Slashdot Mirror
Space Fungus Eating Mir (Really)
dublin writes: "The Boston Globe has a good article about how Mir is being eaten alive by virulent fungi. The fungi, which are found both inside and outside the aging space station, are rampant to the point that a cosmonaut has said, "There were areas you wouldn't want to stick your hand in." NASA reports that some of these fungi can attack and weaken plastics and even metals.
"
The Fungus is among us!
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Organisms that can eat plastic don't know that they're only supposed to eat it in landfills. After 'decomposing landfills completely' they gladly will eat plastic everywhere they find it (including your computer case) %-) Biotechnology should be used accurately, lest it become bio-hazard.
To make fungi (or bacteria) mutate by using strong radiation, one does not have to use space station; gamma guns, etc, are readily available on the Earth and, AFAIK, are widely used to generate mutations in bacteria. Same applies to vacuum pumps. One has a good chance to find both things in any decent bio lab.
But the whole story about fungi growing in vaccum seems pretty... err.. fantastic. Fungi spores are known to survive space vacuum and radiation; but live species are known to die at such levels of radiation and such temperature leaps. More, things that get sent to space stations undergo severe decontamination, and it includes steriziation of pretty much everything. (My parents worked at a space launch facility, so I know it not from books only %-)) So it seems quite unprobable for some fungi to come unnoticed to a space station, not to say to proliferate there.
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" - Ado
Ado? Mr Hitler to you!
And who could forget...
601
or some number for "computer overload" that didn't even happen in the book as far as I can remember.
Yep, Sphere was totally butchered too.
How will they destroy Timeline...? Stay Tuned!
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Yeast is a fungus not a bacteria. But you knew that. All fungii can in shorter spans live without oxygen by fermentation
:).
but the byproduct (alcohol) will kill them quite rapidly.
But there are other reasons why it is unpossible for a fungii to live on the outside of MIR.
First the temperature is low, slowing the life speed down.The sun could warm the surface,but not enough.
The second is the lack of water, fungii need water to feed, and I'm certain that the water would
1) freeze
2) evaporate, making survival impossible.
And thirdly the first issue with the toxication of the fungii by it's byproducts of fermentation.
So I'm quite certain that the fungii found on the MIR was inside where it's warm, damp and lot of nice things to eat like dead human
cells
There are bacteria that can live without oxygen. These are called Arcaebacteria and lives in sulfur vents
on the bottom of the sea and in rock and similar places. One could phantom one of these living in the hull of MIR.
But how would they be transfered from the rock to MIR and would they find sulpur to live on\in...
The guy that made that statement was Jerry Linenger, an astronaut from the USA!
Did you read that story?
Slashdot, did you research that story!?
... and toss it at all the space junk up there. -= Stefan
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
There were dormant bacteria that survived being left on the moon for 2 years inside the Surveyeor 3 camera retreived by the Apollo 12 astronauts.
AFAIK (can't find a specific citation right now), yes, they have pondered it. It is a source of great debate among those who mess with exobiology (which IMHO can't be said to really exist yet as a field).
:-)
The trick here is the difference between a probe going to Mars and a panel going to Mir. A Mars probe may be hermetically sealed inside a capsule and sterilized with ungodly amounts of heat. That capsule may then be launched and the probe deployed. On its descent to the surface, the probe gets to undergo re-entry, which forms (at least in an Earth atmosphere --- I don't know if this is true of Mars as well, but it probably is) a superheated plasma around the craft. (There are some things not even bacteria can survive, and ionized particle bombardment is one.) I believe that probes were also designed to be able to sterilize their internal sample containers and their gathering equipment.
Now compare this to a bit of Mir. It's loaded in a shuttle bay, and spends a few days in there with sweaty astronauts. They handle it. It is never sterilized or sealed away. Humans have ungodly amounts of organisms on us. Contamination is inevitable.
You want a sterile station? Sterilize and seal each piece, sterilize and seal the transport bay, and do not let humans anywhere near it, not even in space suits (the outside of the suit gets contaminated by shuttle air). Touch it only with sterilized and isolated robot arms. In short, take all the same precautions that a Class 4 virology lab does, and perhaps more.
Of course, how you're going to get all the necessary equipment onto an orbiter is your engineering problem, not mine.
Yes, my bad, lactic fermentation is an anaerobic process.
