Methane-Eating Bacteria May Presage ET Life

asukasoryu sends along an intriguing piece in light of our recent discussion of possible signs of life on Saturn's moon Titan. "Researchers have discovered that methane-eating bacteria survive in a unique spring located on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada's extreme north. The subzero water is so salty that it doesn't freeze despite the cold, and it has no consumable oxygen in it. There are, however, big bubbles of methane that come to the surface. Lyle Whyte, McGill University microbiologist, explains that the so-called Lost Hammer spring supports microbial life, that the spring is similar to possible past or present springs on Mars, and that therefore they too could support life."

Comments

As a wise fictional character said...

[History's Coming To]

Or, in fact, symbiotic organisms on Titan, along with ones which might well be methanogenic in nature if they exist, and at even lower temperatures. Life finds a way, ladies and gents.

Re:As a wise fictional character said...

[ColdWetDog]

Well, that's the Big Question, isn't it? While it is becoming clear that life can move from an enormously productive biosphere into ecological niches previously thought to be completely inhospitable to life, can it arise in such 'hostile' environments? TFA didn't really go into detail as to the biochemical characterization of the methanogenic critters. Likely that will happen sometime down the line and will be really interesting.

But we're going to have to get our respective asses to Mars if we really want to answer the question.

Re:As a wise fictional character said...

[JoshuaZ]

Life finds a way, ladies and gents.

We don't know that. We know that once life gets going it seems to be very resilient and manages to find a lot of different environments to colonize. But we don't know how easy it is for life to start. If life starting is really difficult, then it may be that Titan and Mars are completely barren. What this sort of thing does mean is that if there ever was life on Mars, there's a decent chance that there's still some.

Re:As a wise fictional character said...

[History's Coming To]

I know it's off-form to re-reply, but sod it, your comment and the one above are too good not to discuss. Yup, you've both hit the nail on the head. I referenced a fictional character (and was also thinking of Stephen Baxter's excellent "Titan") because at the moment SF is at the forefront in many ways. Yes, there may be life out there, but we have exactly as much evidence for it as we do for god (take your pick), exactly none. If there is, then it might be like this, and it's certainly evidence that life, once established, can exist in extreme conditions compared to Earth's "habitable" zones, but until we find life that's without a doubt non-terrestrial then we're a one-off fluke as far as certainties go.

Please mod into oblivion, or re-reply yourselves and be damned with the consequences ;)

Methane eating bacteria?

[highways]

Can we transplant some of these methane-eating into the Gulf of Mexico? They're badly needed right now.

The problem with using extremophiles as models

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Organisms on Earth which live in extreme environments probably evolved from related species which live in less extreme environments. I have no doubt that there are Terrestrial organisms which could survive in certain environments on Mars, but if they have counterparts on Mars, where did they come from? If they evolved on Mars, there has to have been an environment in which such evolution could have taken place over some kind of condition gradient, from less hostile to more hostile. If they came from Earth, you need a hell of a story about how they got there -- not only are meteor strike ejecta a lot less likely to make it from Earth to Mars than the reverse, you have to envision one piece of rock that just happened to be carrying a viable population of (already rare, even here on Earth) extremophiles that were suited for certain (also very rare) Martian conditions, and landed in just the right place.

If we can ever confirm that Mars had a more life-friendly environment for a significant portion of its history, of course, then these objections can be disregarded. But until we have much more evidence of that than we currently do, I'd be very surprised to find native life on Mars. It's much more likely that if anything is living there, it was carried there by probes from Earth -- and even that seems like a one in a million shot.

Re:The problem with using extremophiles as models

[QuantumG]

About 300kg of rocks make their way from Earth to Mars every year. The reverse is more, about 500kg. The total of "hospitable" rocks that might harbor stowaway life for an Earth to Mars transit is about 150kg/year. So, you see, we're constantly seeding life on Mars.

Re:The problem with using extremophiles as models

[QuantumG]

Glad you asked, cause I love educating random people on Slashdot who can't even be bothered clicking on the links I supply to them, or do their own research.

There's a whole class of bacteria that live inside rocks, they're called lithoautotrophic extremophiles. They suffer through extreme heat and pressures all the time. They have existed for billions of years. When a meteorite impacts the Earth a certain number of these fertile rocks are sent skyward.. the bacteria are protected from the radiation of space by the mass of the rock. Some portion of these rocks are captured by Mars and some even smaller portion are carried to the surface as meteorites. It's a big numbers game.

The speculation is that maybe these extremophiles are now making a living on the Mars service.. bacteria moving from one rock to another isn't that big a stretch of the imagination. Some of them may even make the return trip.