Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, pay their
Speaker 1: brain stuff luring Vogelbon. Here, life's resilience keeps astounding us.
Speaker 1: Unimaginable as it may seem, there's a thriving population of
Speaker 1: microorganisms in the cold, dry, nutrient poor soils of Antarctica.
Speaker 1: A study may have just revealed the secret to their survival,
Speaker 1: and that revelation could transform our quest to find life
Speaker 1: on other planets. Antarctica is a continent which famously goes
Speaker 1: dark for months on end during the winter season, a
Speaker 1: period in which it sees no sunlight. This presents a
Speaker 1: big challenge to organisms who need to photosynthesize, that is,
Speaker 1: convert solar light into food. Intense dryness is another hurdle.
Speaker 1: Certain parts of the continent receive no precipitation whatsoever, and
Speaker 1: even though Antarctica is covered in ice, drinkable water is scarce.
Speaker 1: And then we have the issue of carbon. All known
Speaker 1: life is based on this element, and yet very little
Speaker 1: of it can be found in Antarctic dirt. But life
Speaker 1: uh finds a way. For years now, biologists have known
Speaker 1: about the existence of diverse bacteria communities in Antarctic as soils.
Speaker 1: How could anything survive under such extreme conditions. To gain
Speaker 1: some insight, a team of Australian and New Zealander scientists
Speaker 1: took a hard look at micro filled dirt samples from
Speaker 1: two ice free sites in eastern Antarctica. Both areas are
Speaker 1: deserts where no plants can grow. The McMurdo Dry Valley's
Speaker 1: region has even been compared to the surface of Mars.
Speaker 1: The place has received no rainfall in almost two million years,
Speaker 1: its humidity levels are staggeringly low, and ice, snow, and
Speaker 1: liquid water are all practically non existent there. On December six,
Speaker 1: the team published their findings in the journal Nature. They
Speaker 1: reported seeing DNA traces from twenty three microbial organisms inside
Speaker 1: those soil samples. By reconstructing the microbes genomes, the scientists
Speaker 1: learned that many of these life forms had genes that
Speaker 1: made them exceptionally good at processing carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
Speaker 1: The researchers theorized that the organisms are able to meet
Speaker 1: their energy requirements by pulling both of these gases, along
Speaker 1: with carbon dioxide, straight out of the atmosphere. In other words,
Speaker 1: because of Antarctica's shortage of sunlight and suitable water, as
Speaker 1: well as nutrient poor soil, these microbes could be surviving
Speaker 1: off of air alone. Should this be true, planets and
Speaker 1: moons that were once written off as completely uninhabitable might
Speaker 1: be able to sustain life after all. Maybe alien organisms
Speaker 1: don't need drinking water or abundant sunlight on their homeworlds. Instead,
Speaker 1: it could be that the only thing they require is
Speaker 1: the right combination of atmospheric gases. But the study scientists
Speaker 1: say more research is needed to see if this phenomenon
Speaker 1: exists in other parts of the world as well as
Speaker 1: outside of it. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini
Speaker 1: and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other lively topics, visit our home planet, how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com.