Earth's Bacteria Can Form Circle Around Milky Way
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24 April 2024
Bacteria are everywhere on Earth, and perform varied tasks like causing diseases to fixing nitrogen in the soil
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But do you know many of these micro-organisms exist on our planet? Researchers from University of Georgia have calculated the number
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The scientists said that if these bacteria are stacked on top of each other, they would stretch for 10 billion light-years
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However, the bacterial thread would still be difficult to see, because most are 1 micrometre long, or about 75 times thinner than a human hair
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To give you the context, if it is wrapped around the Milky Way, it would encircle it more than 20,000 times, according to the BBC
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In a more manageable sense, if we packed all the bacteria into a cube it would only be around 10 km on each side
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Up to 80% of all the bacteria are found in biofilms on rocks, in the soil, on stagnant water and in virtually every other habitat
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These biofilms are a few hundred bacteria thick and can contain bacteria, archaea and fungi of various species
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Scientists prefer to call bacteria "prokaryotes", a term that describes a single-cell organism without a nucleus
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They have found these cells 40 miles high in the atmosphere and beneath the ocean floor some seven miles deep
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