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It may seem like we're all standing
on solid Earth right now,

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but we're not.

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The rocks and the dirt underneath us
are crisscrossed by tiny little fractures

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and empty spaces.

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And these empty spaces are filled
with astronomical quantities of microbes,

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such as these ones.

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The deepest that we found microbes
so far into the Earth

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is five kilometers down.

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So like, if you pointed
yourself at the ground

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and took off running into the ground,

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you could run an entire 5K race
and microbes would line your whole path.

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So you may not have ever thought
about these microbes

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that are deep inside Earth's crust,

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but you probably thought
about the microbes living in our guts.

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If you add up the gut microbiomes

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of all the people
and all the animals on the planet,

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collectively, this weighs
about 100,000 tons.

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This is a huge biome that we carry
in our bellies every single day.

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We should all be proud.

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(Laughter)

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But it pales in comparison
to the number of microbes

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that are covering
the entire surface of the Earth,

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like in our soils,
our rivers and our oceans.

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Collectively, these weigh
about two billion tons.

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But it turns out that the majority
of microbes on Earth

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aren't even in oceans or our guts
or sewage treatment plants.

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Most of them are actually
inside the Earth's crust.

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So collectively,
these weigh 40 billion tons.

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This is one of the biggest
biomes on the planet,

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and we didn't even know it existed
until a few decades ago.

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So the possibilities
for what life is like down there,

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or what it might do for humans,

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are limitless.

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This is a map showing a red dot

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for every place where we've gotten
pretty good deep subsurface samples

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with modern microbiological methods,

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and you may be impressed

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that we're getting a pretty good
global coverage,

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but actually, if you remember
that these are the only places

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that we have samples from,
it looks a little worse.

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If we were all in an alien spaceship,

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trying to reconstruct the map of the globe
from only these samples,

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we'd never be able to do it.

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So people sometimes say to me,

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"Yeah, there's a lot of microbes
in the subsurface, but ...

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aren't they just kind of dormant?"

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This is a good point.

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Relative to a ficus plant or the measles
or my kid's guinea pigs,

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these microbes probably
aren't doing much of anything at all.

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We know that they have to be slow,
because there's so many of them.

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If they all started dividing
at the rate of E. coli,

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then they would double the entire
weight of the Earth, rocks included,

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over a single night.

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In fact, many of them probably haven't
even undergone a single cell division

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since the time of ancient Egypt.

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Which is just crazy.

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Like, how do you wrap your head
around things that are so long-lived?

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But I thought of an analogy
that I really love,

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but it's weird and it's complicated.

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So I hope that you can all
go there with me.

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Alright, let's try it.

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It's like trying to figure out
the life cycle of a tree ...

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if you only lived for a day.

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So like if human life span was only a day,
and we lived in winter,

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then you would go your entire life

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without ever seeing a tree
with a leaf on it.

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And there would be so many
human generations

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that would pass by within a single winter

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that you may not even have access
to a history book

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that says anything other than the fact
that trees are always lifeless sticks

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that don't do anything.

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Of course, this is ridiculous.

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We know that trees
are just waiting for summer

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so they can reactivate.

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But if the human life span

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were significantly shorter
than that of trees,

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we might be completely oblivious
to this totally mundane fact.

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So when we say that these deep
subsurface microbes are just dormant,

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are we like people who die after a day,
trying to figure out how trees work?

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What if these deep subsurface organisms

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are just waiting
for their version of summer,

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but our lives are too short
for us to see it?

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If you take E. coli
and seal it up in a test tube,

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with no food or nutrients,

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and leave it there for months to years,

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most of the cells die off, of course,
because they're starving.

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But a few of the cells survive.

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If you take these old surviving cells

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and compete them,
also under starvation conditions,

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against a new, fast-growing
culture of E. coli,

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the grizzled old tough guys
beat out the squeaky clean upstarts

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every single time.

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So this is evidence there's actually
an evolutionary payoff

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to being extraordinarily slow.

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So it's possible

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that maybe we should not equate
being slow with being unimportant.

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Maybe these out-of-sight,
out-of-mind microbes

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could actually be helpful to humanity.

