Earth's alien ocean

Okay.

So in my research, I came across a, a term, chemosynthesis.

Now the energy shift.

Talk to me about that.

So it's, let's take the word photosynthesis.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, synthesis means, uh, a process, and photo means light.

So it's a light-driven process.

Chemosynthesis, it's a chemical process.

So it's not driven by light but driven by chemicals.

So within, uh, different molecules and compounds, the atoms are linked by chemical bonds.

And those bonds have actually a, a decent amount of energy in them.

So if you break those bonds down, if you're an organism which has developed ways to do that using different enzymes, for example, then you can get energy out of it, and that's called chemosynthesis.

Okay.

And so the communities or ecosystems that live down there, are they just microbes, or are they full life communities? What are they?

It ranges from microbes to these gigantic, scary-looking, uh, wormy kinds of things and, you know, even fish.

I mean, the, the kinds of ecosystems we're beginning to find in the deep sea are, you know, really truly alien.

Um, there are these insects and other arthropods, uh, which have multiple legs and googly eyes [laughs] and all sorts of weird stuff's going on down there.

But there are a whole bunch of worms and microbes in particular that, that use these hydrothermal vents, uh, to get their energy.

And then, you know, the bigger things prey on them.

And that's how you get these, these different food webs thousands of meters deep.