* Astronomy

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Terrestrial biosphere

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RE: Biosphere

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Mat of microbes the size of Greece discovered on seafloor

Gargantuan whales and hefty cephalopods are typically thought of as the classic marine mammoths, but they might have to make way for the mighty microbes, which constitute 50 to 90 percent of the oceans' total biomass, according to newly released data.
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Census Releases Deep Sea Findings Beyond Sunlight
Five of the Census 14 field projects plumb the ocean beyond sunlight, each dedicated to the study of life in progressively deeper realms from the continental margins (COMARGE: Continental Margins Ecosystems) to the spine-like ridge running down the mid-Atlantic (MAR-ECO: Mid-Atlantic Ridge Ecosystem Project), the submerged mountains rising from the seafloor (CenSeam: Global Census of Marine Life on Seamounts), the muddy floor of ocean plains (CeDAMar: Census of Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life), and the vents, seeps, whale falls and chemically-driven ecosystems found on the margins of mid-ocean ridges and in the deepest ocean trenches (ChEss: Biogeography of Deep-Water Chemosynthetic Systems).

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From a translucent jumbo octopus to a fish bearing barbed fangs, scientists say they have discovered hundreds of new species living several kilometres beneath the ocean surface and in total darkness.
Researchers probing pitch-black waters from the Antarctic to deep seas off Iceland say they have catalogued about 5,700 marine life forms that have never seen light, with some being new to science.
The data, part of the ongoing Census of Marine Life project, stunned some of the international scientists who say the unexpected finds show how poorly understood the deep seas are and how much more there could be out there.
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Blobrana · L

About a billion years from now, some scientists say, the sun will be too bright for comfort, and our formerly hospitable planet will no longer be able to support life. If visions of this impending heat death disturb you, researchers from the California Institute of Technology have some good news. Their calculations add at least another billion years to Earths expiration date, results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Roughly a billion years from now, the ever-increasing radiation from the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability; the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant life will disappear, pulled out by the weathering of rocks; the oceans will evaporate; and all living things will disappear.
Or maybe not quite so soon, say researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who have come up with a mechanism that doubles the future lifespan of the biosphere - while also increasing the chance that advanced life will be found elsewhere in the universe.
A paper describing their hypothesis was published June 1 in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

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Title: Atmospheric pressure as a natural climate regulator for a terrestrial planet with a biosphere
Authors: King-Fai Li, Kaveh Pahlevan, Joseph L. Kirschvink and Yuk L. Yung

Lovelock and Whitfield suggested in 1982 that, as the luminosity of the Sun increases over its life cycle, biologically enhanced silicate weathering is able to reduce the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) so that the Earth's surface temperature is maintained within an inhabitable range. As this process continues, however, between 100 and 900 million years (Ma) from now the CO2 concentration will reach levels too low for C3 and C4 photosynthesis, signalling the end of the solar-powered biosphere. Here, we show that atmospheric pressure is another factor that adjusts the global temperature by broadening infrared absorption lines of greenhouse gases. A simple model including the reduction of atmospheric pressure suggests that the life span of the biosphere can be extended at least 2.3 Ga into the future, more than doubling previous estimates. This has important implications for seeking extraterrestrial life in the Universe. Space observations in the infrared region could test the hypothesis that atmospheric pressure regulates the surface temperature on extrasolar planets.

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