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OK, so as far as we know,

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there are two ways to do
subsurface living.

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The first is to wait for food
to trickle down from the surface world,

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like trying to eat the leftovers
of a picnic that happened 1,000 years ago.

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Which is a crazy way to live,

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but shockingly seems to work out
for a lot of microbes in Earth.

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The other possibility
is for a microbe to just say,

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"Nah, I don't need the surface world.

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I'm good down here."

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For microbes that go this route,

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they have to get everything
that they need in order to survive

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from inside the Earth.

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Some things are actually
easier for them to get.

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They're more abundant inside the Earth,

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like water or nutrients,
like nitrogen and iron and phosphorus,

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or places to live.

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These are things that we literally
kill each other to get ahold of

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up at the surface world.

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But in the subsurface,
the problem is finding enough energy.

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Up at the surface,

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plants can chemically knit together
carbon dioxide molecules into yummy sugars

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as fast as the sun's photons
hit their leaves.

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But in the subsurface, of course,
there's no sunlight,

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so this ecosystem has to solve the problem

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of who is going to make the food
for everybody else.

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The subsurface needs something
that's like a plant

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but it breathes rocks.

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Luckily, such a thing exists,

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and it's called a chemolithoautotroph.

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(Laughter)

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Which is a microbe
that uses chemicals -- "chemo,"

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from rocks -- "litho,"

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to make food -- "autotroph."

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And they can do this
with a ton of different elements.

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They can do this with sulphur,
iron, manganese, nitrogen, carbon,

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some of them can use
pure electrons, straight up.

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Like, if you cut the end
off of an electrical cord,

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they could breath it like a snorkel.

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(Laughter)

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These chemolithoautotrophes

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take the energy that they get
from these processes

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and use it to make food, like plants do.

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But we know that plants do more
than just make food.

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They also make a waste product, oxygen,

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which we are 100 percent dependent upon.

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But the waste product
that these chemolithoautotrophes make

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is often in the form of minerals,

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like rust or pyrite, like fool's gold,

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or carminites, like limestone.

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So what we have are microbes
that are really, really slow, like rocks,

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that get their energy from rocks,

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that make as their waste
product other rocks.

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So am I talking about biology
or am I talking about geology?

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This stuff really blurs the lines.

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(Laughter)

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So if I'm going to do this thing,

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and I'm going to be a biologist
who studies microbes

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that kind of act like rocks,

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then I should probably
start studying geology.

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And what's the coolest part of geology?

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Volcanoes.

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(Laughter)

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This is looking inside the crater
of Poás Volcano in Costa Rica.

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Many volcanoes on Earth arise
because an oceanic tectonic plate

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crashes into a continental plate.

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As this oceanic plate subducts

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or gets moved underneath
this continental plate,

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things like water and carbon dioxide
and other materials

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get squeezed out of it,

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like ringing a wet washcloth.

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So in this way, subduction zones
are like portals into the deep Earth,

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where materials are exchanged between
the surface and the subsurface world.

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So I was recently invited
by some of my colleagues in Costa Rica

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to come and work with them
on some of the volcanoes.

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And of course I said yes,
because, I mean, Costa Rica is beautiful,

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but also because it sits on top
of one of these subduction zones.

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We wanted to ask
the very specific question,

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why is it that the carbon dioxide

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that comes out of this deeply buried
oceanic tectonic plate

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is only coming out of the volcanoes?

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Why don't we see it distributed
throughout the entire subduction zone?

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Do the microbes have something
to do with that?

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So this is a picture of me
inside Poás Volcano,

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along with my colleague
Donato Giovannelli.

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That lake that we're standing next to
is made of pure battery acid.

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I know this because we were measuring
the pH when this picture was taken.

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And at some point while
we were working inside the crater,

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I turned to my Costa Rican colleague
Carlos Ramírez and I said,

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"Alright, if this thing
starts erupting right now,

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what's our exit strategy?"

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And he said, "Oh, yeah,
great question, it's totally easy.

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Just turn around and enjoy the view."

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(Laughter)

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"Because it will be your last."

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(Laughter)

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And it may sound like
he was being overly dramatic,

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but 54 days after I was standing
next to that lake,

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this happened.

