I want to tell you about my science
story I want to tell you about a story
that led me to a project that I think is
new true and important and perhaps I’ll
recruit some of you to join this project
but my story starts in the ocean it
starts with cruises that went from San
Francisco to Hawaii Hawaii to Tahiti
cruises that went from Woods Hole to the
Azores and the Azores to Scotland
so these cruises were research cruises
which means we weren’t concerned about
the ship we were concerned about the
ocean and I in the days of 1970s I in
those days was part of a small group of
research divers that were engaged in
diving in the ocean using scuba
techniques to explore the ocean um
underwater just studying the surface
waters so we launched ourselves into
little boats and we hung a line in the
water
and we’d OVA round that line now the
bottom maybe four or five kilometers
below us that’s like two and a half to
three miles from the boat to the bottom
so in order to be safe reattached
ourselves to the boat and we attach
ourselves to each other now I can tell
you lots of stories about sharks and
porpoises and animals made of jelly that
we encountered but what I was studying I
was studying the jungles of the ocean so
like the jungles on land the jungles in
the ocean are dominated by plants but
unlike the plants on land which are big
and have lots of stems and trunks and
leaves the oceans jungles look like this
microscopic plants that are usually
algae that fill the water and make it
green and fairly opaque now the reason
this is interesting for our story is
because those particles those plants
aggregate into particles that ultimately
form little microcosms and these
microcosms move through the water
this is a picture underwater of one of
these microcosms looks like and has
interesting chemistry and interesting
biology and it moves it sinks through
the water and what that means for the
organisms associated with it is that it
goes from the warm surface waters to
deeper and deeper water that gets colder
and higher and higher pressure now we
were limited to the upper 20 meters of
the water just because of the nature of
scuba diving and trying to be safe and
we were in the middle of the ocean so we
wanted to be really careful about this
but I had the opportunity to go deeper
to look beyond the diving range using a
submarine called Alvin so Alvin allowed
me to go way way way below where divers
can go and as soon as you get below
about a hundred meters about 200-300
feet this is what it looks like it’s
totally dark but if you turn the lights
on what you see are similar particles to
the particles that I just described to
you particles that are suspended in the
water and aggregated and probably unique
in their characteristics of Bost biology
and chemistry and their sinking through
the water now the reason this is
interesting and in fact the old divers
the old submersible divers the early
submersible divers called the stuff
marine snow because it looks sort of
like a snow storm moving through the
water and it feeds the deep ocean so I
was studying these particles and because
the particles as they fall from the
surface and ultimately get to the bottom
they go through a temperature gradient
and they go through increasing
increasing pressure for every 10 meters
you go down into the ocean you increase
another atmosphere worth of pressure so
in the laboratory we had equipment at
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
where I was a student that allowed us to
simulate these high pressures and high
temperatures and at some places in the
deep ocean there were these hot springs
discovered these underwater geysers and
the uniqueness of these geysers they
were called black smokers and they look
like black smoke but there’s nothing to
do with smoke what this is is
superheated water the water temperatures
because of the high pressure could reach
450 degrees Celsius that’s that’s like
850 degrees Fahrenheit and the pressure
prevents it from boiling
right in one atmosphere that is at sea
level water boils at 100 degrees Celsius
but here because of the pressure it
boils at very very high temperatures so
these black smokers were interesting
because they’re not very they’re not
very common in fact they’re only in
volcanic areas but what’s interesting
about them is that there’s a whole group
of very weird organisms that are
surrounding these black smokers and
other geysers in the deep sea and these
organisms are taking advantage of the
warmth and the minerals coming up from
the Earth’s crust and they’re kind of a
distance sort of like us sitting around
a campfire at night you know and we’re a
distance from the fire and we’re
comfortable but if we get too close it’s
very dangerous with about this time it
was like 1983 we had a high-pressure lab
and these Hot Springs have been
discovered in a number of places and a
filler came to our lab with samples from
one of the black smokers and asked us if
we could build a high-pressure
high-temperature apparatus he asked the
question provocative question is could
organisms live at this superheated high
temperature and survive because the
pressure prevents the water from boiling
could that compensate also for the
biology published a paper with one of
the student what of the postdocs in the
lab Jody Deming so John burrows and Joe
he Deming published a paper that was
really sensational I mean it was life at
250 degrees bacteria black smoker
bacteria growing at 250 degrees that was
a while because that was more than two
and a half times the maximum anybody had
ever seen before and it was very unclear
whether this was because of the pressure
or because he’s organisms were specially
adapted but you know I have been
studying pressure and I knew the effects
of pressure and temperature and I
thought you know I don’t know if this is
true so I took the same equipment and I
did work with the same the same
apparatus that they used and I published
a paper in Nature a few months later
said possible artefactual bases for
thick black smoke or bacteria in other
words their data was wrong so this is ok
I mean science moves forward by having