When the cells are unable to provide enough ATP, they resort to breaking down glucose by glycolysis into pyruvic acid, and then into lactic acid. This process only yields 2 ATP per glucose, but it's very quick. It's much like comparing an internal combustion gasoline powered-engine to solid fuel booster rockets.
The aerobic process in cell metabolism is respiration, the process of converting oxygen and glucose into water and carbon dioxide by breaking glycolysis down into pyruvic acid, and then into acetic acid. From there, it goes through the Kreb cycle to produce ADP, which is combined with another phosphate to produce ATP. This process takes much longer than fermentation, but is much more efficient.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
I would have thought the exact opposite!
I can well believe fungus could grow on the outside - but surely there isn't mush room inside...
Why does this sound like the plot for a really bad sci-fi movie?
Alien Files - horny space fungi that become horny Earth girls.
Now, does that sound like a bad sci-fi movie to you?
This is not particularly dangerous, and actually it happened before (once, as I recall). Soyuz vehicles have an autonomous, very simple and powerful solid fuel rocket right on top of the capsule where cosmonauts are. In case of fire/explosion on launch that rocket detaches the capsule and brings it few kilometers away from the launch pad. This happens very quickly, and accelerations are substantial (like 10+ g) but not unbearable for few seconds.
The Shuttle never had such system and still doesn't have.
I can vouch for the JD smell.
-Caedes
Hey! There's the first two sponsors for the program! :-)
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
What else would you expect from the people who brought you Lenin, Communism,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't communism start in Germany, with Marx and Engels?
The guy who produced Survivor was supposed to create a show that had folks competing to be launched to Mir.....sort of reminds me of a bad W.C Fields joke....
First prize is 1 week on Mir
Second prize is TWO weeks.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
You're right about the lunar missions, but the Hubble repair mission was done by the space shuttle, which is not designed to go beyond the van Allen radiation belts. Hubble is in the same type of near-Earth orbit that the shuttle takes, not geosynchronous orbit like communication satellites. Remember, the only reason for geosynchronous orbit is to stay stationary above one point on the Earth. Hubble has not these concerns. It's looking the other way!
Eric
Ah, now I know that my space training facility is even more accurate than I thought. The fungal blooms creeping in the corners and shadows are now a welcome addition to my home, rather than a hated nuisance. I may not have constant high levels of gamma radiation, but I watch a lot of TV, and run the microwave nearly 24/7.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
And why does condensation get everywhere?
Answer that question (it's a three part answer) and you'll see why your response is "correct" but not accurate or adding any information
"Where am I?"
"In a helicopter..."
Do you work for MS my Anonymous friend?
Ok here's the answers to why condensation gets everywhere:
1) They are in zero g.
2) They have low-power cooling/heating systems and very little water and oxygen (they don't take showers, for example) so they can't dry the air, vent waste air immediately, or wash down the "decks" with fungus-killing detergent.
3) They don't have an oxygen/water making facility next door and a big powerplant to facilitate the actions described in point 2.
All these points are addressed on Mars. Oh yeah, and the other thing:
They DO have a janitor on board. What do you think the pilot does on Space Shuttle missions whilst on-orbit? S/He basically cleans the space potty. It's an extremely important job.
I would be interested in your response.
I guess they ran out of Space Tinactin.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
Mir,
What have I told you about unsafe docking procedures? Everytime you dock with a ship, you're docking with every other space station they've docked with. And who knows what kind of payload they were carrying? I knew this would happen sooner or later, with the rate you're going. Times are changing, this isn't the Space Age anymore.
trick
Ok, Please do some investigation into this more closely. Just because the fungus was first noticed on a Porthole doesn't mean it was found on the *OUT*side of the porthole. This is a completely internal Fungus. It's all fungus that's gotten there from the visitors to the Station, and probably from it's original launch. This is not an Outside fungus so powerful that it lives in space. It's all just fungus we TOOK up there. The only reason it's a problem is because all the equipment can't be TAKEN apart and cleaned up while it's still in space. To get all the Fungus cleaned out they'd have to dissasemble the thing. In fact, the most dangerous funguses are probably the ones that are in components that are mostly sealed and won't allow any disinfectants into them. The funguses will grow and corrode the whole component if nothing can be done.
Read the Space.com article:
"They consume organic stuff which consists of skin epithelia, lipids and other products of human activity," Novikova said. "These products get into the station atmosphere from human breath, sweat etc....and stick to the station's surfaces."
