Although the possibility of life beyond Earth has long attracted the public, there are already tiny creatures on our own planet as strange to us as we imagined.
These microorganisms have discovered places that once thought of life, such as internal volcanoes, under the deep sea crust, or the Arctic permafrost. They not only survive these harsh environments, but also do so in a way that challenges the fundamental principles considered by biological scientists, and do so firmly establishes.
Karen Lloyd, a microbial biogeochemist at the University of Southern California, has been studying these underground organisms for most of her time. In her new book Inner Species: Discover the Strangest Life on Earthshe takes readers on a guided tour of her own and other works, exploring the reasons why these microorganisms are ticked.
Gizmodo talks with Lloyd about the discoveries of scientists like her so far, these lasting mysteries about these secular aliens and why they are trying to understand them are so important. The following conversations may have been gently edited for syntax and clarity.
Ed Cara, Gizmodo: What brought you on this research path first?
Karen Lloyd: I really like chemistry, and as an undergraduate, being honest is the kind of mystery I started. But then I went to the Graduate School of Chemistry and it felt too narrow. I just need – I know there is a way to do science somewhere in nature. The way to do this is oceanography, because that's a place, not discipline. I chose oceanography, so I didn't have to choose between biology, physics, chemistry and geology. I have to give it my best.
Then, by chance, a laboratory is studying these microorganisms, which are isolated from the deep sea. And I don't know that there is this deep life world. Apparently, until you are told, no one knows. But when I found it there, I was like, “Okay, here’s where I can use all these tools, these basic basic tools to find out new discoveries about biology.” From there, I got hooked.
Gizmodo: What makes these lives form more strange than the lives we use to see and study the top?
Lloyd: One of the biggest things that immediately jumped out is that these things are deep in the tree of life. Therefore, we might think that, like the kitten cat, a very different branch of the tree of life. But compared to all these new types of microbes, we're talking about slugs and kittens crashing. I mean, there are things we can never guess – as diverse as we know now on Earth. They are so different from everything our eyes see.
Gizmodo: How do they reshape some of the rules we think we have about our lives?
Lloyd: We have always known that life without oxygen. There are many places where there is no oxygen, such as our inner life. That's not new. However, you can have the idea of an entire ecosystem that never needs oxygen and never needs the influence of plant matter; this can basically only exist in chemical reactions from the inside of the earth (this is new). That's what we learn with these guys.
Gizmodo: It feels like there is almost no beginning in this field. What are the biggest questions about their biology?
Lloyd: The biggest problem left is still very basic.
I mean, a lot of what we know is extrapolated from these highly specialized technologies. You know, this is not true. You can't walk to them like a tree and it's like, “Okay, there's a root cause. I know what it's doing.
So we are still asking similar questions, where are everyone? what are they doing? What are they eating? What role do they play on Earth? How do they interact with metal? As time goes by, what role do they play in the evolution of the earth?
Gizmodo: This is obviously your lifelong job. But what are the latest projects or research you are going to be the first to do now?
Lloyd: Yes, I just came back from New Zealand. They have an amazing dive zone. That is where the two structural plates overlap each other. The process created the volcano, but it also produced this similar alchemy mixture that allowed these underground communities to occupy. So we drove all over New Zealand, sampled a lot of land and worked with locals. It's also fun to do this work, and it's just on a human level.
Gizmodo: What do you want our readers to read?
Lloyd: I hope people will feel hope and possibility. As you can imagine, you can think that all science is known or the problem is small because we have solved all the big problems. There is nothing to explore. We know where all continents are. We can almost solve how many planetary corpses there are in the solar system. But this is just the beginning.
For example, there is an entire world under our feet. It’s not that there are no secrets elsewhere, but that they are using these things. So I want people to have a sense of hope and possibility on all the amazing things we have left to understand life here.
Inner Species: Discover the Strangest Life on Earth Princeton University Press will be released on May 13.
