From Wired Magazine:
How can we look for weird tentacled things living unimaginable lives under indescribable skies if we're still mostly stuck on Earth? I believe that the best place to find life on Mars will be underground, not the cold, radiation-blasted deserts of the surface. So I look to a model system on our planet: caves. The Martian subsurface might have water, or it might have ecosystems as weird as the poisonous, sulfuric acid-soaked Cueva de Villa Luz in the Mexican state of Tabasco. For six years, I've studied the chemistry and strange denizens of Villa Luz. But working there can be hazardous - even life-threatening.
Drops of sulfuric acid from the ceiling sting my neck and back as I crawl. I can't scratch because I'm jammed into a passage, walls coated with sticky, acid-soaked gypsum paste that burns through unprotected skin. I can hear something far down the narrow tunnel, a buzzing like a million tiny voices. My team members and I don't know what it is. We've tried to find out, but each time something forces us to turn back: a spike in carbon monoxide, a breathing-mask failure, a choking blast of ammonia. Now I'm trying again. But the passage is narrowing.
On an earlier trip into Villa Luz, a fellow caver, Jim Lavoie, disappeared before my eyes as the rock he was standing on crumbled. His mask filled with milky, sulfurous water as he was sucked down toward razor-sharp fins of stone. He was strong enough to struggle back to the surface. We hauled him, shaking and retching, onto the ledge.
I can feel the beginning of the "Villa Luz headache." My brain feels too big for my skull, and my eyes are disappearing into my face. It comes with a weird psychological detachment, as if I'm an outside observer, not really there. With a tiny, distant part of my mind, I know this means I've been in too long and absorbed a toxic load of gases - hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and others. But the buzzing is very close. I push on.
Since first suggesting that the underworld was a good Mars analog in 1992, my team has studied caves filled with microorganisms that eat bedrock and produce unique minerals, and we've found beautiful crystal formations that are products of ancient subterranean life. I've dived into hot acid waters, rappelled into deep pristine caves where no humans have gone before. In these worlds under the water, we are the aliens, barely able to cope, while the natives happily flourish.
Damn! Sweat stings my eyes, and there's a maddening tickle in my nose behind the gas mask gouging my face. Suddenly my little friend Blinky, the monitor that samples our air, screams its electronic lungs out. Oxygen dropping! Carbon monoxide soaring! Hydrogen sulfide off the chart get out now, get out now! I try to turn in the passage - but I'm stuck. I have to back out. My knees protest; every sharp rock seems to be poking into my sides and back. I feel as though I'm not even breathing. Blinky reads just 9.6 percent oxygen in the air (compared with 21 percent outside). It's only 50 feet to safety, but that could be too far. The gypsum shards on the tunnel walls rip my arms and back as I shimmy out like some crazed cartoon in reverse. I don't even feel it.
I claw my way out of the last few feet. Together we stumble and slip to the nearest skylight. The values on Blinky's screen drop quickly tolerable again. I can't stand another minute of pain in my skull and rip the mask from my face, flinging it onto the rocks. As I bend over gasping and coughing, showers of sparkles erupt behind my eyes.
We have learned a lot since my frantic retreat. In hazardous areas, our researchers now carry small emergency oxygen bottles. We no longer solo even short distances. We designate safety officers.
We still don't know why the passage buzzes.
I move slowly through a molasses of fatigue and climb out of the cave into the strong Tabascan sun. Lying aboveground, I have no awareness of anything outside of myself. An hour later, maybe more, I pull myself together enough to begin the mile-long trudge back to the boat that will return us to camp. It will be three months before the gashes heal where the acid paste ground into my torn flesh.
The debate about whether there actually is life anywhere else in our solar system has raged for the past century. We just don't know - but someday we'll go find out. We'll face many of the same dangers and challenges we do while exploring the subsurface of our own planet. That's why we're learning to operate in extreme environments with our sensitive "alien" biology: The caves of the solar system await us.
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