# "All life on Earth depends on the Sun for survival" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 22, 2015, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846 "2015-07-22T02:41:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/1 "2015-07-22T02:41:38Z")
It’s been said before that all life on Earth ultimately depends on the Sun for survival, but would, say, some bacteria in undersea volcanic vents manage to get by, or would they just run out of organic matter to eat since everything else would die? (Ignoring the gravity issue if the Sun disappeared and focusing only on the Sun’s light and warmth.) ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/2 "2015-07-22T02:44:53Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > It’s been said before that all life on Earth ultimately depends on the Sun for survival, but would, say, some bacteria in undersea volcanic vents manage to get by, or would they just run out of organic matter to eat since everything else would die? > (Ignoring the gravity issue if the Sun disappeared and focusing only on the Sun’s light and warmth.) It’s not true. There are organisms that rely on deep ocean thermal and chemical sources for life, and if the sun went out tomorrow, from what I’ve heard, they would live on for potentially billions of years without ever knowing the sun was ever there. ETA: Stuff like [this](http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/deep_sea/vents_seeps/). > [@](#): > > Hydrothermal vents > Deep-sea hydrothermal vents form as a result of volcanic activity on the ocean floor. Water seeps through cracks in the Earth’s crust, dissolving metals and minerals as it becomes super-heated from nearby magma. > > This water - which can reach temperatures of 400°C - eventually rises back through the ocean floor, erupting as a geyser from a hydrothermal vent. The dissolved minerals and metals precipitate on contact with the cold sea water, forming a chimney around the vent. > > Oases of life… > When scientists first discovered these vents in the 1970s, they were amazed to find thriving communities of shrimp, crabs, giant tubeworms, clams, slugs, anemones, and fish. These rare geological features turned out to be oases on the otherwise sparsely inhabited ocean floor, with a biomass equivalent to that of a rainforest. > [@](#): > > Cold seeps > Chemicals also seep from the Earth’s crusts at some locations, at the same temperature as the surrounding seawater. > > Since the discovery of vent ecosystems dependent on hydrogen sulfide, scientists have found similar communities living around these so-called ‘cold seeps’. Others have also been found that rely on methane instead of hydrogen sulfide. Some of these are around bizarre deep-sea lakes called ‘brine pools’: depressions in the sea floor filled with water that has a much higher concentration of salt then the surrounding water. And recently a tube worm community was found living on solid methane hydrate on the ocean floor. > > Apart from temperature and the chemical used for energy, a major difference between vent and cold seep ecosystems is the rate of growth. Vent creatures generally grow fast - giant vent tube worms are one of the fastest-growing animals on Earth. They need to be: hydrothermal vents generally only exist for a few decades. > > However, their cold seep cousins grow much more slowly. Seep tube worms, for example, are thought to live for up to 250 years. > > The deepest cold seep ecosystem discovered so far is located in the Sea of Japan at a depth of 5,000 to 6,500m. Other cold seeps and ‘chemosynthetic biological communities’ have been found in the Gulf of Mexico, the Monterey Canyon off the coast of California, US, and off the coast of Alaska, US. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/3 "2015-07-22T02:53:28Z")
[The more general term is ‘chemotroph’](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotroph): > [@](#): > > Chemoautotrophs (or chemotrophic autotroph) (Gr: Chemo (χημία) = chemical, auto (αὐτός) = self, troph (τροφιά) = nourishment), in addition to deriving energy from chemical reactions, synthesize all necessary organic compounds from carbon dioxide. Chemoautotrophs use inorganic energy sources, such as hydrogen sulfide, elemental sulfur, ferrous iron, molecular hydrogen, and ammonia. Most are bacteria or archaea that live in hostile environments such as deep sea vents and are the primary producers in such ecosystems. Chemoautotrophs generally fall into several groups: methanogens, halophiles, sulfur oxidizers and reducers, nitrifiers, anammox bacteria, and thermoacidophiles. Chemolithotrophic growth could be dramatically fast, such as Thiomicrospira crunogena with a doubling time around one hour. And > [@](#): > > In the deep oceans, iron-oxidizing bacteria derive their energy needs by oxidizing iron(II) to iron(III). The extra electron obtained from this reaction powers the cells, replacing or augmenting traditional phototrophism. So apparently at least some don’t need sunlight at all. [NOAA has more information.](http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/06mexico/background/microbiology/microbiology.html) [Then there are the tube worms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamellibrachia): > [@](#): > > _Lamellibrachia_ is a genus of tube worms related to the giant tube worm, _Riftia pachyptila_. It lives at deep-sea cold seeps where hydrocarbons (oil and methane) are leaking out of the seafloor. It is entirely reliant on internal, sulfide-oxidizing bacterial symbionts for its nutrition. From everything I can find, none of these species depend on sunlight directly or indirectly. They’d survive if we were orbiting a cold dark mass the same way as they do now, until the Earth itself had cooled sufficiently that none of the vulcanism they rely on was happening any longer. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/4 "2015-07-22T03:37:59Z")
There are also microorganisms living deep inside the earth. A quick Google is dominated by recent discoveries of bacteria just a few hundred meters under the ocean, but a paper from the nineties said they found them in rocks 1.7 miles deep in the continental crust. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/5 "2015-07-22T03:43:56Z")
Note that aerobic chemotrophs are indirectly dependent on sunlight because they require the oxygen that is produced by green plants. There are, however, some anaerobic chemotrophs. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/6 "2015-07-22T03:59:05Z")
