h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And I thought I was going to find a new cigarette brand here

Could these phenomena also exist deep in the bowels of the earth?

Which phenomena, the cigarettes, the smokers of the living creatures?
I guess you mean the creatures. I don't know but what I've read and
seen about them is quite interesting, but then again I'm not a
biologist, only an engineer.

Actually there is a good bit of evidence of micro-organisms deep inside the earth. One place to learn more is at http://www.sciam.com/1096issue/1096onstott.html .

Beasties living on similar principles live deep within the rocks (according to latest evidence), but the actual black smokers themselves, I don't know. The ones on the sea floor continually recycle water from subduction? (where one tectonic plate slips under another) areas, maybe a geyser would be a land based one.
BCNU - Crescent

Isn't one of the reasons behind mars missions to figure out if there could still be micro organisms living deep below the planets surface?

you might be right.
what would it be like to meet one of those creatures...
digging to the centre o/t earth?

I think they treat any undiscovered micro organisms they find as potentially dangerous so they quarantine them, at least that is until they have studied them. It would be interesting to find one as they are quite different to conventional ones as all they need to survive are minerals form the rocks and water e.g. no sunlight, which i believe is the same as with creatures around black smokers.

Is this all connected with the mid ocean ridge?

I think so because black smokers are linked with volcanic activity arent they and that is a pretty active place. It was the discovery of things like the creatures living around black smokers which altered scientist views on what life needs to survive, it is how they think life would exist on Jupiters moon Uropa, they are planning to send a probe there soon to check this theory out.

Krunchy is spot on. All the black smokers appear on fault lines in the oceans, so the mid ocean ridges are prime spots for them.

but tectonic plates also meet under the earth, not just under miles of water. could there be chemo-synthetic around these edges of plates?
Or must there be water for the minerals to mix with?

There must be water for life, so it is possible for water to be vented underground, and eventually be colonised, but the amount of water would probably mean that it has to escape somewhere (maybe hotsprings or geysers, but I couldn't say yay or nay)

couldn't we make something up about this? like a storyline?
of an expidition into the bowels of the earth in seach of life?