yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

TIL: Life Could Exist on Mars Thanks to Methane | Today I Learned


less than 1m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] Anywhere on Earth that we find liquid water and other sources of nutrients and energy, we find [Music] life. So, we're studying bubbles of methane that are coming out of the Earth's crust in the deep sea. This is a very interesting source of energy for microbes at the bottom of the [Music] ocean. On the sea floor, you see some bubbling coming up, so that's the methane gas.

You see microbes that are living right at the edge of what is energetically possible, and these are the ones eating [Music] methane. On Mars, we found methane. About 2 or 3 billion years ago, there was liquid water over parts of the planet. We know that if there were also methane around, the microbes we're seeing at the sea floor here on Earth could have survived on Mars.

Even finding microbes would be an enormous discovery. Any type of life outside of Earth would really fundamentally change our sense of what's possible in the universe and what it means to be living here on [Music] Earth. If you were to use energy as quickly as a hummingbird, you'd have to eat a fridge full of food or about 300 hamburgers every day in order to survive.

More Articles

View All
Lockdown Around the World | National Geographic
It was just a little bit of like a calm before the storm. People were waiting for something very bad to occur. Sydney, Australia, is a very vibrant city. It is usually bustling. Seeing it so stark is one of those things that you would expect to see from o…
Dr. David Anderson on supporting children's mental health during a crisis | Homeroom with Sal
From Khan Academy: Welcome to the Daily Homeroom live stream! For those of y’all that this is your first time, this is really just a way for us to stay connected during school closures. Obviously, Khan Academy has many resources for students, teachers, a…
Your Mass is NOT From the Higgs Boson
Twenty-one grams. That is the mass of all of the electrons in your body if, like me, you weigh about 70 kilograms. Now, all of the mass comes from the Higgs mechanism, which means that as your electrons are traveling through space time, they interact with…
A Park Reborn: Bringing Wildlife Back | Nat Geo Live
( intro music ) Bob Poole: Gorongosa National Park sits right in the middle of Mozambique. In 1964, a long war for independence broke out against Portugal. And that was followed by an even longer civil war that lasted until 1992. The armies fed off the w…
Priceless Ancient Treasures Leave Greece for First Time | National Geographic
[Music] Some of the objects are so valuable that it’s like what we call hand carry, and that’s basically the courier is handcuffed to the briefcase and escorted through security. The golden wreath of Meup, it’s like a crown, would have gone on her head a…
Making conclusions in a test about a proportion | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
A public opinion survey investigated whether a majority, more than 50 percent, of adults supported a tax increase to help fund the local school system. A random sample of 200 adults showed that 113 of those sampled supported the tax increase. Researchers …