igantic underground oceans hidden in our planet could be home to bizarre ‘alien’ lifeforms

SCIENTISTS have claimed that massive oceans are hidden up to 1,000 kilometres beneath the surface of Planet Earth.

These mysterious bodies of water could even hold lifeforms which are so unusual that some scientists would regard them as aliens.

Steve Jacobsen, a researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois, said a part of Earth’s core called the mantle could contain several oceans’ worth of water.

The deepest of the subterranean seas is believed to stretch about a third of the way down to Earth’s molten core.

“If it wasn’t down there, we would all be submerged,” Jacobsen told New Scientist.

He found a diamond in Brazil which contains imperfections would could only be formed in the presence of water.

“This implies a bigger reservoir of water on the planet than previously thought,” he said

The underground oceans are unlikely to resembles any lakes or seas found on the surface of the planet, with the water bound within rocks which soak up the liquid like a sponge.

This means it is unlikely to be home to any large organisms which are unknown to science.

However, tiny microbeS might just be able to survive in the hidden oceans.

Some scientists believe there is a “biotic fringe” in Earth’s core, which Live Science described as a “boundary where current knowledge predicts that no living cells persist” because the temperature and pressure is too high.

But researchers are often astonished by the conditions organisms can put up with.

One single-celled organism called Geogemma barossii was found thriving near the deep-sea hydrothermal vents off the northwest U.S. coast – an environment Harvard University described as “alien”.

It was able to survive in temperatures of up to 120 degrees centigrade – something many scientists believed was impossible.
If this “alien” can survive in such extreme conditions, what else might be lurking down there in the depths of our planet?