"Bacteria and fungi eat this stuff and generate products of metabolism, particularly organic acids which can corrode steel, glass and plastic."
The only reason it's called Space Fungus is because the station is in Space, and therefore subject to a more direct amount of radiation than when on earth.
They should fire their reverse thrushters.
I wonder if it will like Costarican coffee?
--- Mercutio was right.
Ice Pirates
--
Why Ah Must Scribble GNU
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It doesn't say anywhere in the article that these fungus have evolved to survive in vacuum, despite /. editor claims. Why can't the cosmonauts simply slap on suits, and depressurize the station for a few hours?
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
--Mike--
is probably from Florida. I went to vacation in Florida for 1 week, came back to California with nasty contagious blisters which spread all over my feat. Also note that the space shuttle takes off from Florida and there was a NASA mission to the Mir. The little buggers on my feet will stop at nothing short of universal domination.
So... Is this going to put a hold on Destination: MIR, or just change it into the competition where an ordinary person gets a chance to be eaten alive by space fungi?
jdb
I am a little surprised that this fungus could live outside of the MIR. The environment in not simply oxygen deficient... it is pressure deficient, which should cause the fungus to evaporate - at least its liquids.After all, even a fungus has to respect partial pressures!
Also, the temperature can be expected to change from extremely cold to extremely hot, unless the MIR is stablized relative to the sun.
The only good weather is bad weather.
I may be missing something but isn't finding life not from the planet Earth an incredibly huge breakthrough? I mean, doesn't this open up the door on decades worth of further research? It seems to me that if finding a little water on the moon makes front-page news in the national papers, then surely, this would be big-ass-coverstory material. Maybe I just have to wait for tommorrows paper. This may seem a little naive, considering the lack of its mention in the rest of the replies. I
Well, it'll give the Mir cosmonauts something to keep their mind off the fires and collisions.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Gives new meaning to the term "Space Herpes". (Ice Pirates, anyone?)
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
lets make a "the end is near" type website wish spouts fear-instilling messages about how the space fungus is going to kill us all and eat our beloved cars.
we will also personally welcome the space fungus to planet earth, and offer to help them in their conquest needs.
i think it would be funny, especially if it looked real professional.
i'd even be willing to help with design and implementation.
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
I meant to put "breaking glucose down by glycolysis," but I got ahead of myself ;)
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Re: Could this pose a threat to other satellites (e.g. communications satellite)
No. There would be nothing for the fungus to eat on an unmanned satellite and therefore no metabolic byproducts to "eat" the metal, glass, plastic, etc.
From the space.com article:
Subsistence for the microorganisms was certainly not the metal, glass and plastic of those devices, said Natalia Novikova, a deputy chief of the Department at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow.
"They consume organic stuff which consists of skin epithelia, lipids and other products of human activity," Novikova said. "These products get into the station atmosphere from human breath, sweat etc....and stick to the station's surfaces."
"Bacteria and fungi eat this stuff and generate products of metabolism, particularly organic acids which can corrode steel, glass and plastic."
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." (W. Edwards Deming)
I bet my mom would give the place a good scrubbing in exchange for a free ride! :-)
Seriously though, fungus tends to grow in damp places. Maybe it just needs a good dehumidifier.
I mean, this stuff has to survive being constantly irradiated in a vaccuum environment! How does it get any materials through the layers of protective shell it must have?
Fsck this hard drive! Although it probably won't work...
foo = bar/*myPtr;
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
I mean, the reading comprehension level of Slashdot editors couldn't be that bad, could it? Wait, what am I saying?!
Also, I didn't mean "have they thought of that" in terms of "have they thought of sterilization". I meant "have they thought of the specific implications of this hardy mold on that". Most of what I've read WRT this mold focuses on preventing damage from it, and says nothing about the issues raised here.
Seriously, if you want my references, let me know.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
Why?
If there was martian bacterial or microbial life, and we went to Mars with malice aforethought to destroy it all and we took along all our nuclear and biological agents to do so, thumped a few asteroids into the surface to make sure, and generally raised hell, we would fail in our mission to destroy martian life. Life has survived all this and more on Earth.
If there is no martian life, and earth fungus does get onto the surface of Mars, so what??
About a tonne of martian rock lands on Earth every year and about a tonne of Earth rock lands on Mars. This occurs because of large impacts in the past which ejected rock into space.
