Further With Jesus.
Source: Discover magazine, July/August 2012. Geologist and biologist Tullis Onstott interviewed by Discover:
Interviewer: Then you found still more perplexing discoveries in other South African mines — for instance, microbes similar to those previously seen only at the bottom of the ocean.
Onstott: That’s right. We went back to South Africa in 1998, this time to Driefontein Mine, located about 40 miles southwest of Johannesburg, and took water samples, which are easier to work with than rock and less likely to be contaminated. We started finding the same organisms that people were reporting from deep-sea hydrothermal vents [where hot, mineral- laden fluid flows through volcanic rock into the ocean from deep within the Earth]. We don’t know how the same organisms got to be in both places.
Interviewer: That’s amazing, since we usually think of radioactivity as deadly — but these organisms were actually living on radiation?
Onstott: Well, not just radiation, but radiation, water, and rock were all that was needed to support life at depth. You don’t need light, food, or anything else from the surface. Plus, it’s a renewable energy source.
Interviewer: And does that microbe interact with other species down deep?
Onstott: Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator
Part 9. Further With Jesus.
Song of Solomon 4:10-16 (KJV) How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,
Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.