Chasing Microbes: The Secret Superheroes of Our Planet | National Geographic

There are places all over the world where methane is coming out of the seafloor. This is kind of concerning because methane is a very strong greenhouse gas. We think a lot about carbon dioxide heating up the planet, but methane is about 25 times worse. Anything we could do to understand where that methane is coming from and where it might be going is really important.

These samples are really rare, really exciting, and we gotta preserve as much of the real story as possible. We focus a lot on how humans are causing climate change, and that's a real problem. But we don't even understand the full scope of the natural world to begin with.

To collect these samples, we have Alvin. Alvin is a human-occupied submersible that goes down about 1400 metres below sea level to pick up a chunk of the seafloor to analyze back in the lab. Have a great day!

One of the main things we were after on this expedition was the sediments right around these methane seeps. Microwaves are the smallest type of living organism on the planet, and these aren't the first line of defense against keeping methane from coming out of the seafloor into the atmosphere.

The microbes inside the rocks and the sediment are eating the methane, and that's really important from a greenhouse gas perspective to keep that methane from getting into the water and eventually getting into the atmosphere, where it would heat up the planet. If you're pretty dangerous, we have a very rare chance to sample some of the biology and try to piece together exactly what's happening.

As we learn more about how these microbes are eating methane and how active they are, and where exactly this is happening, we can understand what's happening with our planet and how to prevent greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. This process takes several months, but it looks like they're pretty active; they're eating methane, which is a good sign.

This idea that the world is so expansive on a microbial scale is really exciting. By chasing microbes to the ends of different possibilities, we're finding what life is capable of.