and people also said with certainty that the earth was flat like 500 years ago.
A common myth. The majority knew it was round, most simply debated how big it was. As a result, they thought Columbus would simply get lost at sea or destroyed, when he had a perfectly good route overland that had been in use for years.
Amusing, he even made the crew of his 17 ships swear they were in China when in fact they were in the Caribbean. Shows how well travelled he was
Anyway, I've veered off topic. While anaerobes do exist, they still exist in the presence of a biosphere which contains a number of gases. Mostly CO2 or Ammonia or Sulphur Dioxide...
Theoretically, if something could survive in a gasless vacuum as you describe, duke, they should be able to survive in an electron microscope environment once the atmosphere has been taken out. In fact, everything dies in there.
