Microbe Might Survive on Mars, Experiment Suggests

A methane-making, oxygen-hating microbe is able to thrive in Mars-like laboratory conditions, according to a researcher who says the experiment raises fresh hope about the possibility of life on the red planet.

The microbe, said Timothy A. Kral of the University of Arkansas, “grows just fine and dandy” in a simulated Martian environment that would kill almost every other form of Earth life.

Kral, who is reporting on his research Wednesday at the national meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, said he and a colleague, Curtis Bekkum, created an environment in culture dishes that closely mimicked that of Mars.

The dishes contained no oxygen but were bathed in carbon dioxide and hydrogen gases. The soil in the experiment resembles what is known about Martian dirt, with no organic nutrients and only a small trace of water.

“We make the assumption that there is liquid water beneath the surface,” said Kral. Many planet experts believe that Mars once had great amounts of water and that traces of it still remain beneath the surface.

Into this mix, the researchers placed a group of microbes called methanogens, a type of bacteria that on Earth lives in places where there is no oxygen.

Kral said the microbe comes from a family of organisms that lives on Earth deep underground or around sea floor vents. Some types of methanogens even live in the stomachs of cows, where they help digest grass.

All of these types of microbes, he said, use nitrogen and hydrogen to make methane, a natural gas that can be used as fuel.

To determine if the bacteria was alive in the simulated Martian environment, Kral said he measured the amount of methane produced inside the sealed culture dishes.

“It made methane just like it does on Earth,” he said. “It grows just fine in the Martian conditions. In fact, it grew fine and dandy.”

Although the experiment is far from the final answer, Kral said the fact that the microbes thrived “cautiously increases our belief that life on Mars is possible, or at least it was possible.”

Methanogen microbes, in theory, also could be used on Mars to make methane and provide energy for a human colony there, Kral said.