Dark Life: Martian Nanobacteria, Rock-Eating Cave Bugs, and Other Extreme Organisms of Inner Earth and Outer Space

by Michael Ray Taylor

A veteran caver who routinely explores the inner reaches of the earth offers readers a glimpse into this dark world where microbes that live without sunlight and typical food sources may change our views on evolution.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Michael Ray Taylor is the author of Cave Passages, Dark Life, and Caves, and has written for Sports Illustrated, Audubon, Outside, Reader's Digest, National Geographic Traveler, The Houston Chronicle, and the website of The Discovery Channel. He has consulted on feature films and has worked on documentaries for National Geographic, PBS and The Discovery Channel. He is a professor of communication at Henderson State University and lives in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, with his wife, three sons, his father-in-law, two cats, and a rat terrier. His hobbies include caving, cooking, and playing bass in Blind Opie, a rock band.

Reviews

[Anna Hepworth · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Dark Life" is a journalistic account of scientific efforts to identify and validate the idea of nano-bacteria, and the association between this and various formations in underground caves (and other areas, in the end).

The writing style is very chatty, very 'pop-sci' - a style that I've seen done badly far too many times, but works particularly well here, as it is not only the story of the science, but about how one person gets dragged in to a new field, despite their better judgement. Taylor starts the story as if he were a dispassionate observer, and then chronicles not only the drag out fights between different cadres of scientists, but his own descent into caves, and into being a research assistant.

The perspective is very one sided - the scientists who believe that what they are finding in rocks are nano-bacteria fossils, that the deposits they are studying are the result of life finding every niche, these scientists are portrayed as trail blazers fighting against the status quo, fighting the good fight. And right up to the end, I was expecting there to be some definitive statement that this had been accepted by the scientific 'establishment' as being generally correct to justify the bias. The lack of this was disappointing - it did change my perspective on the whole rest of the book.

In contrast, the scientists who are arguing that the 'fossils' are the result of high-temperature rock formation; those arguing that the same formations are found on the moon (and the story of that is quite fascinating), these are treated as misguided at best, and obstructive and deliberately misrepresenting their results at worst. I was not at all convinced that they should have been treated in quite so cavalier a manner, although I was quite sympathetic regarding the treatment of one, when I read the sections on how an honours student was treated. Then again, this was a biased account, and the honours student is one of the heroes of the book.

That aside, the story is engaging, and once I started to read it with the same goggles on that I read fantasy -- the 'history is written by the victors' goggles -- then the one-sided nature was less of a problem. And I didn't even need that until quite late in the book - I hadn't really realised that I was reading quite such a biased account until about 3/4 of the way through. As an introduction to an area that I know nothing about, it does well. And the vicarious portrayal of caving was interesting. I have no desire to ever go into such an environment, but at least I can understand why some people might.

[Darnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though this book had some interesting material, I have three issues with it, in order of increasing severity:
1) The title suggests biology, but the book is 60% spelunking.
2) It's extremely narrative heavy for a science book.
3) Nanobacteria are a scientific controversy, and this is a partisan salvo instead of an attempt to lay out the information.

[Tim Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

_Dark Life_ by Michael Ray Taylor was a very interesting book. The author began it writing as a science journalist - having written a previous book on cave exploration as well has having articles published in such magazines as _Audubon_ - but over the course of the two and a half years he worked on this book went from becoming an observer to an active participant, a point he himself made several times in amazement and wonder. Originally he had set out to chronicle what was known about "dark life," microorganisms that dwell far underground or in the deep sea, organisms that derive their nourishment from sources independent of sunlight. These organisms, which have been found in such varied places as salt domes, Antarctic ice cores, and in highly acidic caves, have continually challenged notions of what life can tolerate, organisms so common that they may outnumber surface organisms (indeed Taylor rejected the commonly used term "extremophile" as he believes the term implies that these organisms are a "rare curiosity"). Taylor wrote of the history of the search for these microbes, the personalities involved, and where current research was in the field (as well as possible applications of this research).