things that are right and wrong
but it was a case of something that was
new but not true but interestingly
enough this was a turning point in my
story because I and many other people
who have read that original paper and I
was directly involved I thought you know
this is a really interesting question
what is the upper temperature limit of
life and this led me into a new area in
my research I started going around the
world looking at places where the
geothermal hot streams places like this
and the Russian party is in Chocula
where there’s a glacier running into a
volcanic caldera and melting and forming
these hot acid pools and we were
sampling these pools and looking for
life in these pools they were they where
this one was 94 degrees Celsius so it
was below the boiling point of water but
it was super hot and in these places we
found organisms organisms that look like
this their so-called thermo acidophiles
there’s about 80 of them this picture
and there looked like little raisins but
in fact 400 billion of them would fit
inside a raisin an actual raisin right
so they’re they’re extremely tiny and I
went ahead and sampled these organisms
around in many places and really what I
was doing was true but not new there
were a lot of people who had studied
these organisms and much of what I was
finding has known already to science
about this time NASA started a program
called astrobiology and astrobiology was
looking for the limits of life to be
able to direct our search for life
beyond Earth and so I was a perfect
candidate and I went to work for NASA
and in fact I worked on lots and lots of
different projects but I want to tell
you about one particular project which
is very important in the story that I’m
telling you now and that has to do with
a study of Mars Mars as you know is a
planet that people are now talking about
going to and we already have
Rovers on Mars like curiosity is there
right now I mean this is a rover that’s
rolling across the surface of Mars it’s
been there for quite some time already
and it’s sending back data but sending
back pictures of what Mars looks like
this
this is
picture of Mars that was taken from
curiosity looking out to a mountain
called Mount sharp Mars is a cold dry
desolate really amazing place and the
average temperature is minus 60 degrees
average Celsius so that’s like minus
eighty five Fahrenheit it’s super cold
we still talk though about putting
people there even though there’s no
atmosphere to breathe outside and it’s
cold and in fact the atmosphere is so
thin that on the surface of Mars water
boils at four degrees Celsius that’s
about 40 degrees Fahrenheit it boils and
our blood temperature is 37 degrees so
guess what there’s not only no air to
breathe but your blood would boil and
you would freeze if you ever got exposed
to the Martian surface so Mars for me is
sort of new but so what what is Mars
interesting for and for me Mars is an
interesting problem Mars is an
interesting problem because it’s an
exercise in thinking about a
life-support system in fact on Mars the
waste products from the humans the
hypothetical humans that were inhabiting
a Mars habitat the waste products are
more valuable than what Mars will offer
us there Mars offers some solar energy
and a little bit of water and absolutely
no food so we would have to put people
in a system like this and provide the
ultimate in recycling I mean this is the
extreme case because the waste products
from the humans will be more valuable in
making food water and energy than
anything almost anything we’d find on
Mars this question of food water and
energy was very important to me on
thinking about Mars and then I had a bit
of an epiphany what about the earth what
about these same concepts where Mars is
a resource limiting planet what about
thinking about the resource limitations
on earth and thinking about the growing
population on the earth the problems we
have with urbanization and the issues
associated with changes in lifestyle
this hole called affluence that’s
growing in the world not to mention the
fact that climate change is a sort of
monkey wrench in our whole system of
thinking
could we apply the same concepts to the
issues related to water food and energy
on the earth this led me to a project I
call Omega this Omega project is a
system of systems approach that takes
waste water and way co2 at a floating
platform off the coast of coastal cities
to grow microalgae on the waste water
and the platform is also used for solar
energy in the form of electricity and
heat from solar concentrators wave
energy can be the basis for producing
power and wind energy also and because
we’re in an offshore context the under
water from this this infrastructure can
be used for producing food in an
ecologically sound way we deal with the
environmental issues by treating
wastewater we make water from waste
water that’s drinkable and at the same
time we’re producing food from an
ecological aquaculture the system
provides energy from solar power and the
whole system together is a way of
producing green economies that are
sustainable for the future the Omega
project stands for operational marinas
for economic growth and abundance it
started as a NASA project actually with
funding from NASA and the California
Energy Commission and it evolved we
basically showed that this system is
feasible that in fact we could we could
build it there are some issues related
to the economics and the energetics but
it’s but it’s feasible we’ve now started
a nonprofit called the Omega Global
Initiative ogi to spread this idea to
promote this idea beyond NASA so if I
started my journey in the ocean and I
took a turn when we discovered something
that was new but not true I chipped it
again when I started studying the upper
temperature limits of life and we’re
studying things that were true but not
new and then again when I looked at Mars
and realized that it was kind of a so
what we’re never going to colonize Mars
the goal the place that I’ve reached now
we’re the Omega project is perhaps my
final project in an Omega project its
new true and important thank you [Applause]
