Microbes to be 'last survivors' on future Earth

[dipsydoodle]

The last surviving creatures on Earth will be tiny organisms living deep underground, according to scientists.

Researchers used a computer model to assess our planet's fate billions of years from now.

They found that as the Sun becomes hotter and brighter, only microbes would be able cope with the extreme conditions that the solar changes would bring.

The research is being presented at the National Astronomy Meeting.

Jack O'Malley James, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, said: "There won't be very much oxygen present, so they need to be able to survive in low or zero-oxygen environments, high pressures, and high salinities because of evaporating oceans."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23135934

[Javaman]

1. Personally I welcome our microbe overlords. nt

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Sounds like a pretty safe prediction

[DreamGypsy]

3. Thermus aquaticus already told us that.

From Wikipedia:

Thermus aquaticus is a species of bacterium that can tolerate high temperatures, one of several thermophilic bacteria that belong to the Deinococcus-Thermus group. It is the source of the heat-resistant enzyme Taq DNA polymerase, one of the most important enzymes in molecular biology because of its use in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) DNA amplification technique.

History

When studies of biological organisms in hot springs began in the 1960s, scientists thought that the life of thermophilic bacteria could not be sustained in temperatures above about 55° Celsius (131° Fahrenheit). Soon, however, it was discovered that many bacteria in different springs not only survived, but also thrived in higher temperatures. In 1969, Thomas D. Brock and Hudson Freeze of Indiana University reported a new species of thermophilic bacterium which they named Thermus aquaticus.The bacterium was first discovered in the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park, near the major geysers Great Fountain Geyser and White Dome Geyser, and has since been found in similar thermal habitats around the world.

Biology

It thrives at 70°C (160°F), but can survive at temperatures of 50°C to 80°C (120°F to 175°F). This bacterium is a chemotroph — it performs chemosynthesis to obtain food. However, since its range of temperature overlaps somewhat with that of the photosynthetic cyanobacteria that share its ideal environment, it is sometimes found living jointly with its neighbors, obtaining energy for growth from their photosynthesis.

Thermus acquaticus speaks its mind in the pen penultimate chapter of Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale (2004):

Although our tales are not, in the main, told in the first person, let us make an exception for the last word of all our tales, and give it to Thermus aquaticus:

Look at life from our perspective, and you eukaryotes will soon cease giving yourselves such airs. You bipedal apes, you stump-tailed tree-shrews, you desiccated lobe-fins, you vertebrated worms, you Hoxed-up sponges, you newcomers on the block, you eukaryotes, you barely distinguishable congregations of a monotonously narrow parish, you are little more than fancy froth on the surface of bacterial life. Why, the very cells that build you are themselves colonies of bacteria, replaying the same old tricks we bacteria discovered a billion years ago. We were here before you arrived, and we shall be here after you are gone.