Tiny rock-eating lifeforms have been discovered living half a mile beneath pack ice in Antarctica, raising the prospect that life could exist in similarly hostile environments such as Mars.


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Yes, but can we grok them?  ^.^

Hell, this is just our form of life.  What about non-DNA-based, non-water-based life?  Cool.

Beam me up! Just promise one thing. On Mars, religion will be banned.

Very exciting!  Hopefully such life could evolve into intelligent life.  

Who knows !?  

Suppose that absolutely all present life on Planet Earth was to perish, leaving only this deep sub-marine, sub-Antarctic life to rule, then after a further 4 or 5 billion years might we possibly have intelligent life walking the planet again? 

Hmm, what's the timeline on our sun, again?

Don't we have another two billion or so, before our planet passes out of the habitable zone, as we see it, due to sun shrinkage, prior to the red giant phase?  Anyway, five billion years until our sun runs out of fusible hydrogen and goes red giant.

Yes Joseph, & here's something from Nature on "Earth's habitable days are numbered":

"Earth will be able to host life for just another 1.75 billion years or so, according to a study published on 18 September 2013 in Astrobiology . . . . 

The habitable zone around a star is the area in which an orbiting planet can support liquid water, the perfect solvent for the chemical reactions at the heart of life [as we know it]. Too far from a star and a planet’s water turns to permanent ice and its carbon dioxide condenses; too close, and the heat turns water into vapour that escapes into space. . . . 

The inner edge of the Sun’s habitable zone is moving outwards at a rate of about 1 metre per year. The latest model predicts a total habitable zone lifetime for Earth of 6.3 billion–7.8 billion years, suggesting that life on the planet is already about 70% of the way through its run.

Ah, yeah, sounds like the study I saw ... I believe on here ... about a year ago.  I had the direction backwards, though.  I forgot that the sun is heating up, not cooling down, as it goes through its hydrogen.  I remember my Newtonian physics, but most of my astrophysics is freaking gone, since I haven't used it much, in over a decade.

Now, now, Dr. Meaden, you know perfectly well that the earth came into being about 6,000 years ago. Shame on you for foisting off that old earth nonsense!

Now, now James, I thought that you knew that I was a special one----one who was actually chosen to receive an image of the Old Earth being born. 



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