I located the following article in the "Underwater USA"
magazine, march. 1993.

Normally, this type of information would be placed in
MUFON_WIRES, but I feel this is something worth pondering by
all of us.

  SUBSURFACE LIFE EXISTS DEEP INSIDE EARTH, SCIENTIST SAYS

         By Jim Detien - Knight-Ridder News Service

There is probably more life inside Earth than there is on
it's surface, a Cornell University scientist reports.

This life is in the form of bacteria and other
microorganisms, and it's overall volume, the scientist says,
probably surpasses that of all the plants and animals living
on the planet's surface - much of it miles deep draws it's
energy not from the sun, as humans do, but from the heat of
the Earth's interior.

Writing in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science, astrophysicist Thomas Gold goes on to
speculate that similar life forms may exist inside the moon
and in other planets in our solar system.

In his paper, Gold notes that until the late 1970's
scientists were not even aware of the existence of
subsurface life forms powered by Earth's internal chemistry.

In 1977, scientists on the submarine research vessel "Alvin"
discovered totally unexpected giant worms and other forms of
life two miles beneath the ocean's surface.  Those organisms
thrived on bacteria that drew their energy not from the sun
but from chemical processes deep inside Earth.

Since then, many other examples have been found of bacteria
that live within the planet and thrive on chemical energy
sources, such as hydrogen and methane.  Those bacteria can
live without air and do not rely on sunlight for their
energy.

"once you realize that these bacteria live on energy from
inside the Earth, you have to suspect that they would exist
in all places that have a chemical energy source," says
Gold, who currently is directing a project in Sweden to find
oil deep inside Earth's crust.

"If Gold's ideas prove to be correct, they will
revolutionize scientific theories of geology and the
evolution of man on Earth," says Stephen Maran, a senior
staff scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md.

"Gold is a brilliant ideas man whose ideas tend to be
decades ahead of their time,", Maran says.  "He's not afraid
to put forth bold ideas.  You can't dismiss his ideas out of
hand, because some of his most controversial theories have
later been shown to be correct."

Gold, a national member of the National Academy of Sciences,
was the first scientist to explain that pulsars are rapidly
rotating neutron stars.  He was also the first to deduce
that the moon's surface was a fine powdery dust rather than
sharp, volcanic rock.

But he also proposed theories most of his colleagues later
abandoned.

In 1948 he and two other scientists proposed the steady
state model, which says the universe was infinitely old and
generally unchanging.  That theory has been shunted aside by
the Big Bang model, which says the universe was created
during a primordial explosion 15 billion years ago and has
been expanding ever since.

Gold has found evidence of microorganisms living more than
15,000 feet deep in pure granite, and he says the remains of
bacteria have been found in oil and coal.  The bacteria can
exist at temperatures as high as 300 degrees Fahrenheit and
are similar to the life that thrives on hydrogen and methane
seeping up through cracks in the ocean floor.

Gold says that many other forms of bacteria and
microorganisms living as deep as 30,000 feet probably exist,
but have not yet been discovered.  He calculates that those
organisms could have a volume of 100 million million tons -
more life than exists on the planet's surface.

Gold theorizes that life on Earth may have originated in
Earth's interior, and that similar life forms may exist
inside the moon, Mars, Venus, Pluto, the satellites of
Saturn and Neptune, and asteroids and other non-gaseous
astronomical bodies.

"As long as you think life is possible only on the surface,
than Earth only can support it," says Gold.  "But the moment
you talk about stuff on the inside, Earth is not unique at
all.  Every solid planet has similar circumstances, with hot
interiors and chemical processes that will always supply on
energy source for bacteria."

Gold says his ideas can be tested by using robotic vehicles
to sample areas on Mars where huge landslides have exposed
material that was once 6,000 feet below the surface.

"The surface life on Earth, based on photosynthesis for it's
overall energy supply, may be just one strange branch of
life," he says, " The deep, chemically supplied life,
however, may be very common in the universe."

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