LEXEN/ SGER: The LAREDO Sampler: Novel Equipment for Experimentation at High Temperature and Pressure on the Seafloor

地球上地下生物圈的概念最近吸引了全世界研究人员和公众的想象力。与深海热液喷口有关的热的地下生物圈的证据包括对最近喷发地点浮现的絮状微生物物质的潜水观测，以及在扩散(冷)热液流体中检测到嗜热微生物，鉴于微生物的热生长要求，这些微生物必须起源于地下更深(更热)的领域。海底活跃的硫化物结构或黑烟释放出高温流体，据推测这些流体已经流经这种地下生境，这为测试地球上以及通过外推的宇宙其他地方的地下生物圈的上层热边界提供了机会。这项提议是为了完成一种名为拉雷多取样器的新型原位钛设备的开发和潜水测试阶段，该设备可以部署在黑色模拟器的聚焦流动中，用于高温下的现场微生物实验，而不会产生减压效应。相同或连续的模型还可提供对有机化合物在静水压力下的热稳定性或对评估生命可能起源于海底的可能性至关重要的其他非生物过程的现场测试。(未来)精简版的采样器可以部署在热油井或海洋钻探计划遗留的洞穴深处，可以用来将地理测试范围扩大到陆地和非喷口地点。最近对地下生物圈、极端环境中的生命和天体生物学新领域的兴趣激增，表明着手开发有效的、尽管风险很高的深海实验工具的时机已经成熟，这些工具可以提供实验室模拟无法获得的新信息。

The concept of a subsurface biosphere on Earth has recently captured the imagination of researchers and the public worldwide. Evidence for a hot subsurface biosphere associated with deep sea hydrothermal vents includes submersible observations of flocculent microbial material emerging from recent eruption sites and the detection of hyperthermophiles in diffuse (cool) hydrothermal fluids, microorganisms that must have originated in deeper (hotter) realms of the subsurface given their thermal growth requirements. Active sulfide structures or black smokers on the seafloor, releasing high temperature fluids that have presumably flushed through such subsurface habitats, provide an opportunity to test for the upper thermal boundaries of the subsurface biosphere on Earth and, by extrapolation, elsewhere in the Universe. This proposal is to complete the development and submersible testing phase of a novel in situ titanium device, called the LAREDO sampler, that can be deployed in the focused flow of a black simoker for insitu microbial experimentation at high temperature in the absence of decompression effects. The same or successive models can also provide for in situ tests of the thermal stability of organic compounds under hydrostatic pressure or of other abiotic processes critical to assessing the possibility that life may have originated in the subseafloor. A (future) streamlined version of the sampler, deployable deep within a hot oil well or a legacy hole of the Ocean Drilling Program, could be used to extend the geographic testing range to terrestrial and non vent sites. The recent explosion of interest in the subsurface biosphere, in life in extreme environments, and in the new field of astrobiology, suggests that the time is ripe to proceed with development of effective, if high risk, deep sea experimental tools that can provide novel information not obtainable in laboratory simulations.