Life that burns hydrogen in the dark: Arctic microbes may hold a recipe for clean fuel

More than 1,000 feet beneath the Arctic Ocean, in water that never sees the sun, cracks in the seafloor leak gases — and whole communities of microbes live on them, breathing hydrogen the way we breathe air. Molecular ecologist Juan Galarza of the University of Oulu in Finland has spent Arctic summers — where the sun never quite sets and days blur together — glued to a deep-sea scanner, hunting the faint bubble trails that betray these 'cold seeps' and collecting the sediment around them. The bacteria his team finds have spent millions of years evolving tricks for making and using hydrogen, the clean fuel humans still produce mostly from fossil gas. 'These microbes have evolved millions of years there in isolation,' Galarza says. 'This is one of the least explored systems ever.' The hope is that their ancient chemistry can teach our energy system a few tricks — before a warming Arctic changes the seeps forever.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation