User:Luisjoseromeroesclusa/Biospeleothem

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A Biospeleothem (from the Greek "bios" for "life" and the Greek "speleothem" for "cave deposit") is a form of life composed entirely of minerals and able to survive without the need for light or water.

1 Overview
2 Discovery
3 References
4 Notes
5 External Links

[edit] Overview

A biospeleothem, able to survive under conditions of extreme darkness and lack of water, belongs to the realm of extremophiles, living beings able to thrive under extremely hostile conditions, with the exception that biospeleothems are able to survive with little or no supply of water. Not to be confused with regular stalagmites and stalagtites, biospeleothems are not formed by soluble calcium compounds dripping from the roofs of caves, but rather "outward", forming concentric layers or rings, similar to the way trees grow. These beings are able to transform silicon into opal as part of their growth process. This manifests itself in a myriad of forms, coincidentally similar to other known objects and lifeforms, like human dolls, mushrooms, ship sails, and many others. Their closest relative would be coral, however, they develop under entirely different conditions and possess entirely different structures. They also emit a form of luminescence when exposed to the flash of a photo camera.

[edit] Discovery

In 2006, deep inside the Brewer Carias cave (previously known as the "Cueva del fantasma" or "The Cave of the Phantom", as it resembled the hideout of the popular comic book character) located atop the dense Aprada Tepui (a tepui is a form of plateau covered by dense vegetation) on the inhospitable highlands of the Venezuelan Guyana, a group led by world renowned Venezuelan explorer and survival expert Charles Brewer Carias (in whose honor the cave is named) stumbled accross an odd formation resembling a coral, but not precisely so. Upon closer examination it appeared to be not only alive, but surviving under extremely adverse conditions, namely utter darkness, and without evident presence of water, given the altitude of the location was about 10 meters (about 32 ft) above the maximum water level.

In order to prove the validity of his theory, some samples were taken to Professor Vicente Marcano from the Universidad de Los Andes to help him determine whether he was correct. Currently, NASA is planning on traveling to Venezuela to determine whether these are indeed living organisms (which are born, grow, reproduce, die inanimately and produce opal out of silicon), and whether to classify them as exobiological. In spite of the insistence that these beings come from Mars and arrived on earth as a result of a meteorite impact (there is indeed a crater nearby) the truth according to its discoverer is that this form of life is common in the solar system.

In the words of it's discoverers : "Nosotros encontramos árboles de roca creciendo desde el suelo, en la oscuridad, a tres kilómetros de profundidad en donde no hay ninguna gota de agua que les diera forma. Se encuentran decenas de metros por arriba de las zonas de inundaciones, así que el agua que proviene de los ríos subterráneos de la cueva tampoco los alimenta o les da forma". "We found trees of rock growing from the ground, in total darkness, at a depth of three kilometers where no drop of water could give them form. They are located tens of meters above the flooded zones, so the water coming from the underground rivers of the cave doesn't feed them or give them shape." ^[1].

The surrounding location was coincidentally made famous by the novel "The Lost World", written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1912, and noted for creating Sherlock Holmes, the well known fictional detective from Scotland Yard.