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Microbes Survive Space Trip
An unnamed correspondent points to this Discover.com article; looks like the bacteria tested for space survival (in the short term) passed that test. From the article: "Two strains of microbes from extreme environments on Earth appeared to survive a short flight through the vacuum and searing radiation of space, researchers at the University of Maryland announced Sunday. The experiment lends credence to the theory that primitive life might hitchhike between Earth and other worlds aboard debris from meteorite impacts."
this is true, but the rocks that are thrown up arent exactly very hospitible to life, theyre probably red hot by the time they leave the atmosphere if not from the actual impact and trauma of being torn from the surrounding strata than simply by atmospheric friction as it shoots out of the gravity well. Probably enough to sterilize anything. Of course the best way to test this is to find a big honkin asteroid, slam it into earth and see if any bacteria survive being flung clear.
...but only one of the organisms tested is actually a bacterium (D. radiodurans). The archaea aren't true bacteria.
I recall that one of the Apollo missions, maybe Apollo 12, landed nearby an automated probe, maybe a Surveyor probe, and one of the astronauts, maybe Pete Conrad, cut a bit of the probe off put it in a back and took it back to Earth. On Earth a scientist found that there were microbes on the bit of metal. They speculated that a technician must have sneezed on the Surveyor probe before it left Earth. The scientist scraped a sample of snot from the scrap metal and put it in a dish to see what would happen. Surprisingly the microbes were alive.
OOG HAVE POWERFUL CAVEMAN IMMUNE SYSTEM WHEN STONED ON CAVE WEED!!! OOG FIND GREEN MICROBE AND BREAK HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD!!! BUT OOG NOT MIND BEING SENT INTO SPACE TO TEST COSMIC RAYS!!! OOG THEN GET FREAKISHLY BIG AND STRONG AND GREEN AND THEN BECOME LAME INCREDIBLE HULK PARODY WITH HIS OWN COMIC!!!
SPEAKING OF WHICH, OOG WANT OWN COMIC!!! SOMEONE GET JACK KIRBY AND STAN LEE TO MAKE SILVER AGE OOG COMIC!!! OOG BREAK LEADER'S HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD!!!
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Neither group of microbes came out of the trip unscathed. Even Deinococcus radiodurans, the species known for radiation endurance, lost 99.9% of its numbers. Clearly this isn't the stuff of interplanetary colonization yet. What we need to do is take these cultures, grow them back to strength, and send them up again. Maybe next time we'll only lose 99%. So we do it again. And again... Eventually, we may evolve something that can actually survive long space trips. Bear in mind that this might be much more similar to the natural bacteria on a non-magnetic, low-atmosphere planet, so it's a perfectly valid way to investigate the question.
Or, we might find that no matter what we do, there's a physically-imposed limit on how much radiation any bacterium can handle. This would mean that space-bacteria would have to exist inside rocks, under better shielding. Or that they couldn't exist at all -- but that possibility is welcome too, since it gives the theory falsifiability...
- Michael Cohn
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
The religeous texts already have a lot of stuff in them that is very far removed from human experience. Anyone who believes in that faith will have already made their peace with the inconsistencies, and (most of them, anyway) accept that at least some of the book is the result of a ... uh .. creative process. (I've heard of Christian pastors who don't even believe that Jesus literally came back to life after he was killed.)
One more minor inconsistency between the book and real life isn't going to disturb anyone.
Also, even on purely logical grounds, where no faith is involved, you could disprove every single assertion in the bible and it still wouldn't disprove the existence of the god described therein.
For example, if Linus says, "Linux exists" and also says, "Penguins live on the moon" and you disprove his penguin statement, that doesn't mean he's wrong about Linux.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
follow this link for some interesting stuff from nasa about astrobiology, including the "life evolved on mars and flew here on a comet" theory IIRC
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
OK, so the bacteria could survive a few days in outer space (barely?). So, I suppose it follows that they could also survive for thousands to millions of years in outer space, which seems to be a more realistic time frame? Admittedly, testing that hypothesis is next to impossible, but forgive me if I don't take this as proof that life originated on Mars or something. (And what's the deal with everyone wanting to prove _that_? Earth not good enough for you?)
