Aliens of the Deep Page #8

- OK,

- This is black smoke,

- Look at these guys,

I can't believe they're swimming in and out of it,

Oops, Aah! It's hot,

OK, if it's not cooking them,

it's not gonna cook me,

So I'm gonna move in a little closer,

Being bold,

- Now let's get out, Back out,

- I've got full back command,

- What the heck?

- All right,

- They're attached to us,

- Let's stay away from that,

- They're on us,

- They're attacking us!

Lookit, the shrimp love him,

They're all over him,

The shrimp are loving Jake,

Check that out,

Look at that,

Oh, wow, Oh, my goodness,

I can't even see the fly,

I just see shrimp,

Yeah, looks like

we've got some piggybackers,

some shrimp that are

along for the ride, Over,

Wow, That's amazing,

I can get shrimp at Sizzler, This...

You can't get this shrimp at Sizzler,

"Riftia," the giant tubeworms,

are hands down

the stars of the deep vent community,

and also the best example

of symbiosis in action.

I've got a little bit of

shimmering water here,

We should be OK,

Wow, Oh, this is gorgeous,

These animals don't even have a stomach.

They literally can't eat.

They depend completely on

a large sac of microbes inside their body,

which produces their food.

When you get in really close,

you can see some pretty neat stuff,

Oh, wow,

You see that guy?

Can we grab him?

If you want to,

You get ready, I think we're set,

On your mark...

- Oh, he might come to us,

- Go,

Oh!

Crab got away, Tell 'em nice try,

Nice try, nice try,

They're gorgeous underwater,

The long red plume is like a gill.

It takes in oxygen,

and also nutrients from the vent fluid.

The worm's job

is to keep this plume in the flow,

sucking in nutrients

which feed the bacteria inside.

And it's the bacteria's job to convert the

sulfide chemicals into food for the worm.

So the question is,

do the bacteria work for the worm,

or does the worm

work for the bacteria?

If these animals didn't exist,

we could not have imagined them.

It makes me wonder what else

is out there, waiting to be discovered.

You've got a cool job, Genya,

Thank you,

So the real question is, could you

imagine a colony of these on Europa?

Where would the oxygen

be coming from, you know?

If the whole idea is they don't

need sunlight to drive this ecosystem,

it's just chemosynthesis,

but they need some ambient oxygen,

- The oxygen in the water came from...

- Photosynthesis,

Photosynthesis

a million years ago, maybe,

It doesn't matter, however long

it takes for the water to turn it over,

So the question becomes,

is oxygen necessary for life?

- Ah, yeah, Yeah,

- OK?

It may be for large animals, OK?

But if we get down to the microbial level...

- But we want to see large animals,

- You want to see large animals,

We want to see large animals,

We don't want to spend all this money

to go out into space and find a microbe,

Oh, come on, microbes are great,

You know, they're highly underrated,

But they're not good conversationalists,

I mean, look, I would want to give...

Here, look, let me just go forward

to one of these cool Riftia patches...

What do you think

makes life here possible?

These guys have this

incredible symbiosis with microbes,

Yeah, they're living on the bacteria,

But I'm not gonna give

a bouquet of bacteria to my mom,

but I would give her

a bouquet of these Riftia.

Look at these things,

They're beautiful,

So what Jim says is right.

O xygen is the afterburner that fuelled the

explosion of multicellular life on our world.

And even though chemosynthesis

happens beyond the light of our sun,

many of the biological processes

still require some free oxygen,

and this oxygen is typically supplied from

photosynthesis at the surface of the Earth.

So where might oxygen

come from on Europa?

Europa's orbit sits within Jupiter's

enormous magnetic field.

The intense radiation

continually slams energetic particles

into the Europan surface,

and has the potential

to transform vast amounts of water ice

into things like hydrogen peroxide

and molecular oxygen.

Assuming those oxidants make their way

into the ocean on a regular basis,

through cracks

and upwellings or comet impacts,

they would represent an energy jackpot

for any life forms trying to survive there.

And so this is where

some of the hydrothermal samples

come into play again.

We're trying to replicate the Europan

surface environment in the lab.

Now, these,

these are rocks from the deep ocean,

So let's prep this for the chamber,

- Maybe take a little piece off of here,

- OK, sure,

So this is Europa in a can,

This part down here

is a vacuum chamber,

We've got liquid nitrogen coming in,

and we can grow ices

and basically replicate

the surface environment of Europa,

Then, up here,

we've got a high-energy electron gun,

and what this does is replicate the radiation

environment of the Jovian magnetic field,

this tremendously large

and powerful magnetic field of Jupiter,

What would happen to life

exposed to that environment?

We're taking microbes that we found

down at the hydrothermal vents,

putting them into this environment,

and bombarding them, blasting them,

with this high-energy radiation,

making sort of a chemical junkyard,

a biological chemical compound junkyard,

And this is sort of comparable to,

say, going to a junkyard here on Earth,

and you wander around the junkyard

and you see a steering wheel and a tire,

and you know that at one point

there was a complete car,

When we send a spacecraft to Europa,

we're going to have to understand

what are the chemical and molecular

biosignatures that are left behind?

Are we seeing that same

kind of signature on the surface of Europa?

If we do, what does that imply

for the habitability of the ocean below?

Menez Gwen's

an underwater volcano.

It's this really unique place because

you have your hydrothermal vents there,

and shimmering water everywhere.

- Are we digging this place?

- We're digging this place big time,

Big time,

Really see the clear fluids,

So these are a little bit cooler, 'cause

you're not getting the black smoke here,

This site has an amazing dreamlike quality.

The cooler, clear vent fluid

isn't as toxic as the black smokers.

So you wind up

getting a lot of visitors.

Including some opportunistic predators.

Oh, look at all that shimmering water

coming out of that structure,

If we can collect a sample down there,

that would be fantastic,

MIR One, MIR One, MIR Two,

This is MIR One.

Go ahead.

OK, Jim, we're ready now to launch Jake,

Ready to go now,

Here we go,

Coming out,

- Everything working OK?

- Yeah, it seems OK,

So getting to work with Mike

and Jake is just absolutely fantastic,

because you can think about this thing

as the distant ancestor of a vehicle

that may someday

explore oceans on other worlds.

OK, Mike, looking good, You should

be able to take your core sample

right at the base of

that chimney, Over,

- Looks pretty hot though, Kevin,

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