Short Wave - Worm Blobs From The Bowels Of The Earth

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

In the toxic waters of Sulphur Cave in Steamboat Springs, Colo. lives blood-red worm blobs that have attracted scientific interest from around the world. We don special breathing gear and go into the cave with David Steinmann, the spelunking scientist who first documented the worms, along with a trio of science students from Georgia Tech, to collect worms and marvel at the unique crystals and cave formations (ever heard of snottites??) that earned Sulphur Cave a designation as a National Natural Landmark in 2021. Then we learn about how extremophiles like these worms are helping scientists search for new antibiotics, medicines, or in the case of the Georgia Tech team, models for worm blob robots that can explore uneven, dangerous terrain, like caves on other planets.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. So, Emily, when I was a kid... How old? How old are we talking here? We're talking around 10, 10, 11. I was a wee lad. And there was this cave near my house. It's like this big hole that opens up in the ground, a stream slopes into it. And at the bottom of the slope, we could see this ominous crack. And then past that nothing.

You can't see anything. Just darkness. And I was reading Lord of the Rings for the first time. and it felt like the entrance to the cracks of doom in Mordor, especially because the stream that runs into the cave bubbles up from a spring, a few feet away, and it's full of sulfur, so it's steaming, and the whole place just reeks of dragon breath,

or, you know, rotten eggs to people who don't read too much fantasy. But at any rate, my friends and I, you know, our imaginations would run wild, we would play like adventurers, Frodo and Samwise, and we would go to this cave and just, you know, wanted to go in and explore it and discover all the treasures and the terrors that it held, but we couldn't.

Was it the parents? Were they like, you are forbidden, young man? Forbidden. Do not go into the cave. There were, in fact, signs around it saying, keep out, and there was a story in local lore about this kid in the 60s who had gone in and had to be pulled out because he was unconscious and converse,

and convulsing. Yeah, no. Which, of course, just made us want to explore it all the more. So tempting, the mythical places of our childhood. So, like, what was in there? We're talking monsters? We talk in dragons? Not talking dragons, per se.

No, we're talking toxic chemicals. Because of the sulfur springs that flow into this cave, the air in it is actually full of lethal levels of hydrogen, sulfide, and carbon dioxide. And sulfuric acid actually does. drips from the ceiling and can burn your skin. Okay, yeah. No, no, no, no. I understand why the parents in the neighborhood were trying to keep you all away.

Indeed, indeed. There's only like a dozen or so of these sulfur caves around the world. So I was nothing short of ecstatic when I learned that this one in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, was named a National Natural Landmark, and that one of the cavers to first document it was planning to take in a team of spulunking scientists. A call to adventure, Aaron Scott's greatest catnip, and the chance to finally, you know, see what's down there, to hear what's down there with your microphone. I want to hear that. There are lots of harmful things in this cave, but if you take the precautions we are and have the gear in the gloves, then we'll be safe, I hope.

So in July, I met David Steinman and three scientists at the cave, which is now fenced off. David's a veteran caver and a research associate with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and he's helping the first scientist put on a self-contained breathing apparatus or SCBA. It's kind of like scuba gear for land. Let me turn the air on in the back. The same exact one we use in the Navy. Oh, good. Harry Twazahn is a PhD student at Georgia Tech and a former Navy operations officer,

and he brought along two other science students from the Bomb La Lab at Georgia Tech. They're all wearing matching coveralls that they ordered online, and David and Harry are going him first. Okay, now you should just be able to breathe comfortably. You got your quick people are good to go? I have my suspect. Yep, I have my fussing cuff with me. Ready to go.

Here we go. David and Harry descend and pass through the crack. Out of sight, but not out of sound. All right, now we're down in here a little bit, high in the zone where the air is just sitting really cautious. And the reason they're risking life and limb to do this, Emily, the treasure they are questing for is not dragon gold, it is worms. Blood red colored worms that live in writhing, wriggling worm blobs.

So there are monsters. Yes, ever so tiny monsters. The sulfur cave worms are most interesting because they can live where nothing else in the world would normally be able to live. And that is the kind of thing that gets scientists excited. researchers from around the world want to study these sulfur worms in the hopes of finding new antibiotics, medicines, or in the case of Harry and his team, inspiration for robots that could explore other dangerous places. So today on the show, as part of our series serving the science in our national parks and public lands, we go into a toxic cave to look for blood-red worm blobs with lots of potential.

I'm Emily Kwong. I'm Erin Scott, and you're listening to Shortwave. the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. So, Aaron, please tell me you got to go into the sulfur cave too. Oh, I did. Heck yeah. Okay, we're going to follow you, and I'll just lurk here in the darkness, like a cave salamander, and listen. So I strap the oxygen tank to my back, and I pulled on one of the face masks over my head.

Testing, testing, one, two, three. Ready to enter the bowels of the earth. I am. I am. Let's go. And David and I started down the slope that the spring runs down into the cave. You can see all the beautiful rimstone dams and little formations on the spring water coming through. The slope is like this sculpted cascade of tiny little terrace pools.

And then at the bottom... We're looking into a real jagged crack with lots of sharp edges. And that crack is what we squeeze through next. It opens up to the first room in the cave. It's maybe five feet tall and about 75 feet long. So if you look at the ceiling, there are really amazing crystals. The ceiling is covered in tiny, delicate crystal formations, kind of like elongated, jumbled salt crystals.

