Life in water

[mooeypoo]

(Giving people Negative votes because you are making an idiot of yourself and they are trying to reduce your ignorance to not only science but also where your TV programs come from isn't cool or clever either.) [/shamed]

 

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Moderator Note

Seriously? Psycho, you're not a new member here. You already know our code of conduct. Being rude doesn't add credibility to your posts, and makes it extremely hard to read what you are writing. It's also against the rules.

 

If you guys think other posters warrant the attention of staff, use the report button. Lowering yourselves to the level of rudness will just make us respond to the civility issue rather than a potentially more important underlying issue.

 

 

Tone it down, please.

[Psycho]

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Moderator Note

Seriously? Psycho, you're not a new member here. You already know our code of conduct. Being rude doesn't add credibility to your posts, and makes it extremely hard to read what you are writing. It's also against the rules.

 

If you guys think other posters warrant the attention of staff, use the report button. Lowering yourselves to the level of rudness will just make us respond to the civility issue rather than a potentially more important underlying issue.

 

 

Tone it down, please.

Actually I think you will find it isn't rude to call someone ignorant when they clearly are, it is just factual and this is a science forum, I am not going to pander to some social conception of niceties when people can't even be bothered to read the links I post them, they just need to be told straight out they are ignorant as they obviously don't know it.

 

This is a science forums, my arguments are based around science, you shouldn't get negative votes for this being so and people need to be informed that this is the case if they converse with that person, so they can ignore them. It is also massively ironic that in a topic where someone doubts a source from Nature and supplies no other valid one the person supplying it gets reprimanded at the end, on a Science forum.

 

If you really want me to start reporting posts because they are wrong, then you are going to end up with about 50 a day that will be utterly useless to you, as the whole point of this forum is to inform the masses about the current scientific consensus (or so I assumed), I always assumed that if they were posting they wanted to listen, maybe that was my error and I should go to another forum where the scientific method is upheld.

 

If you don't want the current scientific consensus on a subject, from actual scientists, posting scientific sources to back their arguments, maybe you should mention that somewhere in the sign up process.

Edited November 10, 2011 by Psycho

[hypervalent_iodine]

Psycho, I've already had to split this topic once. Please try to stay on topic and don't derail this thread by responding to mod notes. In any case, you're misinterpreting what mooeypoo was saying. Correcting someone's post is all well and good and backing yourself up with sources is even better, just try to keep the condescending tone in which you sometimes do it to a minimum.

 

Water on earth is teeming with life and scientists are looking for life in water on other worlds. The question is, is there any water on earth that doesn't have life? I'm not talking about in a lab or water that's been specially treated, but any water out in the wild that a person could find that is completely devoid of any life.

 

I want to go back to the OP for a moment, since this thread has started to turn into a book review club. Even though it doesn't appear that the OP'er intends on rejoining the discussion, I think it would be nice if we could all go back to what randomus was originally asking - i.e. are there any marine environments that we know of incapable of harbouring life. As a non-biologist, the answer to me seems to be a tentative yes, there are places, but they are very extreme. We've discussed hyperthermal environments to death and the conclusion there seems to be that, yes, things live there, though not necessarily in the most extreme cases such as deep sea hydrothermal vents.

 

Another extreme environment worth mentioning is that of the Dead sea - i.e. hypersaline waters. If I'm not mistaken, there's not terribly much in the way of life there, although you do find some variety of microbe. I'm not up on the details there, though, so perhaps Psycho or someone might like to chime in with opinions and/or corrections.

Edited November 10, 2011 by hypervalent_iodine

[mooeypoo]

Actually I think you will find it isn't rude to call someone ignorant when they clearly are, it is just factual and this is a science forum, I am not going to pander to some social conception of niceties when people can't even be bothered to read the links I post them, they just need to be told straight out they are ignorant as they obviously don't know it.

 

You weren't just calling them ignorant, and it wasn't about the content of your post, it was the attitude, and it wasn't just one post.

 

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Moderator Note

 

The argument isn't the problem. The way you present it is. We don't require people to agree with one another, we require people to be civil.

 

 

Please don't argue with moderation notes in the thread. If you think you experienced some injustice, use the report button and (other) moderators will examine it (again), or contact an admin.

[CharonY]

Another extreme environment worth mentioning is that of the Dead sea - i.e. hypersaline waters.

 

Hypersalinity is indeed very restrictive. However, halophilic (i.e. osmotolerant) prokaryotes can survive quite well under these conditions. Haloferax is an example of a halophilic archaea and I think it may have actually been isolated from the dead sea.

 

Sterile environments are likely to be exceedingly rare. It is probably easier to think the other way round. Take the known limits of extremophiles (with the caveat that much of them are still unexplored and experimental results may be limited) and try to match an aquatic environment to that.

 

Off the top of my head the T limits would be -20 to 125° C (excluding spores). Tolerance against salinity starts at around 15% NaCl though I would have to look up the upper limit. Combinations of several extremes would arguably also limit the possibility of survival.

Edited November 10, 2011 by CharonY

[questionposter]

Psycho, I've already had to split this topic once. Please try to stay on topic and don't derail this thread by responding to mod notes. In any case, you're misinterpreting what mooeypoo was saying. Correcting someone's post is all well and good and backing yourself up with sources is even better, just try to keep the condescending tone in which you sometimes do it to a minimum.

 

 

 

I want to go back to the OP for a moment, since this thread has started to turn into a book review club. Even though it doesn't appear that the OP'er intends on rejoining the discussion, I think it would be nice if we could all go back to what randomus was originally asking - i.e. are there any marine environments that we know of incapable of harbouring life. As a non-biologist, the answer to me seems to be a tentative yes, there are places, but they are very extreme. We've discussed hyperthermal environments to death and the conclusion there seems to be that, yes, things live there, though not necessarily in the most extreme cases such as deep sea hydrothermal vents.

 

Another extreme environment worth mentioning is that of the Dead sea - i.e. hypersaline waters. If I'm not mistaken, there's not terribly much in the way of life there, although you do find some variety of microbe. I'm not up on the details there, though, so perhaps Psycho or someone might like to chime in with opinions and/or corrections.

 

And on the opposite end, What about water bears? They can indefinitely survive without water, have scientists found what makes them tic? Because I think if its discovered why waterbears can remain indefinitely dormant that it can answer other questions about how other life forms deal with water.

[CharonY]

These are different aspects. One is surviving, the other is actively growing. Water bears are probably the most resilient animal and beat a number of prokaryotes, too. Chances are, however, that spores are among the top survivors.

[swansont]

If you really want me to start reporting posts because they are wrong, then you are going to end up with about 50 a day that will be utterly useless to you, as the whole point of this forum is to inform the masses about the current scientific consensus (or so I assumed), I always assumed that if they were posting they wanted to listen, maybe that was my error and I should go to another forum where the scientific method is upheld.

 

If you don't want the current scientific consensus on a subject, from actual scientists, posting scientific sources to back their arguments, maybe you should mention that somewhere in the sign up process.

 

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Moderator Note

Just for the record, we don't want people to report posts that are wrong — that's not the function of the feature. We want you to report posts that break the rules rather than trying to deal with those situations yourselves. Simply being wrong is not a rules violation.

 

We DO want the current scientific consensus on the subject and for people to back up their arguments with sources. We just want a certain level of civility when they do it.