Aliens of the Deep Page #4

When you see black smoke,

what you're really seeing

is a blowtorch of

superheated water.

Uh, we're getting in position

to get a water sample

from the top

of one of these structures, Over,

Yeah, roger that.

That's good.

OK, let's get in as close as we can

on this chimney, Genya,

These chimneys

reach 750 degrees Fahrenheit,

and that's hot enough to melt

the windows of your submersible.

That's a bad thing.

Mental note:
Don't melt

the windows of the submersible.

Guys, we're getting really close

to this black smoker here,

- Close enough?

- I think this is maybe a little too close,

Uh, well, we're starting

to get into the plume,

Right underneath the sub,

Genya, move back.

You better move back.

OK, I start to move back,

That's normal.

We usually drive right in 'em like that.

We were right on top of it,

That was a little freaky,

That's pretty cool, Kevin,

The geology's fascinating.

But it's not why I came out here.

Keldysh, Keldysh, MIR Two,

We are on the bottom,

Depth 3526 meters,

And we are at the top

of the Moose structure, Over,

These sites were

first visited 25 years ago by geologists.

And they weren't looking for life.

But it wasn't until

they got into a submersible

and went down to the bottom

to see with their own eyes...

It was like, "Oh, my God.

There's life down here, and it's beautiful. "

It's an entire ecosystem.

Wow, That's awesome,

Copy that. That's what

we're imaging right now. Over.

- Look at all that hot water,

- They're right in the flow,

Oh, man, Check this out,

It's like liquid fire,

and these guys are dancing right next to it,

They are really tickling

the dragon's tail,

The science community

was stunned.

How could these animals

be living in these toxic chemicals,

at these pressures,

around extremes of temperature

from freezing to beyond boiling

in just a few inches?

How could there be a whole ecosystem

living without sunlight?

And not just living,

but thriving!

Unbelievable,

This is the most insane

amount of biomass I ever saw in my life,

Wow,

Holy pancakes, Batman,

And they're right there in the flow,

just enjoying the hydrothermal fluid,

Oh, look at 'em swarming,

They love it in the smoke,

Oh, yeah,

The vents

were providing the energy for life.

It was coming from chemicals

dissolved in the water,

coming from inside the Earth itself.

Not photosynthesis,

but chemosynthesis.

It was a whole new basis for life,

one that didn't need the sun,

only water and heat.

That party's been going on down

there in the dark for the last billion years,

and it's gonna be going on

for the next billion years,

They're just doing their thing,

it's got nothing to do with us,

the sun could go out tomorrow and they

wouldn't know and they wouldn't care,

Exploring and discovering

ecosystems like this,

which may not depend

on energy from the sun,

opens up all sorts

of interesting possibilities

when we think about

the search for life elsewhere.

Wherever we've found liquid water

on planet Earth, we've found life.

That's pretty profound.

If we find liquid water elsewhere in

the solar system, are we gonna find life?

We won't know

unless we start searching.

In fact, NASA is planning a mission

called the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter.

AKA JIMO.

At 120 feet long

it's gonna be several times longer

than any planetary probe

ever launched,

and its nuclear reactor will power

ion engines and a big science radar.

The main goal of JIMO

will be to use that radar

to look down through the ice

of Jupiter's three largest moons.

First, it will study Callisto,

and then it'll move to Ganymede.

And these are bizarre moons,

the largest of Jupiter's 61 known moons.

Callisto and Ganymede

both have crusts of ancient ice and rock

that may hide oceans

miles below the surface.

Further in is Io,

which is a moon of fire, not ice.

Io's eccentric orbit causes it

to deform as it circles Jupiter.

This intense tidal pumping

pulls at the moon like taffy,

generating friction at the core

which then becomes heat,

and this heat drives the solar system's

largest active volcanoes.

There are constant eruptions,

rivers of lava,

and volcanic plumes shooting

hundreds of miles into space.

But the gem of the Jovian system, at least

as far as the search for life is concerned,

is Europa.

It's here where fire and ice

come together in perfect harmony.

The scientific community

is relatively certain

that beneath the icy, chaotic shell of

Europa, there exists a liquid water ocean,

with twice the volume

of all the Earth's oceans combined.

So tidal heating is working here too,

keeping that water from freezing.

And possibly providing

energy for life.

The same kind of life that we're finding

at the deep vents here on Earth.

You see all that out there,

all that yellow and white and orange?

That's just a huge

colony of microbes,

This is just acres and acres

of this bacterial mass,

Look at that, This could be like

a little glimpse back in time,

Yeah, couple of billion years ago,

Hydrothermal vents

have been on planet Earth

since the oceans were formed.

It may have been sites like these

around which life itself began.

If we can just sort of

scoop up the top area of that,

maybe a little bit of

the sediment below,

Excellent,

Nice sample,

You can see all the stringy

little filaments that make up the mat,

Extremophiles are simply

life forms that thrive in the extremes

of temperature and pressure

and radiation,

environments that to us are deadly.

These microbes go far beyond anything

which our imagination could conceive of

back when we first started studying

where we might find life.

Now, if we find anything on Europa,

it's probably gonna look just like this,

Absolutely,

So I think if we're gonna try to get

evidence for life on another planet,

we've certainly gotta look

for evidence for life on our own first,

It's the only sample

we've got, right?

Pan Conrad. She was

one of our senior astrobiologists.

She comes from

the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

and she's one of those valuable people

who knows how to make science fun.

So you know when you were little, and you

used to play like you were in a submarine?

That was this,

How cool is this?

This is way better than the cardboard box,

Tolya, just see

if you can ease in on this structure,

Absolutely,

It's just like the Mushroom Planet,

It looks exactly like a mushroom,

Ah, that's gorgeous,

It's like a mirror,

That's the hot water

forming a surface,

That is very cool,

See the bacteria growing right along

the edge, right in the hot flow?

I see it,

It's all bacterial mats on top,

Certain molecules

found in living organisms

will glow when they're hit

with an ultraviolet laser.

Is that a good place

for a fluorometer reading?

I think this is a great place

for a fluorometer reading,

We designed

our life detection tool in such a way

that we could point it

at a rock and say:

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