Go Beneath the Surface to Find a Job

In 1991, scientists aboard the submersible Alvin were in the right spot at the right time to witness something extraordinary. They had sailed into the aftermath of a very recent volcanic eruption on the seafloor and found themselves in a virtual blizzard.

They were densely surrounded by flocs of white debris, composed of sulfur and microbes, which drifted more than 30 meters above the ocean bottom. The seafloor was coated with a 10-centimeter-thick layer of the same white material.

This vast volume of microbes did not come from the ocean. The eruption had flushed it out from beneath the seafloor.

The discovery was transforming. It strongly suggested that previously unimagined and potentially huge communities of microbial life were thriving in the dark, increasingly hot, oxygen-depleted rocky cracks and crannies below the ocean bottom. An abundance of life apparently flourished in conditions we had considered too extreme. It shattered our narrow preconceptions and stretched our view of the places and circumstances that can harbor life.

The importance of this theory of evolution is that humans and other species may have actually come from bacteria and other life forms which came from inside the earth and developed there. Conventional wisdom has always held that life has evolved on the surface of the earth. To take this one step further, all planets may hold, in their core, the ingredients for life as we have on Earth. Once you get deep inside a planet and beyond the crust, there is a possibility that a substantial majority of planets may have the potential to have life spring out of them just as may have happened on Earth.

There is potential in our earth and there is also vast potential inside of you. Planets like Mars and others, which we believe have barren surfaces devoid of life, may have beneath them bacteria and other things that can support life. When you get beneath the surface there is often a lot more there than meets the eye. This is the way it is with the job market as well. Many people pick up one newspaper, or look at one job board, or talk to one recruiter and conclude that there are no opportunities in the job market. They start to believe the market is so bad that there are no possibilities for them. They apply for unemployment or bemoan the current state of things in the market. It is when you penetrate the surface and begin to go deeper and deeper that you start to see possibilities you did not realize were there.

When you are looking for a job you need to go deep and look beneath the surface. You should be looking at jobs on every job board, every employer website, and everywhere you possibly can. You need to go beneath the surface and find where life and the opportunities are. This is the way to really get ahead. You cannot just accept what appears to be true. When the job landscape looks barren you need to go beneath the surface and find where life is and where the opportunities are.

The discovery that life itself may actually come from within the earth strongly suggests that that there is life inside other planets and if not on them. The bacteria that are believed to thrive in extreme conditions in the bottom of the ocean, deep inside boiling vents, are a class of species known as extremophiles. There are extremeophiles that live inside ice, live in rocks, and live in other conditions which are extremely inhospitable to life as we know it.

What makes extremophiles so important to science is that they may even be able to survive for long periods of time even in deep space. In addition to bacteria found in black smokers (oceanic volcanic vents), these extremophiles have even been found in semi-dormant states inside ice cores over a mile-deep beneath Antartica. Endolithic bacteria have even been found inside rocks in subterranean lakes. Tarigrades bacteria can survive the vacuum of space. Some recent experiment suggest that if bacteria were sheltered from space radiation they could survive dormant inside of a thick meteoroid, for example, for millions of years. In an incredible example:

On April 20, 1967, the unmanned lunar lander Surveyor 3 landed near Oceanus Procellarum on the surface of the moon. One of the things aboard was a television camera. Two-and-a-half years later, on November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan L. Bean recovered the camera. When NASA scientists examined it back on Earth they were surprised to find specimens of Streptococcus mitis that were still alive. Because of the precautions the astronauts had taken, NASA could be sure that the germs were inside the camera when it was retrieved, so they must have been there before the Surveyor 3 was launched. These bacteria had survived for 31 months in the vacuum of the moon’s atmosphere. http://www.panspermia.org/bacteria.htm

All of this suggests that life exists where we do not necessarily believe it is capable of doing so. Even the inside of a rock may contain life. When you are looking for a job you need to keep asking questions; do not just accept the idea that there may not be opportunities in certain places. You need to look as hard as you can for the opportunities and life that exist in the market. Opportunities exist where you least expect it.

An interesting theory called panspermia states that seeds of life already exist all over the universe and that life on earth may have originated through these seeds. Additionally, it states that these seeds may deliver or may have delivered life to other habitable bodies. The late Noble Prize winner Francis Crick, along with Leslie Orgel, proposed the theory of directed panspermia. Under this hypothesis, life on earth may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. According to Crick, small grains containing DNA fired randomly in all directions would be a very cost-effective strategy for seeding life at a compatible planet at some time in the future. Such a strategy could have been pursued by a civilization facing catastrophic annihilation or hoping to terraform planets for later colonization.

Our sun is one of 400 billion stars in our galaxy which is one of 100 billion galaxies that we know of. The chance that there is not life on other planets would be very, very difficult to accept. However, what is even more difficult to accept is how our search for life on other planets has been proceeding throughout history.

• We have used telescopes.
• We have used vast networks of radio listening devices (SETI).
• We have flown spaceships around numerous planets.
• We have landed spacecrafts on Mars numerous times.
• We have sent men to the moon on more than one occasion.
• We have placed massive telescopes in outer space.
• We have taken small samples of dirt and other minerals from planets and tested them.

We have spent billions of dollars and done incredible things with our search for life; however, what is most interesting to me is that in all of these things we have just scratched the surface. The trip to the moon and the Viking I Mars Lunar Lander were some of the greatest national and world events of their time. We went to space and spent billions of dollars, but all we did was scratch the surface. Incredible efforts were made to find life and explore, but all we have ever done is scratch the surface. Life may very well exist in these places, but the life would likely be beneath the surface and not on top of it.

Most people assume that life must exist on planets like our own. According to a 2007 paper by University of Florida astronomers: ”With powerful instruments scouring the heavens, astronomers have found more than 240 planets in the past two decades, none likely to support Earth-like life.” (http://news.ufl.edu/2007/12/20/et-observers/) This means that it is unlikely that there are planets nearby which are like our own. However, we continue to look for patterns which are familiar and planets that have similar atmospheres to our own.

What does the exploration for life on other planets, extremeophiles, and panspermia have to do with your job search? It has everything to do with your job search. In space exploration and the search for life on other planets, we have confined our search primarily to what we understand. We assume that signs of intelligent life must be on the surface. However, it may be beneath the surface where all of the activity and life actually exist. Think of all we have put forth through telescopes and all the other efforts that have gone into studying the universe. We have done all of this when we do not even understand the life that exists inside of our own planet, beneath the surface. There is likely life on other planets, even ones close by, but this life is almost certainly beneath the surface.

You will not find opportunities and you will not find jobs unless you allow yourself to go beneath the surface and find these opportunities. Everything that you need and desire is out there, but you need to look beyond (or in this case beneath) the obvious in order to find it. People who achieve the greatest results in their job searches always go beneath the surface.