Short Wave - Worm Blobs In The Bowels Of The Earth

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

In the toxic waters of Sulphur Cave in Steamboat Springs, Colo. live blood-red worm blobs that have attracted international scientific interest. We don special breathing gear and go into the cave with a team of researchers. There, we collect worms and marvel at the unique crystals and cave formations that earned Sulphur Cave a designation as a National Natural Landmark in 2021. Then we learn how extremophiles like these worms are helping scientists search for new antibiotics, medicines and even models for robots that can explore uneven, dangerous terrain, like caves on other planets.Read more about these worms: https://n.pr/3LjbigOWe love hearing what science you're digging lately! Drop us a line at [e-mail] 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

Hey, shortwavers. Emily Kwong here with my lovely co-host, Aaron Scott. Hey, Aaron. Hello, Emily. Hi. So, some of you may have read about this and already know, but the layoffs at NPR did impact our show. That is why some of our colleagues, including Aaron, are leaving us right now. We have been taking time to process what has been a really, really sad and tough time for shortwave. all while continuing to create the same nerdy, newsy science show you know and love. And I want to personally thank you for all of your support. Likewise, I have to thank all the shortwave listeners who support our show and support our team. I'm going to miss you all.

This was a dream job, and it's going to be hard to find something that can match it. But I'm trying at least to tell myself that layoffs are the new sabbat. This is the kind of Aaron optimism I've come to know and love. Oh, man. And, you know, it's not goodbye. It's a see you later for now. And as a parting gift, you've chosen one of your favorite episodes for us to listen to. Yes. And it's kind of classic Aaron Scott reporting. It's got vivid writing, beautiful descriptions. The awe in your voice carries the peace and also the love for your hometown and your dad. And I'm so glad you brought it to our show. And thanks for bringing so much of your. every day at work. It's really, really fun to work with you. Thank you, Emily. Shortwavers, enjoy the show. 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 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 talking monsters? We talking dragons?

Not talking dragons per se. No, we talk in toxic chemicals. Because of the sulfur springs that flow into this cave, air in it is actually full of lethal levels of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide. And sulfuric acid actually 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 Land.

Mark, and that one of the caveers 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 and 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. 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 Baumla Lab at Georgia. 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 feet and you're good to go? I have my, yep, I have my suspecting customer 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. 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 Podcasts 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 strapped the oxygen tank to my back, and I pulled on one of the face masks over my head. Testing, testing, one, two, three. I need to enter the bowels of the earth. I am. I am. 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 ladder 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, you 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 snat types? 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 mats? And this streambed 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've find them. And as you look, you can see clumps of worms everywhere. Wow, they really are everywhere. I mean, it's stunning. 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 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. Okay. David said that was the sound that I was running out of air. So at that point, we reemerged 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 just 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. Whoa. 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 extremophiles that now show up in soap. 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 have 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 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've 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 worms 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 cave's bacteria.

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, spulunking in the world. 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 reported this, hiking one of those very mountains. 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.