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

anywhere on earth that we find liquid
water and other sources of nutrients and
energy we find 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
ocean
on the seafloor that seems them 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
methane on Mars we found methane about
two or three billion years ago there was
liquid water over parts of the planet we
know that if there were also methane
around the microbes were 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 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