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An attempt is made to discover the physical processes in the cochlea which would yield results in agreement with observations. It is shown that the assumption of a ‘passive’ cochlea, where elements are brought into mechanical oscillation solely by means of the incident sound, is not tenable. The degree of resonance of the elements of the cochlea can be measured, and the results are not compatible with the very heavy damping which must arise from the viscosity of the liquid. For this reason the ‘regeneration hypothesis’ is put forward, and it is' suggested that an electromechanical action takes place whereby a supply of electrical energy is employed to counteract the damping. The circumstantial evidence for such a process is considered, and it appears that the cochlea microphonic potential, hitherto, an unexplained by-product of the action, forms an important link in the chain of events. Some implications of the theory are discussed, and ways of testing it are suggested.

There are strong indications that microbial life is widespread at depth in the crust of the Earth, just as such life has been identified in numerous ocean vents. This life is not dependent on solar energy and photosynthesis for its primary energy supply, and it is essentially independent of the surface circumstances. Its energy supply comes from chemical sources, due to fluids that migrate upward from deeper levels in the Earth. In mass and volume it may be comparable with all surface life. Such microbial life may account for the presence of biological molecules in all carbonaceous materials in the outer crust, and the inference that these materials must have derived from biological deposits accumulated at the surface is therefore not necessarily valid. Subsurface life may be widespread among the planetary bodies of our solar system, since many of them have equally suitable conditions below, while having totally inhospitable surfaces. One may even speculate that such life may be widely disseminated in the universe, since planetary type bodies with similar subsurface conditions may be common as solitary objects in space, as well as in other solar-type systems.We are familiar with two domains of life on the Earth: the surface of the land and the body of the oceans. Both domains share the same energy source-namely, sunlight, used in the process of photosynthesis in green plants and microorganisms. In this process the molecules of water and of CO2 are dissociated, and the products of this then provide chemical energy that supports all the other forms of life. Most of this energy is made available through the recombination ofcarbon and hydrogen compounds concentrated in the plants with the oxygen that became distributed into the atmosphere and oceans by the same photosynthetic process. The end product is again largely water and CO2, thereby closing the cycle.This was the general concept about life and the sources of its energy until -12 years ago, when another domain of life was discovered (1). This domain, the "ocean vents", found first in some small regions of the ocean floor, but now found to be widespread (2), proved to have an energy supply for its life that was totally independent of sunlight and all surface energy sources. There the energy for life was derived from chemical processes, combining fluids-liquids and gassesthat came up continuously from cracks in the ocean floor with substances available in the local rocks and in the ocean water. Such sources of chemical energy still exist on the Earth, because the materials here have never been able to reach the condition of the lowest chemical energy. The Earth was formed by the accumulation of solid materials, condensed in a variety ofcircumstances from a gaseous nebula surrounding the sun. Much of this material had never been hot after its condensation, and it contained substances that would be liquid or gaseous when heated. In the interior of the Earth, heat is liberated by radioactivity, by compression, and by gravitational sorting; and this caused p...