story I want to tell you about a story
that led me to a project that I think is
new true and important and perhaps I’ll
recruit some of you to join this project
but my story starts in the ocean it
starts with cruises that went from San
Francisco to Hawaii Hawaii to Tahiti
cruises that went from Woods Hole to the
Azores and the Azores to Scotland
so these cruises were research cruises
which means we weren’t concerned about
the ship we were concerned about the
ocean and I in the days of 1970s I in
those days was part of a small group of
research divers that were engaged in
diving in the ocean using scuba
techniques to explore the ocean um
underwater just studying the surface
waters so we launched ourselves into
little boats and we hung a line in the
water
and we’d OVA round that line now the
bottom maybe four or five kilometers
below us that’s like two and a half to
three miles from the boat to the bottom
so in order to be safe reattached
ourselves to the boat and we attach
ourselves to each other now I can tell
you lots of stories about sharks and
porpoises and animals made of jelly that
we encountered but what I was studying I
was studying the jungles of the ocean so
like the jungles on land the jungles in
the ocean are dominated by plants but
unlike the plants on land which are big
and have lots of stems and trunks and
leaves the oceans jungles look like this
microscopic plants that are usually
algae that fill the water and make it
green and fairly opaque now the reason
this is interesting for our story is
because those particles those plants
aggregate into particles that ultimately
form little microcosms and these
microcosms move through the water
this is a picture underwater of one of
these microcosms looks like and has
interesting chemistry and interesting
biology and it moves it sinks through
the water and what that means for the
organisms associated with it is that it
goes from the warm surface waters to
deeper and deeper water that gets colder
and higher and higher pressure now we
were limited to the upper 20 meters of
the water just because of the nature of
scuba diving and trying to be safe and
we were in the middle of the ocean so we
wanted to be really careful about this
but I had the opportunity to go deeper
to look beyond the diving range using a
submarine called Alvin so Alvin allowed
me to go way way way below where divers
can go and as soon as you get below
about a hundred meters about 200-300
feet this is what it looks like it’s
totally dark but if you turn the lights
on what you see are similar particles to
the particles that I just described to
you particles that are suspended in the
water and aggregated and probably unique
in their characteristics of Bost biology
and chemistry and their sinking through
the water now the reason this is
interesting and in fact the old divers
the old submersible divers the early
submersible divers called the stuff
marine snow because it looks sort of
like a snow storm moving through the
water and it feeds the deep ocean so I
was studying these particles and because
the particles as they fall from the
surface and ultimately get to the bottom
they go through a temperature gradient
and they go through increasing
increasing pressure for every 10 meters
you go down into the ocean you increase
another atmosphere worth of pressure so
in the laboratory we had equipment at
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
where I was a student that allowed us to
simulate these high pressures and high
temperatures and at some places in the
deep ocean there were these hot springs
discovered these underwater geysers and
the uniqueness of these geysers they
were called black smokers and they look
like black smoke but there’s nothing to
do with smoke what this is is
superheated water the water temperatures
because of the high pressure could reach
450 degrees Celsius that’s that’s like
850 degrees Fahrenheit and the pressure
prevents it from boiling
right in one atmosphere that is at sea
level water boils at 100 degrees Celsius
but here because of the pressure it
boils at very very high temperatures so
these black smokers were interesting
because they’re not very they’re not
very common in fact they’re only in
volcanic areas but what’s interesting
about them is that there’s a whole group
of very weird organisms that are
surrounding these black smokers and
other geysers in the deep sea and these
organisms are taking advantage of the
warmth and the minerals coming up from
the Earth’s crust and they’re kind of a
distance sort of like us sitting around
a campfire at night you know and we’re a
distance from the fire and we’re
comfortable but if we get too close it’s
very dangerous with about this time it
was like 1983 we had a high-pressure lab
and these Hot Springs have been
discovered in a number of places and a
filler came to our lab with samples from
one of the black smokers and asked us if
we could build a high-pressure
high-temperature apparatus he asked the
question provocative question is could
organisms live at this superheated high
temperature and survive because the
pressure prevents the water from boiling
could that compensate also for the
biology published a paper with one of
the student what of the postdocs in the
lab Jody Deming so John burrows and Joe
he Deming published a paper that was
really sensational I mean it was life at
250 degrees bacteria black smoker
bacteria growing at 250 degrees that was
a while because that was more than two
and a half times the maximum anybody had
ever seen before and it was very unclear
whether this was because of the pressure
or because he’s organisms were specially
adapted but you know I have been
studying pressure and I knew the effects
of pressure and temperature and I
thought you know I don’t know if this is
true so I took the same equipment and I
did work with the same the same
apparatus that they used and I published
a paper in Nature a few months later
said possible artefactual bases for
thick black smoke or bacteria in other
words their data was wrong so this is ok
I mean science moves forward by having
things that are right and wrong
