# What environments on Earth contain liquid water, but are devoid of life? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 22, 2015, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250 "2015-04-22T02:41:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/1 "2015-04-22T02:41:06Z")
I can’t name any. Some isolated aquifer, the inside a volcano? REALLY saline water, what? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/2 "2015-04-22T03:27:09Z")
You would think if there were ANY, it would be the Dead Sea. But there are microorganisms living there, and that counts as life. My WAG is that the answer to the question is “none”. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/3 "2015-04-22T03:35:17Z")
Is there anything living in the Cave Of The Crystals? Also, I recall hearing, years ago, about some area (can’t remember where) that was devoid of animals near some kinds of lake or pond. IIRC, it was burping out CO2. But I suppose there could still be anaerobic bacteria in the water. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/4 "2015-04-22T03:39:38Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Is there anything living in the Cave Of The Crystals? > > Also, I recall hearing, years ago, about some area (can’t remember where) that was devoid of animals near some kinds of lake or pond. IIRC, it was burping out CO2. But I suppose there could still be anaerobic bacteria in the water. Are you thinking of Lakes Nyos and Mounon in Cameroon? ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/5 "2015-04-22T03:47:58Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Are you thinking of Lakes Nyos and Mounon in Cameroon? I was just looking at that. It’s very possible it’s that one, but Lake Nyos is just one of a number of “Crater Lakes” it really could have been any of them. I probably saw that documentary 20 years ago. Honestly I don’t even know if it was a documentary about the lake or it was just a one off comment as part of some other special. Anyways, I was coming back to mention to the OP that he might also want to look at Crater Lakes. Looking at wiki, some of them clearly do support life (wiki mentions algae), but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/6 "2015-04-22T04:25:45Z")
Chlorinated swimming pools(\*) and chlorinated municipal water supplies? ( \* ETA: Meaning, when no carbon-based life forms are actually, y’know, swimming in them.) ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/7 "2015-04-22T09:28:48Z")
My first thought was Lake Karachay, but I don’t know if anything is living in it or not. This lake has the distinction of being the most polluted place on the entire earth. Around certain parts of the lake the radiation levels from nuclear waste are so high that a human would receive a lethal dose within an hour. Poking around on google, Don Juan Pond in Antarctica has the distinction of being the saltiest body of water on the planet. > [@](#): > > Researchers have recovered traces of microbial life from the pond, but they are still trying to determine whether it is actively growing and replicating there, or just blowing in from other locations. Don Juan counts as “an example of a place on the surface of Earth where we might expect life, but cannot verify the presence of active life,” says Corien Bakermans, a microbiologist at Penn State University. Then there’s lake Vostok: > [@](#): > > It seems that life really can’t survive everywhere, or at the very least that it’s hard to find in some places. Russian scientists have published the first preliminary results of their drilling into Lake Vostok, several kilometers beneath the Antarctic ice, show the lake, which has been sealed off for at least 15 million years, maybe more, to be devoid of life. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/8 "2015-04-22T12:16:25Z")
Pretty much anyplace exposed to the atmosphere or the open ocean is going to get colonized pretty quickly in ecosystem-scale timeframes (10K years?). That exposure both seeds the area with life from elsewhere, and limits via dilution just how inhospitable it can be in terms of physics / chemistry. One area we (AFAIK) can’t get good data on is high pressure high temperature water pockets deep underground. Someplace manmade like Lake Karachay (good find there **e\_c\_g** ) is probably the best bet given that we can create things much messier and much more recent than Nature can/did/will. ---
**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:** [April 22, 2015, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/9 "2015-04-22T12:19:57Z")
_Definitely not_ the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Swimming there was a mildly disgusting exercise. Each cubic foot of it seemed to have at least a dozen brine shrimp in it. These are the things that they used to advertise as “Sea Monkeys” in those comic book ads. But they don’t look like monkeys, or like the weird creatures drawn in the ads. They kind of look like tiny feathers from a pillow, only with two black dots for eyes at one end. And since they’re floating around in that Lake, presumably there’s something in the water they’re eating. the dead shrimp wash up on the salt-encrusted shore, which has a thick protective layer of Brine Flies, presumably eating the dead shrimp, or laying eggs in them, or something. The flies, in turn, are eaten by the birds. It’s one big smorgasbord in what you would have thought a lifeless place. Besides that, about 20 years ago too much fresh water started running down into the lake, diluting the salt (and threatening to make the level rise enough to swallow up Salt Lake Airport). The salt level was so low near the mouths of the streams running in that fish were actually living in the lake. As mentioned above, there are bacteria even in the Dead Sea, which is far saltier than Utah’s Salt Lake. You might think that volcanic hot springs, practically boiling, and with high mineral content, would be devoid of life. But there are bacteria even in that harsh environment. Look up “Extremeophiles” > **[Extremophile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile)** > > An extremophile (from Latin extremus meaning "extreme" and Greek philiā (φιλία) meaning "love") is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e. environments with conditions approaching or expanding the limits of what known life can adapt to, such as extreme temperature, radiation, salinity, or pH level. > Since the definition of an extreme environment is relative to an arbitrarily defined standard, often an anthropocentric one, these organisms can be c... ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/10 "2015-04-22T12:55:07Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Then there’s lake Vostok: Later studies identified life in Lake Vostok: > **[Never-Before-Seen Life Found In Remote Lake](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lake-vostok-life-russian-scientists_n_2838097)** > > Never-Before-Seen Life Found In Remote Lake strange and unique life, but life nevertheless. For the OP-my best guess is “none”. I have never heard of any site with liquid water and no life. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/11 "2015-04-22T15:46:25Z")