No. The Surveyor spacecraft carried television cameras, not film cameras. They transmitted their pictures back to Earth via radio.
They need a crutch to live their lives. That simple.
You should really feel sorry for them. These people go through their entire lives limping from emotional crisis to emotional crisis as their belief system crumbles around them.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
Is it me or is the idea that life on our planet actually came from somewhere else a bit silly? What ever happened to KISS and Occum's? In simple and brief terms, it suggest that biochemical reactions on Earth are responsible for the start of life not some extraterestial source(although some say that it was an extraterestial event that may have helped trigger it).
For some microcellular organism to do this fantastic voyage it must...
- survive the initial impact (devistating in magnatute since stuff was thrown back into space) of a cestial body somehow not be blown apart by the event
- survive in the extreme vacuum and radiation of space
- survive in the extreme heat and destructive force of reentry
- survive another impact and again not be blown apart by the event
- and then take shape on a primordial Earth enviroment hostile to areobic life to begin with (did I remember the eras correctly? was there enough O2 in the atmosphere during the dates they are throwing around?)
I find it interesting that everyone is going gaga over this "evidence" like this yet no one is willing to suggest the idea that life started here and hitched a ride to Mars which is possibly just as "plausable".
Attacking? Thats a load of crap; he was merely telling the common people (most could not read nor write, while the wealthy church however...) about his findings. In other words; handing them a clue that there were more sides and points of view then just the one the church told about. And thats something the church could not handle; freedom of speech? The idea alone... Nohoo; let the people remain clueless, don't want to loose the income they provide.
Nonsense. You have "faith" in science don't you?
Ehmz, offcourse not. I do have some confidence in the people working on this matter. science is nothing more then to study, come up with theories and backup those theories with proof.
Faith is required for following the path of the Lord and being allowed into Heaven. It's not required, but the consequences of its lack is eternal damnation.
I take serious offence in the way you morons threaten the rest of the community with this loaded piece of crap. Its the same old story and I guess you dumbo's will never grow up; you can't force people anymore into believing the things you seem fit. In this aspect you are no better then your ordinary dictator. Those dictators can still use drastic measures to enforce their will, but we can be very gratefull that we took away that kind of power from the likes of you a long time ago. Please don't forget that the main reason for doing so was the fact you morons could not handle it; you killed and tortured people because they didn't believe the things you did.
Religion; the best way to justify ordinary dictatorship.
There were rodents on Earth during the time of the Dinosaurs, and we can trace ourselves back to them, so no - it's not our fault.
However, much, much earlier in Earth's history, it was subject to a much more massive collision. It involved a planet-sized (Mars sized) body termed Morpheus (IIRC) and resulted in the formation of the Moon.
There is speculation that there was already some primitive life on Earth at that point, but there was scarecely any dry land. The collision effectively terminated EVERYTHING that was there before - since the entire planet deformed and resolidified. We could be whatever little bits of protoplasm survived a brief orbital trip - or maybe we rode in on Morpheus.
My source for this is "What if we had no Moon", a recent show on the Discovery Channel.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
From reading the article it basically states that two types of bacteria were sent up. One is simple household stuff. The other is a bacteria reknown for its ability to withstand radiation. The common bacteria was killed, the resistant bacteria resisted although if saw a 1000 fold reduction in numbers.
