How Hot Is Too Hot for Life Deep Below the Ocean Floor?
Kai-Uwe Hinrichs of MARUM. “The goal of the T-Limit Expedition, therefore, was to drill a thousand-meter deep hole into sediments with a temperature of up to 120 degrees Celsius – and we succeeded.” Worldwide [...] technological challenges. Temperatures of 120 degrees Celsius are normally encountered at about 4,000 meters below the sea floor. There is only one way in the world for scientists to obtain samples from such [...] gradient here, it was possible to reach a temperature of 120 degrees Celsius in a hole only 1,180 meters deep. “Surprisingly, the microbial population density collapsed at a temperature of only about 45