Is Anybody Out There?: A Look at Extremophiles in Relation to the Possibility of Life on Other Planets

Could there be life on other planets? Could Mars, our closest planetary neighbor and the planet most similar to Earth, hold life? And if so, could the extremophiles we have been studying hold clues to what this life is like?

One thing you have learned in this class is to keep open the possibility of life in unexpected places. If a planet is too cold to support life as we know it, maybe a microbe has adapted to that environment. No oxygen? Maybe the food chain is based on sulfur or methane. No sunlight? We have already seen thriving communities of living things here on Earth in caves with absolutely no light.

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is currently investigating Mars and Europa (one of the moons of Jupiter) for signs of life. One theory they are exploring is that maybe life in the universe originated from the same place and was transported to other planets by meteorites.

It sounds like science fiction, right? Well, let’s remember that a lot of the organisms we have studied in this class sounded too weird to be true until their existence was verified. And Earth is thought to have thousands or even millions more extremophiles that haven’t even been discovered yet? What could they be like?

At this point, every living thing we know of, no matter how extreme it is in other ways, need water. That is why NASA spends so much time looking for water on other planets and moons. But is it possible to find life that doesn’t even need water?

So “never say never” - and keep an eye out for new discoveries in the world of extremophiles. There is a lot to be learned from them.