but it was a case of something that was
new but not true but interestingly
enough this was a turning point in my
story because I and many other people
who have read that original paper and I
was directly involved I thought you know
this is a really interesting question
what is the upper temperature limit of
life and this led me into a new area in
my research I started going around the
world looking at places where the
geothermal hot streams places like this
and the Russian party is in Chocula
where there’s a glacier running into a
volcanic caldera and melting and forming
these hot acid pools and we were
sampling these pools and looking for
life in these pools they were they where
this one was 94 degrees Celsius so it
was below the boiling point of water but
it was super hot and in these places we
found organisms organisms that look like
this their so-called thermo acidophiles
there’s about 80 of them this picture
and there looked like little raisins but
in fact 400 billion of them would fit
inside a raisin an actual raisin right
so they’re they’re extremely tiny and I
went ahead and sampled these organisms
around in many places and really what I
was doing was true but not new there
were a lot of people who had studied
these organisms and much of what I was
finding has known already to science
about this time NASA started a program
called astrobiology and astrobiology was
looking for the limits of life to be
able to direct our search for life
beyond Earth and so I was a perfect
candidate and I went to work for NASA
and in fact I worked on lots and lots of
different projects but I want to tell
you about one particular project which
is very important in the story that I’m
telling you now and that has to do with
a study of Mars Mars as you know is a
planet that people are now talking about
going to and we already have
Rovers on Mars like curiosity is there
right now I mean this is a rover that’s
rolling across the surface of Mars it’s
been there for quite some time already
and it’s sending back data but sending
back pictures of what Mars looks like
this
this is
picture of Mars that was taken from
curiosity looking out to a mountain
called Mount sharp Mars is a cold dry
desolate really amazing place and the
average temperature is minus 60 degrees
average Celsius so that’s like minus
eighty five Fahrenheit it’s super cold
we still talk though about putting
people there even though there’s no
atmosphere to breathe outside and it’s
cold and in fact the atmosphere is so
thin that on the surface of Mars water
boils at four degrees Celsius that’s
about 40 degrees Fahrenheit it boils and
our blood temperature is 37 degrees so
guess what there’s not only no air to
breathe but your blood would boil and
you would freeze if you ever got exposed
to the Martian surface so Mars for me is
sort of new but so what what is Mars
interesting for and for me Mars is an
interesting problem Mars is an
interesting problem because it’s an
exercise in thinking about a
life-support system in fact on Mars the
waste products from the humans the
hypothetical humans that were inhabiting
a Mars habitat the waste products are
more valuable than what Mars will offer
us there Mars offers some solar energy
and a little bit of water and absolutely
no food so we would have to put people
in a system like this and provide the
ultimate in recycling I mean this is the
extreme case because the waste products
from the humans will be more valuable in
making food water and energy than
anything almost anything we’d find on
Mars this question of food water and
energy was very important to me on
thinking about Mars and then I had a bit
of an epiphany what about the earth what
about these same concepts where Mars is
a resource limiting planet what about
thinking about the resource limitations
on earth and thinking about the growing
population on the earth the problems we
have with urbanization and the issues
associated with changes in lifestyle
this hole called affluence that’s
growing in the world not to mention the
fact that climate change is a sort of
monkey wrench in our whole system of
thinking
could we apply the same concepts to the
issues related to water food and energy
on the earth this led me to a project I
call Omega this Omega project is a
system of systems approach that takes
waste water and way co2 at a floating
platform off the coast of coastal cities
to grow microalgae on the waste water
and the platform is also used for solar
energy in the form of electricity and
heat from solar concentrators wave
energy can be the basis for producing
power and wind energy also and because
we’re in an offshore context the under
water from this this infrastructure can
be used for producing food in an
ecologically sound way we deal with the
environmental issues by treating
wastewater we make water from waste
water that’s drinkable and at the same
time we’re producing food from an
ecological aquaculture the system
provides energy from solar power and the
whole system together is a way of
producing green economies that are
sustainable for the future the Omega
project stands for operational marinas
for economic growth and abundance it
started as a NASA project actually with
funding from NASA and the California
Energy Commission and it evolved we
basically showed that this system is
feasible that in fact we could we could
build it there are some issues related
to the economics and the energetics but
it’s but it’s feasible we’ve now started
a nonprofit called the Omega Global
Initiative ogi to spread this idea to
promote this idea beyond NASA so if I
started my journey in the ocean and I
took a turn when we discovered something
that was new but not true I chipped it
again when I started studying the upper
temperature limits of life and we’re
studying things that were true but not
new and then again when I looked at Mars
and realized that it was kind of a so
what we’re never going to colonize Mars
the goal the place that I’ve reached now
we’re the Omega project is perhaps my
final project in an Omega project its
new true and important thank you [Applause]
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