And if we go even deeper, we might find the descendants of those unique and ancient bacteria, including in basaltic rock. f) With all this new evidence you start to think that as there is a deep biosphere on Earth, where most of our bacteria live. Perhaps there might be deep biosphere on other plants. Hence, the search for extra-terrestrials should be concentrated in the subsurface rather than the near surface which we know already is too extreme for life. Thank you very much.
Questions：
Nishimura from JAMSTEC： In your explanation, you mentioned that methane hydrate of the bacteria increases and also in the hydrothermal region there is an increase of bacteria. That's what you mentioned. And in hydrothermal activity, in that zone, a JOIDES Resolution, of course it is possible to drill to that depths. Do you have any concrete plans to use a JOIDES Resolution to drill up to that zone, the hydrothermal zone?
Answer： Yes, have plans to go back to Juan de Fuca Ridge. There is a research proposal in, being considered now, to go back and look at those deep high temperature zones in order to see if we can actually culture organisms from those environments and use the same suite of techniques we've used in other environments in order to prove the existence of these very high temperature organisms. It's up to ODP whether they approve our proposal not. In addition, we are very keen to drill even deeper at the Blake Ridge gas hydrate site to fully quantify the amount of deep bacterial methane production and study even deeper acetate formation.
