Earthquakes that feed underground life? The earth hides a microbial power plant.
A Chinese study has just unveiled a fascinating mechanism that has not finished talking about it: earthquakes could in some cases produce the energy necessary for the survival of deeply buried microbes. Clearly, the earth would behave like a battery, and it is the rock itself that would recharge it.
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A fracture, water, and life recharges in energy
The team of the Canton Geochemistry Institute wanted to understand how life could remain where the sun never penetrates, where temperature and pressure are extreme, and where nutrients are rare. For this, it simulated in laboratory what is happening when a fracture earthquake, especially quartz, an omnipresent mineral.
Two types of ruptures have been reproduced: fractures by extension, which open the rock as a wound, and the shear fractures, where the rock is slowly crushed, in the water, at the rhythm of the tectonic movements.
In this way, water trapped in the faults is literally broken by mechanical violence. The molecules explode into unstable pieces, free radicals, which then recombine hydrogen (H₂) and hydrogen peroxide (h₂o₂). Two very energetic compounds.
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An autonomous underground microcentral
These molecules do not remain there to float. They create a chemical imbalance, a natural tension between oxidizing and reducing areas. A bit like the poles of a battery. The microbes present in the faults know how to take advantage of it. They exploit this “redox gradient” as a continuous source of energy.
Researchers have measured that hydrogen produced by these flaws can be up to 100,000 times higher than that generated by other known processes, such as serpentinization (reaction between ultra -basic rock and water) or radiolysis (breaking of water by radiation).
In other words: an earthquake activates an invisible biochemical power station, serving a microscopic life, discreet but active, sometimes for millions of years.
The key role of iron, a great chemical conductor
In this mechanism, iron is a centerpiece. Present in many rocks and in groundwater, it oscillates between two states: ferrous iron (Fe²⁺) and ferric iron (fe³⁺). This switch between oxidized and reduced forms makes it possible to transfer the electrons, the basic unit of any energy reaction.
This iron cycle in turn influences the behavior of other elements such as carbon, nitrogen or sulfur, all essential to the chemistry of the living. This network of chain reactions forms a real natural “electrical network”, maintained only by the mechanics of the earth’s crust.
A life without light, but not without energy
It was still believed recently that deep life only fed on hydrogen from mineral or radioactive reactions. This new model shows that tectonics itself, via faults and earthquakes, can produce continuous energy molecules.
The system operates on a micro-ecosystems scale, invisible to the naked but essential eye to understand the history of life on earth. These underground pockets could even be the first niches where life appeared, before light, before oxygen.
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Implications until on Mars … and under the ice of Europe
This discovery is not limited to our planet. Tectonic fractures also exist elsewhere. On Mars, in the faults of the old rivers beds. On Europe, Jupiter’s moon, under its icy crust which covers an ocean of liquid water. If the same mechanisms occur there, then microbes could survive there without light, fueled by geological energy alone.
It is a tilting of perspective. Life may not depend on the sun. It can be satisfied with the raw mechanics of planets, shocks, cracks and minerals.
The study, published in Science Advancesrecalls how much our planet is still full of unknown corners, inhabited without anyone knowing it. And that energy, like life, can spring where you least expect it.
Source :
Crustal Faulting Drives Biological Redox Cycling in the Deep Subsurface (in French: “Crustal faults feed the biological redox cycles in the deep subsurface”).
Xiao Wu et al.
Sci. Adv.11,eadx5372(2025).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adx5372
Image: Small bubbles on colored water (Freepik)