They glisten in the light of our headlamps. You wouldn't know it, obviously, but looking around at the ceilings in the walls, they're actually covered with thousands of species of different bacteria. Some of the bacteria colonies form these dark winding rope-like formation called biovermiculations that look exactly like the creepy vines

covering everything in the stranger things upside down. Can you see any of the snoutites? Yeah, some of the little drips off the crystals down there are snot types. Excuse me, excuse me. So what are snot tites? Yes, so dripping from the ceiling are these tiny little stalagites that look like they're made out of mucus. No, no. Snot, snot tites.

Really, they are actually made up of colonies of bacteria that are metabolizing the hydrogen, sulfide that's seeping through the rock into sulfuric acid. So these snottytes are literally dripping acid of pH-0 that can burn our clothes and skin. And then below us, the stream itself widens out over the cave floor and disappears into darkness. Are these bacterial masks? And this stream bed is covered in these bacterial mats that are white with a yellowish tinge, that is just kind of this ghostly sludge. and that is where we find them.

And as you look, you can see clumps of worms everywhere. Wow, they really are everywhere. I mean, it's stunning. And I'm just going to collect a couple of worms real quickly. The worm blobs look like little blood-red sea anemones, wriggling in this dream bed, and they live off the bacteria that in turn lives off the sulfur. So it's easy to see why scientists look to places like this sulfur cave

to dream up what life might look like on a lot. other planets. I mean, between the ghostly sludge covering everything and these writhing worm blobs, it does feel just downright otherworldly, like a place that we humans don't belong. David said that was the sound that I was running out of air. So at that point, we re-emerged from the bowels of the earth, reeking of brimstone. Capital adventure, Aaron. The people you were with, they sound pretty cool. I mean, this is clearly not David's first time looking for worms in sulfur caves.

No, not at all. He was actually the first person to report seeing them. Back in 2007, there was a group of scientists who wanted to explore sulfur caves, and they sent David in first to document the life there before others could disturb it. Because finding new species in caves is kind of his thing. Over the last 20 years, I found about 100 new species, maybe a couple dozen have been named so far, and there are many more out there.

I sort of like to joke with my friends that if I want to find a new species in a cave, all I have to do is go to a cave I've never been to before. And almost guaranteed, if there's a little moisture, I'll find something. Are there novel species in caves? It's really that easy? It's really that easy. This is one reason I love caves.

They're like these little islands of evolution. I mean, they're cut off from other places, and they tend to have this, like, steady temperature and moisture year round. which means the critters in them often kind of evolved to fit each specific cave. Wow. Isn't that amazing? So in the case of an extreme environment, like the sulfur caves, the creatures that evolved to flourish there are known as extremophiles. And scientists love these because some of them have evolved novel compounds to survive their hazardous homes.

And those compounds could have uses for us, too. Ooh, like what? Well, researchers have found chemicals in a case. extremophiles that now show up in soaps, biofuels, lactose-free milk. I mean, you name it. And after analyzing these worms, David and several other researchers were able to announce that they were indeed a new species to science, and they named them limno-drillus sulfurensis, and word spread in extremophile circles.

I've just been finding more and more researchers over the years who've sort of been contacting me to see if I could collect worms for them so they could. study them in new ways, like the antibiotics, the robotic worms, the physiology, the blood, the detoxifying substances. Right, because these worms live in super intense environments where a few creatures can survive. So when he says detoxify, does he mean like get rid of the sulfur? Yeah, exactly. Scientists are really interested in how they can actually somehow detoxify this sulfur, and they found two compounds that seem to be doing it, one of which David says they know, and one that's a mystery. And then the worm,

have evolved another incredible ability because the spring water with all its sulfide has super low oxygen levels. And they have blood that binds oxygen amazingly well, that it allows them to live in such an unusual environment where there's really hardly any oxygen available at all. And that could have a lot

of medical potential too. I mean, David jokes about athletes wishing they had worm blood. And then there are researchers in France who have requested the worms to look for new antibiotics based on the fact that the worms live healthy little lives surrounded by all the caves back Also, there's Harry and his team from Georgia.

They're particularly interested in how the worm blobs move around. I'm looking into the biology, physics, all the way to the robotics. For these worms, we're trying to come up with rules to say, how can they locomote together in an entangled group. We're trying to apply them into the field of, let's say, underwater exploration, cave explorations, maybe space. Okay, so robots that can explore other planets, antibiotics, compounds that could oxygenate our blood, it just sounds like a lot of weight placed on the shoulders of these little worms.

You know? Yes, yes. And to be fair, you know, nothing might come of it. This is all early research. But for David, it's all about the joy and the potential of the search itself. Here we are in 2022, 14 years later, and we're still discovering new attributes and features of these unusual worms. Here you are 31 years later, spalunking in the cave of your childhood fantasy. Living my best Frodo dream.

Erin, Scott, thank you so much. You betcha, thank you. This episode was produced by Thomas Liu. It was edited by Gabriel Spitzer and fact-checked by Rachel Carlson. The audio engineers were Gilly Moon and Josh Newell. Emily, before we go, I would like to dedicate this episode to my dad, David Scott. He inspired my love of nature, always taking me hiking in the mountains around Sulphur Cave. And he passed shortly after I report.

this, hiking one of those very mouths. You were the best adventure partner, dad, gonna miss you. I'm Aaron Scott. I'm Emily Kwong. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.