Word: bacterias
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Michael Crichton didn't really have to get the science right to make sure The Lost World would be a best seller. But he got the science right anyway. Like many of his earlier novels--from The Andromeda Strain, his killer-bacteria thriller that prefigured The Hot Zone by 25 years, to Jurassic Park--The Lost World is suffused with scientific detail that has clearly been lifted from the latest research journals. Yet as a novelist Crichton isn't bound by the usual caveats that academics are forced to issue; he can and does take the most speculative of theories...
...explore. Oceans cover nearly three-quarters of the planet's surface--336 million cu. mi. of water that reaches an average depth of 2.3 miles. The sea's intricate food webs support more life by weight and a greater diversity of animals than any other ecosystem, from sulfur-eating bacteria clustered around deep-sea vents to fish that light up like New York City's Times Square billboards to lure their prey. Somewhere below there even lurks the last certified sea monster left from pre-scientific times: the 64-ft.-long giant squid...
...currents influence much of the world's weather patterns; figuring out how they operate could save trillions of dollars in weather-related disasters. The oceans also have vast reserves of commercially valuable minerals, including nickel, iron, manganese, copper and cobalt. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are already analyzing deep-sea bacteria, fish and marine plants looking for substances that they might someday turn into miracle drugs. Says Bruce Robison, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California: "I can guarantee you that the discoveries beneficial to mankind will far outweigh those of the space program over the next couple...
...more than a passing resemblance to hell--are actually bursting with life. Nobody had invited biologists along to study the vents because nobody imagined there would be anything to interest them. But on a dive off the Galapagos in 1977, researchers found the water around a vent teeming with bacteria and surrounded for dozens of feet in all directions with peculiar, 8-in.-long tube-shaped worms, clams the size of dinner plates, mussels and at least one specimen of a strange pink-skinned, blue-eyed fish...
...bacteria around the vents, in turn, were living inside the mollusks and worms, breaking down other chemicals into usable food--an ecological niche nobody had suspected they could fill. Many biologists now believe that the very first organisms on earth were chemosynthetic as well, suggesting that the vents may well be the best laboratory available for studying how life on the planet actually began...