Onstott Tullis C. - Deep Life

DEEP LIFE

DEEP LIFE

The Hunt for the Hidden Biology of Earth, Mars, and Beyond

TULLIS C. ONSTOTT

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2017 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press.princeton.edu

Jacket image: In a side tunnel of Beatrix Gold Mine, the southernmost mine in the Witwatersrand Basin of South Africa, a borehole one mile beneath the surface intersects with an ancient fault zone. High-pressure water containing viruses, bacteria and H. mephisto, the Worm from Hell, shoots out from the fault. Photo courtesy of Dr. Gaetan Borgonie, Extreme Life Isyensa, Belgium, and Olukayode Kuloyo and Dr. Borja Linage of the University of the Free State, South Africa.

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-691-09644-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Onstott, T. C. (Tullis Cullen)

Title: Deep life : the hunt for the hidden biology of Earth, Mars, and beyond / Tullis C. Onstott.

Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016027791 | ISBN 9780691096445 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Adaptation (Biology) | Extreme environments. | Space environment.

Classification: LCC QP82 .O57 2017 | DDC 612/.0144dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027791

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Sabon Next Pro & Montserrat

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

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To ELEANORA ANDERSON, my Princess, my one true love, always and forever, in this universe and beyond.

To my colleagues and friendsTOM KIEFT, TOMMY PHELPS, SUSAN PFIFFNER, ESTA VAN HEERDEN, and GAETAN BORGONIEwith whom Ive had the privilege of sharing many good times as we explored this universe together.

To DR. FRANK J. WOBBER, whose forethought, tenacity, managerial skills, and geological insight changed my life and those of many others and who kept all of us in the Subsurface Science Program focused on the prize.

To the memories of DAVID BOONE and D. C. WHITE, both of whom provided guidance and inspiration for this geologist as to what could be achieved.

To the memory of PIET BOTHA, our jolly jester of the Crocodilian Estate, whose bright light was tragically extinguished.

To the memories of ROB and SYBIL HARGRAVES, who encouraged me to pursue the answers to questions I wanted to ask, no matter how unconventional they were.

Finally, to the memory of GENE SHOEMAKER and to CAROLYN SHOEMAKER, who were so nurturing to this young techie.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

In September 1996 I was stumbling through a pitch-black tunnel in Western Deep Levels, one of the AngloAmerican companys deepest gold mines, west of Johannesburg in South Africa. At two miles beneath the surface of the Earth, the heat and humidity were almost all I could think about. Earlier that morning my guide and I had learned that the ventilation system was off where the train was supposed to have taken us to collect samples. So instead, he picked an alternate route, and I followed him at a walk/run through a maze of intertwining tunnels. After an hour of hiking, we finally reached the stope, a narrow tilted tunnel into the rock where the miners had been removing the freshly blasted gold and carbon-rich rock. I had not, however, anticipated that the entrance to the stope would be the little rabbit hole in the side of the tunnel that I now faced. We squeezed into the hole and shimmied down the 30 slope of the three-foot-high stope. There my guide barked orders to the miners in a language unintelligible to my ears, and they unplugged the detonators to the explosives in the rock. After they had finished, we gingerly levered out a couple of large, thirty-pound chunks of the carbon-rich layer, which I wrapped in sterilized bags and shoehorned into my backpack. I tried not to think of the weight of the rock above my head every time my helmet banged against the ceiling of the stope. With my samples bagged, my guide began crab crawling his way further down the slick, steeply dipping scree slope. Were going deeper? I shouted down at the helmet lamp of my guide below me. With my backpack in one gloved hand, I started sliding further down the stopes on my butt after him. Hurry, they have to blast soon! my guide shouted up from below me. The air smelt of burnt rock, literally a fire-and-brimstone odor. It pervaded the stope. There had been no signs of water anywhere, except for the tiny, rusty stains on a rock that I had collected half an hour earlier in one of the tunnels. As I caught up to my guide, he quickly grabbed my arm and pulled me aside as I almost fell into a dark pit. Thats a 100-meter drop, my friend, he said in his stiff Afrikaans accent. As we continued downward, we suddenly popped out of another rabbit hole and into a deeper and even hotter tunnel, where we trudged for an hour until we came to what I had hoped to find. Water! It was dribbling out of a drill hole in the ceiling of a tunnel intersection, and my nostrils started stinging from the acrid smell of ammonia. I climbed up the rusting rock bolts that held wire mesh against the rocky wall and stretched my gloved hand up toward the dripping borehole. I was able to collect enough water to make some pH and temperature measurements in the little cup that I held. Fantastic! Its 50C and a pH of 9, I shouted down to my guide. After readjusting my small knapsack to my chest, I climbed higher, and balancing precariously on the bolts, I filled every sterilized serum vial I had with me. As soon as I dropped to the tunnel floor we were off again. Hurry, weve got to catch the cage, he shouted back to me, and I hurried behind him the best I could in my ill-fitting gumboots. I continually pulled up the loose belt that held my headlamp battery and struggled to keep up with him while lugging seventy pounds of rock and water samples.

We finally reached the station for the cage. We had minutes to spare, so I took some quick pictures. The miners, some of whom had just walked in from their shift, were reclining in various positions on the concrete floor away from the cage entrance while the shift bosses sat on benches right next to it. I was clicking away when my guide pulled down his coverall and mooned me, and the shift bosses started laughing. The miners looked on, stoically bemused. I nervously laughed as well, but as we waited for the cage to arrive, I silently asked myself, What in hell am I doing here miles beneath the surface of the Earth collecting microbial samples? The results from the samples in my backpack would tell me if it was worth the trip. I might find bacteria that had been isolated from the surface of the Earth for two billion years or I might even discover the secrets to the origin of life itself. But first I had to isolate the rocks from air and then get them back to the USA.

Finally the cage arrived, and I snapped back to the present as I crammed into the cage with thirty other hot and sweaty miners. My arms were pinned to my sides, my backpack was wedged between my feet. With a bang the cage door was slammed shut and locked from the outside. It was dark and strangely quiet except for the sounds of mechanical chirping birds. Then the cage jerked and began accelerating toward the cool, sunny surface so far above. I had walked, run, climbed, and crawled 11,000 feet beneath the surface of the Earth in search of a hidden universe of life. In ten minutes I would once again be safe on top.