It's really changed my view of what life is. So many of the things that we attribute to the trappings of life look like requirements, like oxygen and sunlight. All the things that humans would absolutely die without — they’re not really necessary for life. Studying these things sort of breaks down what is necessary; what are the things that life has to have?
Karen G. Lloyd is the Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in leading publications such as Nature and Science. She is the author of Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
And it makes you think about what is life and what, another big question these days is like, what is consciousness? Where do we consider that life begins? It has a whole other meaning when you're dealing with these organisms.
KAREN G. LLOYD
It's really changed my view of what life is. So many of the things that we attribute to the trappings of life look like requirements, like oxygen and sunlight. All the things that humans would absolutely die without — they’re not really necessary for life. Studying these things sort of breaks down what is necessary; what are the things that life has to have?
What we see is energy. That's a really big defining feature of life; it has to be continually bathed in some sort of energy that has to be flowing through it at all times. That requirement opens our eyes to other possible ways that life can be.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
So they can survive in toxic elements or eat metals or just whatever; they live off it. If you could speak to these microbes, what would you like to ask?
LLOYD
The number one question I would ask is, how old are you? I want to know the answer to that. From the energetic calculations that we can do based on the changes in chemicals around them, our best estimate is that these populations are just in a maintenance state and they're not really making new cells. Which is weird because if you work in microbiology in a laboratory, you're constantly regrowing cells. They're not growing; they're dying. You might be able to keep them in a frozen state in your freezer for decades. That's possible.
We just always study them in this active growing state. Since these organisms are by and large things that have never grown in a lab, their whole lineages are not laboratory organisms. I'd love to know how long a single cell can last because if it is possible that a single cell can last for hundreds of thousands of years, I just think that's a weird way for biology to be.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
As implied in the term "intra-terrestrial," how linked is that to extraterrestrial? I mean, we do, like — is this, even us, the fact that our planet is alive and we are alive. Are we all from outer space? Because particularly when you go further down, some of that stuff is really alien.
LLOYD
I mean, that's why I'm using that word. I want to draw the similarities with alien life, and we have these questions. They're the same questions that we would be asking if we could get a sample from Europa or if we could get a sample from Mars. I think the parallels are partly in how we study them.
They're teaching us how to look for strange life, but then they're also teaching us about what’s possible with life, and they're so close to the edge of what is and isn't life that it really helps us to sort of — I don’t know. I don’t know where to draw that line personally, but they at least show us that that line is maybe closer to non-life than we would have thought, than I would have thought.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
As humans, we are told we have already consumed 90% of the 300 million years it took for oil, gas, and coal fossil to form, extracting and converting them into fuel. It's almost unfathomable when you consider how quickly we've tapped into a resource that took eons to create. In doing so, we're injecting 300 million years of organic material into our ecosystem, triggering toxic repercussions. The pace at which we've altered the planet’s natural processes raises critical questions: how do we balance progress with sustainability? Are we racing toward irreversible consequences? The impact on our environment is profound, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that finding a way to mitigate this disruption is not just necessary — it’s urgent.
So, what have you discovered then about inter-terrestrials that could either help, mitigate, or even worsen the situation regarding climate change?
LLOYD
If you think about this ecosystem, one way to think about it is that it's a little chemical incubator that is just dying for carbon dioxide, and they really are. If you give them more carbon dioxide, they'll suck it up and get to divide finally. They get to grow. I think that there's a lot that they can do for us with storing our carbon.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
I was reading something in The Guardian today about AI's advancement threatening human relevance across all spheres, from economic roles to cultural and social domains. As AI outpaces human capabilities, it could render us obsolete without any malicious intent, simply by offering superior performance in jobs, creativity, and companionship. Despite current skepticism, AI continues to progress, mastering tasks once deemed uniquely human. This trajectory suggests AI will increasingly dominate critical functions like legal decisions and healthcare. In the workplace, AI assistants will eclipse human workers, driving job losses and reshaping employment dynamics. The allure of efficient, knowledgeable AI companions may reshape societal norms, even advocating for AI rights over human interests. To navigate this future responsibly, we must envision a role for humans alongside AI, not as rivals, but as collaborators and stewards of a technology-driven era.
It will be hard to justify spending twice as much for a human therapist, lawyer, or teacher who’s only half as good. The most disturbing possibility is that this might all seem perfectly reasonable to us — outsourcing our imaginations to bots and ceding more and more to machines as the years pass. Who knows? But it's worth thinking about.
LLOYD
It just sounds like a bunch of hype to me. I don’t know; it’s like I use really complex algorithms. I use AI-type algorithms to analyze data sets all the time, and it doesn't feel that foreign to me, and it doesn't feel that scary. People don’t want their jobs to go away because you can just have an AI creation sort of acting for you. That seems bad, but I don’t know. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t know why.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
You have worked all over the world and have also experienced the beauty and wonder of the natural world within America. What are your reflections on this planet we call home?
LLOYD
I think that one of the things that I would not know about had I not gone to as many places as I have is how much the people and the landscape are intertwined. Everywhere I go, I'm working with people who are already there, in whatever capacity, whether their lineage has been there for thousands and thousands of years, or whether they're recently arrived. There are scientists everywhere. I think that the urge to be a scientist, no matter what your political state is or what your funding state is, is always going to be there. So everywhere we go, there are scientists. The natural world is amazing, and it is a miracle. I think it's amazing, but it is intertwined in the local people as well, and that's been really wonderful to see.
