Karen Lloyd at Noema Magazine:
Buried in the deepest darkness underground, eating strange food, playing with the laws of thermodynamics and living on unrelatably long timescales, intraterrestrials have remained largely remote and aloof from humans. However, the microbes that dwell in the deep subsurface biosphere affect our lives in innumerable ways.
On a planetary scale, they play a key role in regulating Earth’s level of oxygenation. In addition, without the nutrients recycled by intraterrestrials in the seafloor, such as iron and nitrogen, phytoplankton would be severely limited in their ability to make oxygen for us. Intraterrestrials are also uniquely suited to detoxify our worst waste by breathing radioactive uranium, arsenic, organic carcinogens and other nasty stuff. So in effect, they have helped us develop as a species without poisoning ourselves. Given how intrinsically entwined intraterrestrials are in Earth systems, they might also play an outsized role in how Earth responds to human-made climate change.
more here.
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