Yes, I get that there is life at the bottom. What I am asking is about the cold, dark open water above the bottom, and below where sunlight can penetrate.
Are humans not a carbon-based life form?
Maybe Lake Vostok. We suspect there is life there but the water would have to be collected under very sterile conditions to be sure.
Well Water depending on the aquifer is a rather poor environment for bacteria. Drilled wells by design minimize the ability for coli form bacteria to survive. In pretty much any sample you will find low levels of non-coli form however.
After bleaching a well it can take a significant amout of time before any level of bacteria can be found again.
You’re right there’s not much there. There is a slow, steady, and very diffuse “snowfall” of food from the sunlit surface layer that eventually settles on the bottom. On the way down some of it gets consumed by the sparse life that lives in the middle waters.
This depth range is properly called the “pelagic zone” and this Pelagic zone - Wikipedia will fill in the details for you. You’re specifically asking about the so-called bathypelagic and abbysopelagic zones. Which have their own articles as well.
But only after Dr Ian Malcolm said it first.
Okay, this is weird and unexpected. Not exactly what the OP had in mind, but related, certainly.
Coconut water is apparently sterile, according to several sites. Not even micro-organisms, unless the nut itself is damaged. It was used as intravenous hydration fluid in Cambodia during the time of the Khmer Rouge.
Well, that is weird and unexpected.
very little but yes, plenty of microorganisms, and various larger critters passing through.
If we are allowed to include fluids already *within *organisms then the list of sterile fluids is endless.
Urine is sterile.
Nectar in unopened flowers is sterile. The juice of any fruit, not just coconuts, is sterile.
Egg white is sterile.
The humour in the eye is sterile.
If this is what the OP wanted then the list will run into the billions. It’s quite hard to find an internal fluid in a healthy organism that isn’t sterile. Of course some pathogens will occasionally find their way into these fluids, just as some will occasionally find their way into coconut milk. But generally the fluids are sterile.
Really? My blood may be sterile in that it contains very few parasites or bacteria from the outside, but that’s largely because my bloodstream is filled with my own leukocytes sweeping al that stuff away, not to mention lots of red blood cells carrying oxygen and carbon dioxide to and from the lungs. It may be “sterile”, but it’s not “Devoid of life”, as the OP asks. By contrast, the use of coconut water as a hydrating liquid suggests it is devoid of life.
Turns out urine isn’t sterile, either:
planktonic life exists throughout the water column. 10,000 ft down certainly is no barrier to life. There won’t be much, but there will be some.
I was just going to repeat what my urologist told me-urine is sterile. Apparently not. And I strongly suspect that coconut milk will suffer the same fate if it is carefully studied.