Dunfield’s Inferno

Mud Volcano at Hell's Gate

University of Calgary biology professor, Peter Dunfield, has been to hell and back looking for ways to keep methane gas out of the atmosphere.

And what he and his colleagues found in a New Zealand geothermal field called "Hell's Gate" might just do the trick. It's a type of methane-eating bacteria that lives in a boiling, highly acidic, water environment that's deadly to almost everything else on earth.

Primarily produced by decaying organic matter, methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. By studying the newly discovered bacteria, Dunfield hopes to find ways it can help reduce the amount of man-made methane that's emitted by landfills, mines, waste sites, geothermal power plants and other sources.

Dunfield also plans to continue searching for similar species in other exotic habitats where he says "you find a lot of bizarre organisms -- 95 percent of which have never been studied in a lab."

By going to extremes, he believes he'll find even more unknown species that can help us protect our own human habitatbefore conditions here get as hot as, well, you know where.

Script by Stephen Webb

Discovery Links

To learn more about today’s topic, please explore the links below:

• Methane Gas Pollution
• Methanotrophic Bacteria
• Hellish' hot springs yield greenhouse gas-eating bug