LISA VAN PAY: This is one of my favorite things in the whole world.
So, I'm pretty excited.
So, we're gonna need some tools.
Not just samples and test tubes. Ideas are tools too.
And we're gonna need a place to do all of this stuff. People usually think science happens in the lab.
Well, that's true.
But, what is a lab really?
How about this?
Or this?
Is this a lab?
What about here?
Or what about deep underground?
Smells like science.
We've got a place to ask questions and a way to answer them. What now?
Well, it turns out the order of things is pretty important because each step builds on and works with
the previous ones. That's science.
People talk a lot about green technology and what might happen in the future.
But how do we get there?
Discovery can mean adventure especially when your lab is a cave.
I got to explore a place few people have ever seen, Snowy River in Fort Stanton, New Mexico.
Visiting a rare place like this means there are a lot of new things to see.
DIANA NORTHUP: So, if you look at this patch right up here, see how it sparkles back at you.
So, those are actinobacteria. What you're seeing up there is a whole mat of bacteria.
It's like a city that's going about its business. It's finding a way to get energy.
It's reproducing. We can study them to see how they gain energy in such a low-energy environment.
LISA VAN PAY: So, you explore and when you find something neat or interesting or weird, you ask why.
I'm noticing a bunch of different colors here. Can you tell me a little about what might cause that?
MONICA MOYA: Right, so, this dark coating is a manganese deposit which we believe
is deposited by bacteria.
Now, on the surface of conducted study on desert varnish we believe they're doing this to gain energy.
LISA VAN PAY: Scientists think that some of the interesting features of the cave weren't just formed
by water and moving rocks. The bacteria helped too. Monica and Diana want to do more experiments to test
their hypothesis that microorganisms helped form some of the things we're seeing.
DIANA NORTHUP: One of our big questions when we look at these in caves is how the bacteria are actually
mining the rock wall for reduced manganese and how they're moving the electrons.
We're hoping that we'll see a similar structure here to what we saw in Spider Cave which is what's called a
nanowire and they can be literally tens of microns long which is really small.
But, in an environment like here, it's actually really long and it allows them to have the structures deep
in the rock and be able to conduct electrons.
LISA VAN PAY: These wire-like things may be one way bacteria get energy in this low-energy environment.
Who knows? Eventually, researchers might adapt the nanowire idea to solve one of our energy problems.
Once researchers have tested their idea, they share it with others.
Then, they get to do their second favorite thing: argue about science.
So they don't really look alive. How did you figure out that they were alive?
DIANA NORTHUP: I spend a lot of time with a colleague who's a geologist and a mineralogist and we look at
the same image and we are argue about what's life and what's mineral.
LISA VAN PAY: And so it goes, on and on. There are always more things to discover,
more things to see and new places to go.
So Monica, what made you want to look for different kinds of life inside of caves?
MONICA MOYA: Well, I saw this documentary about Diana Northup and her work in such extreme environments
and how she can find microbes pretty much anywhere. Besides, I get to go to pretty cool places like these.
LISA VAN PAY: Yeah, being a scientist isn't just about looking through a microscope or writing equations,
although it can be that sometimes. It's about exploring the world around us.
Looking inside or outside, up or down and sometimes way down for answers.
Those answers can give us stuff like cleaner greener energy or a better understanding of our world.
One thing's for sure. There are always gonna be more questions.
What are you gonna ask? I'm Lisa and I'm a scientist.