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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."
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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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
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... :)
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 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...