The Sun is the major source of energy for most organisms on our planet. Plants, algae, and cyanobacteria use the energy from sunlight to make organic matter from carbon dioxide and water and form the basis of the food chain.
There are a few exceptions to this, such as ecosystems living around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which derive their energy from the chemical compounds such as methane and hydrogen sulfide.
But scientists have found bacteria in the frozen wasteland of Antarctica that can survive on air alone without the usual sunlight or geothermal energy sources that all other ecosystems rely on. This is the first time an air-eating form of life on Earth has ever been discovered.
Antarctica may be cold and remote and mostly covered in ice but there are a few small areas that are ice free. The bacteria samples were taken from two of these – Robinson Ridge (Casey Station) and Adams Flat (Davis Station) – in the Australian Antarctic Territory.
But even without the ice these areas are just as hostile to life as the rest of Antarctica, due to very low temperatures, a shortage of water, carbon and nitrogen, plus months of Antarctic darkness, intense UV radiation, and constant cycles of freezing and thawing making it a difficult place for life to sustain itself.
But researchers led by Belinda Ferrari of UNSW in Sydney, Australia did find life in the form of a number of microbes, including two bacteria, previously unknown. They found that they produce energy directly from atmospheric hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
The authors wrote in their paper in the science journal ’Nature’“ that ‘Whereas most ecosystems are driven by solar or geologically driven energy, primary production in these Antarctic desert surface soils appear to be supported by atmospheric trace gases.”
Besides this being a first for life on Earth, Ferrari says that it also “opens up the possibility of atmospheric gases supporting life on other planets”.
