Pat gets a smoking no-prize for bringing this NY Times article to our attention:

In the quarter century since the discovery of the hydrothermal ("hot water") vents, scientists have found a world's worth of life: hundreds of unfamiliar species, new genera, new families and whole new orders. Together, they constitute major gains in measures of global biologic diversity, and they have gained a name: the dark biosphere.

To think that we all, and I mean "All", evolved from microbes that could survive at 250 degrees F and ate iron is just cool. Sounds like some sort of microscopic comic book idea.