Have any of the deep sea life forms mentioned here evolved from surface life forms? If so, then they were probably dependent on the sun at some point in their history, even if not now. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/7 "2015-07-22T04:31:49Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Have any of the deep sea life forms mentioned here evolved from surface life forms? Probably not. In fact, it has been speculated that[life itself originated in submarine volcanic vents](http://www.space.com/19439-origin-life-earth-hydrothermal-vents.html). Some of the earliest life forms may have been chemosynthetic. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/8 "2015-07-22T05:21:42Z")
Just so no one is confused, Colibri is talking about the bacterial chemoautotrophs that form the bottom of the food chain in these vent communities. The multi-cellular animals like the worms and crustaceans all had ancestors from regular surface ecosystems. Even the vent tubeworms that never eat get their nutrition from symbiotic chemotrophic bacteria, they aren’t able to directly metabolize the vent chemicals. The first bacterial life on earth was chemotrophic, photosynthesis didn’t evolve until a billion or two years later. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/9 "2015-07-22T05:53:23Z")
And just to add a little more, the chemoautotrophs living in rock deep down inside earth’s crust are [not](http://astrobiology.com/2014/02/how-deep-inside-our-planet-can-life-exist.html) thought to be the origin of life. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/10 "2015-07-22T18:49:28Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Probably not. In fact, it has been speculated that[life itself originated in submarine volcanic vents](http://www.space.com/19439-origin-life-earth-hydrothermal-vents.html). Some of the earliest life forms may have been chemosynthetic. I was about to post that speculation. I just want to add that it has to be one or the other. The existence of a unique genetic code virtually certainly implies that there is only one origin of all current life on earth. It might have been on the surface; it might have been in those deep vents; it could not have been both. Which is not to deny the possibility that life originated more than once, but only one of those origins has survived till today. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/11 "2015-07-22T19:00:47Z")
Things living deep inside the earth or at volcanic vents may not depend directly upon the sun, but one indirect result of the sun being there is that the earth stays at a temperature of about 300K. Take away the sun and that background temperature is going to plummet. When the seas start to freeze and the earth’s hot core starts to cool off faster than it did with the sun there, things will change. Perhaps life will be able to evolve rapidly enough so that it can still live with the ambient temperature lower than it had been (as in the science fiction short story _Infra Draconis_, where life survives in geologically active bodies without a nearby star (in the Magellanic Clouds). But it’s not a given. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/12 "2015-07-22T19:50:31Z")
Here’s a letter to Nature from David Stevenson about the possibility of internally-heated, life-supporting planets in deep space. [The Possibility of Life-Sustaining Planets in Interstellar Space](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/237427218_Possibility_of_Life-Sustaining_Planets_in_Interstellar_Space) > [@](#): > > If, as many have suggested, life can develop and be sustained without > sunlight (but with other energy sources, plausibly volcanism or lightning in this instance) then these bodies may provide a long-lived stable environment for that life (albeit one where the temperatures slowly decline on a billion year timescale). It is even conceivable that these are the most common sites of life in the Universe. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/13 "2015-07-22T20:32:41Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Things living deep inside the earth or at volcanic vents may not depend directly upon the sun, but one indirect result of the sun being there is that the earth stays at a temperature of about 300K. Take away the sun and that background temperature is going to plummet. When the seas start to freeze and the earth’s hot core starts to cool off faster than it did with the sun there, things will change. Perhaps life will be able to evolve rapidly enough so that it can still live with the ambient temperature lower than it had been (as in the science fiction short story _Infra Draconis_, where life survives in geologically active bodies without a nearby star (in the Magellanic Clouds). But it’s not a given. They think that there might be liquid oceans deep under the ice of several of Jupiter and Saturn’s moons. At a certain point the ice above will provide insulation for the deeper waters. As for the Earth’s core, from what I recall it’s not going to wind down for billions of years, so life could continue to exist over those thermal vents for a hell of a long time with or without the sun. In fact, it might actually last longer down there without the sun going all red giant on us than having the thing. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2015, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/14 "2015-07-22T21:10:45Z")
Another possible survivor would be [radiotrophic fungi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus). They evolved from more conventional forms of life, but have developed the trick of getting the energy they need from gamma radiation. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/15 "2015-07-23T02:58:46Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Another possible survivor would be [radiotrophic fungi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus). They evolved from more conventional forms of life, but have developed the trick of getting the energy they need from gamma radiation. HEY … peoples have melanin … did humans get left out of the evolution gravytrain _again_ … ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/16 "2015-07-23T03:16:06Z")
There’s also [_Desulforudis audaxviator_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desulforudis), a bacterium found deep in a mine in 2006. It survives on [sulfate ions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfate-reducing_bacteria) that are, in turn, produced from radioactive decay — no sunlight required. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2015, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-life-on-earth-depends-on-the-sun-for-survival/725846/17 "2015-07-23T05:05:16Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > HEY … peoples have melanin … did humans get left out of the evolution gravytrain _again_ … Hey, humans doubled-down on a very specialized, but very successful, strategy: Have big brains and complex language and evolve by changing our cultures and making tools. It’s working rather well for us so far, compared to other great apes.