Quest for Life in the Most Hostile Environment

Jens Oliver Bonnet Lab Academy

The Marum crater with its 1,100 °C hot lava lake on the volcanic island of Ambrym belongs to the island nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific - and is certainly one of the most hostile places on our planet. It's hard to imagine that any life form could survive in this environment, next to the bubbling lava from which red-hot fountains are spewed again and again. But to be absolutely sure, a closer look has to be taken. And that's exactly what Jens Kallmeyer did. With his colleague Jeffrey Marlow from Harvard University, the geomicrobiologist ventured down into the volcanic crater and its 400-meter-high walls bathed in toxic gases. At the bottom of the crater, he dressed in a heat protection suit and gas mask and approached the lava lake to retrieve samples.

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Quest for Life in the Most Hostile Environment