- [screeches]
- Don't worry, this is not an alien attacking me.
It's just an extremophile.
Extremophiles are rugged life forms
that survive under extreme conditions.
Yikes! - [growling]
- They can be found in places
like the Atacama Desert in Chile,
which is the driest desert on Earth.
Or the bottom of an ocean in a vent
of an underwater volcano.
These extreme environments can help us understand
how life may have formed on other worlds too.
Wonder where else they can be found
and why NASA is on the hunt to find extremophiles?
- When we study extremophiles here on Earth,
we're looking for environments
that push the limit
or the edges of physical or chemical parameters
that define an environment.
We also go to places
where the acidity is very high.
So places like acid mine drainage,
where very high acid waters
come out of environments where we've done mining.
We're also interested in high pH
and we go to places like Soda Lake.
Some of the lakes that are in the Sierras in California.
We're also interested in extreme
salinity, so we go to places like
the Great Salt Lake, which has the salinity
that is probably 10 to 100 times
the salinity of seawater.
We're also interested in organisms
that could withstand radiation
that's thousands of times higher
than the radiation that would kill a human being.
Because of NASA's exploration of our solar system,
we know that there's a diverse array of environments
in our own solar system.
Now, we're interested to know if those could support life.
So NASA supports research to go into what we call
Analog Environments.
Those are environments that very much mimic
the environments that we might find on Venus
which is very hot and acidic,
the environment we might find on Mars,
which is very cold and dry.
And so we're interested in understanding the potential
for life in any of these environments
because that will let us know if it's a place
worthy of our search for life
in our solar system.
- So if we know these types of extremophiles can live here
on Earth in extreme conditions,
do you think there could be organisms
living on other planets in those extreme conditions?
- NASA's interested in understanding
the origin and evolution of life here on Earth
so we can understand where else in our solar system,
or beyond, life could exist.
So one of the ways we go about this
is to learn as much as we can about life here on Earth,
and that really focuses on what we learn about extremophiles.
Then we look at other bodies in our solar system
and look at what kind of environments they present
that could host life.
So if we look at Mars, it's a lot colder
and a lot drier, so much less water on Mars
than here on Earth.
So we go to places like the Atacama Desert
to try to understand what kind of organisms
can live in that cold, dry environment
and then hope that that will guide us
in our search for life on Mars.
- When we're looking for life on other planets,
we need to stop thinking about what's normal for us,
instead think about what's normal
for extremophiles.
If you want to find out more,
check out this astrobiology website.
See you next time.
[music playing]