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Audience: Oh!

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Freaking terrifying, right?

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(Laughs)

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This was the biggest eruption
this volcano had had in 60-some-odd years,

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and not long after this video ends,

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the camera that was taking
the video is obliterated

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and the entire lake
that we had been sampling

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vaporizes completely.

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But I also want to be clear

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that we were pretty sure
this was not going to happen

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on the day that we were
actually in the volcano,

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because Costa Rica monitors
its volcanoes very carefully

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through the OVSICORI Institute,

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and we had scientists from that institute
with us on that day.

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But the fact that it erupted
illustrates perfectly

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that if you want to look
for where carbon dioxide gas

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is coming out of this oceanic plate,

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then you should look no further
than the volcanoes themselves.

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But if you go to Costa Rica,

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you may notice that in addition
to these volcanoes

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there are tons of cozy little hot springs
all over the place.

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Some of the water in these hot springs
is actually bubbling up

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from this deeply buried oceanic plate.

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And our hypothesis was
that there should be carbon dioxide

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bubbling up with it,

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but something deep underground
was filtering it out.

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So we spent two weeks
driving all around Costa Rica,

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sampling every hot spring we could find --

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it was awful, let me tell you --

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and then, we spent the next two years
measuring and analyzing data.

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And if you're not a scientist, I'll just
let you know that the big discoveries

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don't really happen
when you're in a beautiful hot spring

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or on a public stage,

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they happen when you're hunched
over a messy computer

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or you're troubleshooting
a difficult instrument,

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or you're Skyping your colleagues

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because you are completely
confused about your data.

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Scientific discoveries,
kind of like deep subsurface microbes,

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can be very, very slow.

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But in our case,
this really paid off this one time.

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We discovered that literally
tons of carbon dioxide

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were coming out of this
deeply buried oceanic plate.

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And the thing that was keeping
them underground

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and keeping it from being released
out into the atmosphere

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was that deep underground,

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underneath all the adorable sloths
and toucans of Costa Rica,

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were chemolithoautotrophes.

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These microbes and the chemical processes
that were happening around them

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were converting this carbon dioxide
into carbonate mineral

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and locking it up underground.

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Which makes you wonder:

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If these subsurface processes
are so good at sucking up

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all the carbon dioxide
coming from below them,

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could they also help us
with a little carbon problem

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we've got going on up at the surface?

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Humans are releasing enough
carbon dioxide into our atmosphere

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that we are decreasing
the ability of our planet

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to support life as we know it.

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And scientists and engineers
and entrepreneurs

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00:12:05,160 --> 00:12:07,664
are working on methods
to pull carbon dioxide

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00:12:07,688 --> 00:12:08,981
out of these point sources,

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so that they're not released
into the atmosphere.

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And they need to put it somewhere.

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So for this reason,

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we need to keep studying places
where this carbon might be stored,

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possibly in the subsurface,

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to know what's going to happen to it
when it goes there.

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Will these deep subsurface microbes
be a problem because they're too slow

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to actually keep anything down there?

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Or will they be helpful

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because they'll help convert this stuff
to solid carbonate minerals?

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If we can make such a big breakthrough

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00:12:36,156 --> 00:12:38,542
just from one study
that we did in Costa Rica,

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then imagine what else
is waiting to be discovered down there.

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This new field of geo-bio-chemistry,
or deep subsurface biology,

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or whatever you want to call it,

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is going to have huge implications,

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not just for mitigating climate change,

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but possibly for understanding
how life and Earth have coevolved,

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or finding new products that are useful
for industrial or medical applications.

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Maybe even predicting earthquakes

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00:13:04,621 --> 00:13:06,819
or finding life outside our planet.

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It could even help us understand
the origin of life itself.

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Fortunately, I don't have
to do this by myself.

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I have amazing colleagues
all over the world

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who are cracking into the mysteries
of this deep subsurface world.

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And it may seem like life
buried deep within the Earth's crust

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is so far away from our daily experiences
that it's kind of irrelevant.

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But the truth is that this weird slow life

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may actually have the answers
to some of the greatest mysteries

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00:13:38,624 --> 00:13:39,774
of life on Earth.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)