A week ago, The New York Times ran an article detailing the work of Tullis C. Onstott, a researcher with Princeton University. Onstott, along with a team from the university, recently descended nearly a mile beneath Earth’s surface, using a decommissioned mine to study bacteria living in the rocks in South Africa.

So what?

Well, forty years ago, NASA sent the Viking lander to Mars and scientists thought the existence of those bacteria was flatly impossible.

Deep in the earth, the archaea, as they are classified, have no need for sunlight. As scientists do more and more research, they’ve discovered they can survive in places that no one thought they could, from the stygian depths of the crushing ocean to, indeed, the bottom of mines in South Africa.

Again, why do we care? I have enough on my plate without worrying about weird science things. I have papers to write, groceries to buy and dogs to play with.

Well, there is one major implications. The existence of life in these weird places, while not conclusive, certainly demonstrates the feasibility of life existing in other places like Mars, the moons of Jupiter or elsewhere in the solar system or the universe. So we need to consider that when exploring the rest of space.

If life can grow here, it can probably grow somewhere else. Does this mean that life could be developing somewhere in the galaxy? Indeed. Is this where we came from? The article cites a theory that life rode to earth in a meteorite and spread from there.

A lot of this is given some credence by readings of methane, both on Mars and closer to home in planetbound research. Methane is frequently a byproduct of bacterial life and growth. NASA’s Curiosity rover detected methane on its meander across the surface of Mars, though it’s been far from consistent.

Future rovers scheduled for Mars exploration may be built to search for life in ways that present rovers haven’t been able to. Gilbert B. Levin, one of the original Viking team members and an advocate for sending a dedicated rover to Mars to search for life, is working with the European Space Agency to see about sending a purpose-built rover to Mars in 2020.

And all of this from some stuff growing in the water between the cracks in a mine somewhere.