|
| COMMON MICROBES SURVIVE PRESSURES EQUAL TO THOSE FOUND AT 50 KILOMETERS INSIDE THE EARTH’S CRUST |
| Until now, scientists thought that only specially adapted organisms they call extremophiles could exist in seemingly intolerable environments such as high-pressure, high-temperature oceanic hydrothermal vents or in the ice sheets of Antarctica. A study published in the February 22, 2002, issue of Science, however, shows that even common bacteria are viable under high-pressure conditions equivalent to about 50 kilometers beneath the Earth’s crust or 160 kilometers in a hypothetical sea. |
|
| “PARENTAL EYE”. SIGHT OF ALL ANIMALS STARTED DEVELOPING FROM A COMMON SOURCE |
| Mechanism of striped fish or fly’s eye development points out at a common evolutionary origin of animals’ eyes. Eyes of Chorda and Invertebrate animals are drastically distinguished in structure. That’s why people had thought that their eyes were developing independently. However, a research conducted by German Max Plank Biological Institute’s scientists has shown that in the embryo development process the same gene was used to “create” fly and fish eyes.
Thus, scientists now put forward another hypothesis: eyes of all animals were born from one “parental eye”...
|
|
| BOUNDARIES OF THE LIVING WORLD, WHERE ARE THEY? |
| The latest estimates accomplished
by scientists show that the upper boundary of the earth’s biosphere is in the
stratosphere at an altitude of up to 100 km inclusive. Thus, any microbes or
their spores entering the area above the boundary mentioned (either from the
earth’s surface or from the space) have to be rapidly heated over there up to
120° C and over by the Sun radiation, to die then. |
|
