[TML] Plants, animals and characters

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 4/4/08 2:35 PM, "Bruce Johnson" <johnson at pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

> On Apr 3, 2008, at 10:01 PM, shadow at shadowgard.com wrote:
> 
>> On 3 Apr 2008 at 19:42, Jerry W Barrington wrote:
>> 
>>> On 4/3/08 5:17 PM, "Knapp" <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Eating, I need some help here but the roots of the energy system
>>>> are:
>>>> the sun, geothermal and ???? After that it is all about eating
>>>> others
>>>> and how fast, big and or resistant to eating the others are and you
>>>> are.
>>> 
>>> Solar is by for the primary.  Geothermal is only available in very
>>> limited
>>> areas, and those areas can die out over time.  I really don't know
>>> over any
>>> other *known* sources.
>> 
>> I just recalled that a *lot* of bacteria get energy from processing
>> things like sulfide ores into sulfates.
> 
> I'm thinking he's asking about primary sources of energy, of which
> there are only two: fusion, powering the sun, and fissile decay, which
> powers geothermal sources.

Yeah, that's why I didn't distinguish Douglas's "geothermal" from
chemosynthesis.  Whether chemicals emitted from magma or minerals which once
*were* magma or rocks metamorphosed by tectonics, it's driven by the core.
As opposed to most of the biosphere, which is driven by sunlight.

Even though we generally consider the rocks to be static, if bacteria are
"eating" them, they must be replenished by one of those 2 sources.