This is a scientific American 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

The first life here on Earth appeared about 4 billion years ago.

In one place these pioneering organisms may have emerged is at hydrothermal vents deep underwater, where unusual chemistry provided energy for primitive life forms to survive. Life forms like the methane belching microbes found at the vents today.

Now for the first time researchers have found evidence of methane producing life in similarly

extreme conditions, but up here at the surface of the Earth, at a

spring in Northern California called the CEDRS. The water there is

extremely basic with a pH of 11.6 and it contains no oxygen. Not an easy place to survive.

Researchers tested water and sediment there at the cedars.

Some samples got dosed with mercuric chloride to kill any life present.

Those dose samples produce no methane.

But the samples in which microbes who were allowed to survive did put out methane,

confirming that at least some of the methane at the springs is indeed biological in origin.

The findings appear in the Journal of Geophysical Research biogeosciences.

The finding has implications for climate change alleviation because the geologically similar

spring in Oman has been proposed as a site for carbon storage, pumping CO2 underground where

it gets incorporated into stone.

But the extremophiles at the cedars can use that CO2 to make methane,

and even more potent greenhouse gas.

So imagine pumping CO2 into the ground and having it come back up as methane.

Penny Morrill, a biogeochemist at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

This will not necessarily happen, but it is something to be tested for before fully implementing a carbon capture and storage technology at one of these types of sites.

Morrill says the study is also a reminder that life is tenacious.

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