You might get close with some cave that has a lake that has been ‘shut off’ from interacting with other water. Caves tend to be pretty sterile, because the food situation is like a snake eating itself - there’s no food being produced, as with photosynthesis. Still, I doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/12 "2015-04-22T16:25:35Z")
Just for a data point: a short while ago we had [a thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=730438) on [Lake McKenzie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_McKenzie), which isn’t quite devoid of life, but is rather hostile to it, because the water is “too pure”, lacking the stuffs that most creatures need to live in it. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/13 "2015-04-22T16:43:37Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Caves tend to be pretty sterile, because the food situation is like a snake eating itself - there’s no food being produced, as with photosynthesis. To quote Dr. Alan Grant, “Life finds a way”. Bacteria have been discovered in mines whose ultimate energy source is [radioactive decay,](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10336-gold-mine-holds-life-untouched-by-the-sun.html#.VTfPFs4e6S0) with no solar energy input to the system. ---
**Author:** ![jbaker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@jbaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jbaker)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/14 "2015-04-22T17:35:11Z")
Although there are hyperthermophilic forms of life that can thrive on temperatures above 100 C, they have not been found to live at temperatures above 122 C, and it is thought unlikely that they could survive temperatures above 150 C. A fumarole is an opening in a planet’s crust, often in the neighborhood of volcanoes, which emits steam and gases such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen sulfide. If a fumarole were at a temperature above 122 C (or, at most, 150 C), it would probably have no life. All three of the suggestions made by engineer\_comp\_geek (Lake Karachay, Lake Vostok, and Don Juan Pond) remain contenders. Although life was found in drillings at Lake Vostok, this may have been the result of contamination. ---
**Author:** ![halfreal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@halfreal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/halfreal)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/15 "2015-04-22T17:35:19Z")
> **[Ancient water cache may be pristine primordial soup](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329762-600-ancient-water-cache-may-be-pristine-primordial-soup/)** > > Deep rocks have been cracked open and water isolated for billions of years released – the liquid may represent Darwin's "warm little pond" where life arose ---
**Author:** ![sweeteviljesus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@sweeteviljesus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweeteviljesus)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/16 "2015-04-22T18:30:58Z")
How about the insides of reactor vessels? Is the heat/pressure too high? Thanks, Rob ---
**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:** [April 22, 2015, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/17 "2015-04-22T19:58:37Z")
There are some rivers that are acidic enough to burn exposed skin. Those might be contenders, though I would hardly be surprised to learn there are extremophiles there, too. ---
**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:** [April 22, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/18 "2015-04-22T20:47:58Z")
How about the middle of the open ocean - 10K feet down? Sure, there is going to be life at the surface where there is sunlight, and at the bottom where there is a more firm environment (even without sunlight). I am thinking in the zone where there is no sun, and no terra firma - just open water - any life that is there is likely there only to pass thru, no? (I am seriously ignorant on this one so please be gentle). ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/19 "2015-04-22T20:59:25Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > How about the middle of the open ocean - 10K feet down? I know I risk the inevitable once in 1960 joke by posting this, but they found life in the Mariana Trench. > [@](#): > > Once on the bottom, they waited and watched. And they got some big surprises. “We saw the deepest living fish ever recorded,” says Drazen. “Definitely something new. We took one look at the thing and were amazed — big, wide, winglike fins, this eel-like tail and this scalloped face. It was very unique.” They nicknamed it the “ghost fish” for its almost translucent skin. It appears to be a new species of snailfish — living 5 miles below the surface. > > The landers also carried baited traps that drew fish to be videotaped. What the fish didn’t eat was consumed by hordes of shrimplike amphipods. Other traps actually caught animals, including another new species of snailfish. More info in the complete article here: > **[Unexpected Life Found In The Ocean's Deepest Trench](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/12/25/372894314/unexpected-life-found-in-the-oceans-deepest-trench)** > > An expedition to the Pacific's Mariana Trench has found evidence that life exists miles below the surface. But it's not life as we know it. ETA: Youtube video of what lives in the trench: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6N4xmNGeCVU/maxresdefault.jpg "Life in the Mariana Trench") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N4xmNGeCVU) ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250/20 "2015-04-22T21:08:13Z")
Considering that there is a _spider_ that lives way up on Mount Everest - a spider! not even a bacteria, an actual animal with legs and stuff! - happily eating tiny stuff that gets blown up there by the wind, I would not be surprised by anything living anywhere. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-environments-on-earth-contain-liquid-water-but-are-devoid-of-life/718250.md?page=2)