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."

Comments

Just the beginning...

[laborit]

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

Stan Lee, be proud

[theuglykid]

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!"