Image courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . Vrijenhoek will conduct DNA analysis on the samples gathered by the expedition. Their range of possibilities greatly expanded with the discovery of hydrothermal vent ecosystems. When cold seawater drains through cracks in the ocean floor to hot spots below, hydrothermal vents return a mineral-rich broth of scalding water. The bacteria use their energy to build sugars out of carbon dioxide and water the same way plants do.
Sugars then provide fuel and raw material for the rest of the microbe's functions.
Image courtesy Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . Deep-sea bacteria are at the bottom of this abnormal food chain, which includes shrimp, tubeworms, clams, fish, crabs, and octopi. The ability of life to thrive off of such geothermal energy raises possibilities for other worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa , which most likely has liquid water beneath its icy surface. Europa is squeezed and stretched by gravitational forces from Jupiter and the other Galilean satellites. Tidal friction could possibly warm the core of Europa enough to maintain the solar system's most massive ocean.