Somewhere along the way he became part of the story, as he became the friend and later colleague of several of the researchers he covered. While not a trained scientist per se, at least not in the field of microbiology, he assisted in and even proposed a number of experiments in the search for controversial nanobacteria (microbes with a size of less than 0.2 micrometers, once thought to be too small to be an independent functioning organism or at least too small for a prokaryotic organism, including known bacteria and archaea; not a virus) in a variety of environments, mostly notably Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas. By the end of the book he was regularly exchanging email with researchers, providing samples for them, and even had co-authored a few presentations at various seminars.

Much of the book is focused on personalities - understandable given Taylor's increasing personal involvement in the story himself - though mainly in the context of research on the topic at hand. The main characters (if you will) in the book were Larry Mallory (a scientist who had devoted his career to harvesting and culturing cave microbes in a promising search for a cure for cancer, particularly from microbes from the fascinating Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico, an interesting place described in great detail in the book), Bob Folk (a colorful scientist who discovered nanobacteria and their presence in a number of substances and had been in the lead in efforts to prove that microorganisms are vital in the formation of travertine in caves and hot springs as well as in some cases at least entire caves and cave systems), and Anne Taunton (an undergraduate student who as part of a NASA internship became embroiled in the efforts to determine whether or not the famed Martian meteorite ALH 84001 contained fossils of extraterrestrial nanobacteria). Others are followed to lesser degrees, among them Finnish nanobacteria expert E. Olavi Kajander, who had done pioneer work showing that nanobacteria may be the possible agents of many maladies such as kidney stones, Alzheimer's, and Mad Cow Disease that involve mineral precipitation in the body. In large measure these and other personalities faced considerable skepticism, criticism, and worse in their studies, as scientists found it hard to accept (in different instances) what was thought of as "impossibly" small bacteria, biological origins for various types of minerals and mineral formations, and the presence of microfossils in ALH 84001. Mallory had to leave his university because he was essentially denied tenure, the administration not believing his study of cave microorganisms important, Folk faced considerable criticism for suggesting that such substances as travertine owed their origins to bacteria, and Taunton (and the team she worked with) had a very difficult time with several scientists - including even her own undergraduate academic advisor - over efforts to demonstrate that the ALH 84001 microfossils were evidence of Martian life or even life of any kind. Although Taylor did a good job of showing the fact there was sometimes intense and even rather personal criticism in science, I don't know if he always showed why people had such a hard time accepting bold new theories. In particular some of the opposition to ALH 84001 fossils was quite heated.

Though much of the focus was on personalities, politics, and the process of research the microbes were much discussed as well, many with bizarre biologies. Some cold-loving organisms were termed "psychrophiles," capable of growth below freezing, at -5 degrees Celsius, organisms that exhibit slower metabolisms at temperatures above freezing and death at anything approaching human body temperature (organisms that for years - like many other examples of dark life - proved difficult to study and culture in the lab). Some organisms found in apparently solid rock two miles deep, existing only on hydrogen and water, have unbelievably slow metabolisms, appearing to divide cells no more than once per century. Though many caves and indeed individual pools in caves produced unique microorganisms there were also astonishing similarities; the closest relatives to some sulfur-oxidizing thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria from a cave in Kentucky were found to be a sulfur-oxidizing, symbiotic bacterium from a deep sea polychaeta worm, a relationship that has not yet been explained.

At least as far as this reader is concerned Taylor made his case that nanobacteria exist, that they are key in the formation of some minerals and many caves, and I am very open to the idea that ALH 84001 may indeed contain Martian microfossils. I enjoyed reading about the discussions scientists had about whether or not subsurface Antarctic lakes such as Lake Vostok and Jovian moon of Europa might have dark life and hope that both can be analyzed in the not too distant future.

[Madeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting- Mars and Cave see how they're connected