Now here is my problem. The rocket wasn't even orbital. It basically only scratched the surface of space for a short time. Even doing that caused a three order of magnitude drop in the hardiest bacteria on the planet. It killed the weaker one, the one that would have most likely been the representative of our evolutionary ancestor. Does this really prove that life could have been seeded from somewhere else? Shouldn't the flight at least be orbital so the long term survival of the bacteria can be examined? All I'm saying is that a millenium in space is very different from the hour (ish?) the experiment used.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
If life didn't form, be it from spontaneous generation, abiogenesis, or quite literally "the hand of god," we wouldn't be here talking about it. Using the improbability of life forming as evidence against any one of the above is simply pointless.
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Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
First link, now a quick summary: The early unmanned space probes contained cameras. This was the mid 1960's, the only way to retrieve the images was to pick up the cameras, which our intrepid astronauts did. They returned to earth with a colony of the bacteria, these bacteria survived launch, radiation, 3 years on the moon, launch from the moon, more radiation and re-entry.
There is a big issue about how the first cells formed. And this does nothing whatsoever to help it.
In fact, it all sounds a bit flukey to me. Microbes evolve on Mars, hitch a lift to earth, love it here and thrive and become higher life until Slashdotters are born. Over on Mars, meanwhile, everything goes pearshaped, they don't become multicellular and the planet dies.
Surely, Microbes evolving on Earth, with all the right conditons for sustinance of Carbon-based life, is more likely. Why do scientists feel the need to deliberatley complicate matters?
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. -- Homer Simpson
It's easy... microbes live happily on bit of rock, huge comet (meteor?) hits, tons of rock get chucked into space, one or two manage to escape the gravity well and land on another planet.
IIRC it looks like one entire hemisphere of Mars is an impact basin.
well there's a bateria(D. radiodurans) that can survive the levels of rad's that you get when you drop a nuke,
somthing like 1.5 million rads..
heres a good link with lots of other nutty bugs
i'm sure a few of them could survive anything that space d the sun can throw at them.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I have always thought we needed to send more stuff into orbit to taste cosmic radiation. There just aren't enough invisible microbes, stretchy microbes, or rock microbes. But whatever you do, don't get that green one angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.
"Archaea SMASH!"
This is an interesting theory about how life could have come to Earth, but it only solves the n+1 part of how life came to exist. The base case, or how the very first life came to exist is still an open question.
Zapman
We're born, we eat, we breed, we die. End of story.
For the sake of the argument, let's assume your beliefs are right. I was born in 1974, I'll probably die somewhere around 2065. By 2100, we're both dead. End of story.
On the other hand, here are my beliefs. I believe there is a God, I believe that there's life after death, and I believe that I didn't evolve from a radiation-immune microbe. (These are my closely-held, personal beliefs. I'm neither attacking anyone or forcing them on anyone, so I'd appreciate if everyone doesn't jump on this.)
Now let's assume that I'm right. We both live, we both die. But that's where our paths diverge. I go into the afterlife, while you experience your "end of story." So if I don't believe like you do, but you turn out to be right, I lose nothing. But if you don't believe like I do, and I turn out to be right, you lose everything.
Somehow, this all relates to space microbes and NASA and all that good stuff. Somehow. ;-)
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Having fun with genomics::
The entire genome of Deinococcus radiodurans is freely available at TIGR.
Enjoy!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Egads... More blind people spewing out their Christian Mythology.
For hundreds of years science has been chipping away at religion. The church was ready to execute Galileo in the name of a god. Only recently did the Pope apologize.
I'm always amazed at the number of otherwise intelligent people that believe in ghosts, goblins, and invisible deities.
Saying one must have faith simply acknowledges the fact that religion can't stand up on it's own merits.
We're born, we eat, we breed, we die. End of story.
Trolling is a art,
This reminds me of the Discovery channel commercial with the meteors. Picture microbes doing this instead of meteors.
"On the Discovery channel I learn all about everything, including how to make everything from French pastries to nuclear explosives"
"I learned that meteors burn up in the atmosphere"
"AHHH, the atmosphere! The atmosphere!"
Poor microbes. They should test reentry. That would prove a lot too (not that this didn't).
Eh...