So, if there is life that can live under the conditions you describe, it could certainly survive two planetary impacts in a big enough chunk of rock.
To sum it up for you - if what you are suggesting is possible - it has already happened on a vast, vast scale.
Going to Mars is a Green concern - the more we learn about another planet, the more we know about our own. Runaway greenhouse effect? What's that? Take a look at Venus...
Certainly! That's why many, if not most, scientists are opposed to sending people to Mars before a rather exhaustive robotic exploration has been done.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I'm more interested in why the space station is so infested. The article was very vauge on this point. Is it something unique about space stations that make them easy targets for fungi?
These are just regular earthly fungi. Why aren't earthbound sturctures showing the same problems as Mir?
Britain and the US are collaborating to fund an ex-USSR biological warfare station to wipe out opium poppies (news story here.)
Supposedly they have developed a genetically engineered fungus that kills the plants; of course what everyone wants to know is "so when you release it can it mutate into a MIR-eating monster?".... looks like maybe it already did.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
i suppose those spores aren't an alien life form like the article implies. it sounds far more plausible that the spores have been on the spacecraft before liftoff and mutated into their current form over time. that would explain why they can be related to other fungus found on earth.
besides, how high is the mir's orbit? i guess chances are that it's well within the (rapidly thinning, but still) earth's atmosphere.
I do beleive it is time to call in.....ROGER WILCO to begin production of Space Quest VII!!!! He will fight a huge mutant fungus...no..wait, already did that in V. ummmmm...CUT! Get the screenplay people in here now!!! I want to have a word with them.
So we have now found life thriving thats not on this planet.
How can anybody doubt there's life somewhere else?
To say what God did when he created the universe,or the cause of the universe, is nothing short of hubris.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Damp-Rid is a chemical dehumidifier. That is, you open the package, and pour the white pellets into a double wall bucket. The inner bucket is perferated. As the pellets grab the water out of the air, it is deposited as a pink, slightly viscous, liquid in the outer bucket. Over time this turns into a pink gelatinous goo.
Damp-Rid advertising claims that it can dehumidify a room to the point that fungus (mildew, specifically) can't grow!
I guess we need to fly more Damp-Rid on our space flights.
Issue: Could the mold problem be directly caused by the human inhabitants? Where would the humidity come from otherwise?
Jeff
that guy from nasa, about the 'places you wouldnt want to put your hand in'.... im just wonderin....why in the world was this dude talking about my ex girlfriend? oh, yea, i get it now...all that fungus goin on down there...yucky....
"sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
I guess this means a manned interstellar journey is out of the question, in the near term, anyway. Such a journey would surely succumb to a choking fungi invasion long before they would reach their destination. Even the slightest mishap with contamination would spell certain doom in a matter of days or weeks. Think of the overloaded air filters trying to scrub out the dead skin cells, the little flecks of snot and spit, food and hair, all of it fit for fungi consumption. A veritable cornucopia, a veritable horn of plenty for spacewort
The only surefire means of avoiding this fate, that I can think of, is for such interstellar ships to feature a balanced ecosphere with plants, animals, microbes and insects, co-mingled with the crew quarters and the ship common areas.
This story offers up pretty solid indication that the risk of fungi infestation aboard long-term spacecraft is very real. The ecosphere ship is the only obvious solution, as mechanical filtering and sanitization services are almost garunteed failure at some point. I'll be certain to point all this out to any Hollywood writer-types I bump in to.
- - My grandad was Socialist premier of Saskatchewan from 1944-1961!
...protecting the Earth from the scum of the Universe. Literally.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Yeasts are funguses. Specifically, they're monocellular funguses.
-- Anne Marie
Great, so instead of landfills of inert plastic, we get landfills of aggressive, hungry fungi. Much more exciting! Hey Mom, watch me throw billy in the landfill!
Moo
Yes mold is a problem, but jumping in a big pile of explosives and orbiting the earth is of more immediate importance.
managers...why god invented purgatory
Here's the link to sign-up to win that trip to the mir Trip to Mir.
Network television leads the way for civilians into space.
Failure to stop this action will result in orders from Comissioner Sleer (a-la Servalan) to wipe out all organic life in a 3 million spacial radius.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Then the Puppeteers appear, to set up trade agreements.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
It's been done: The Andromeda Strain (d: Michael Crichton) http://us.imdb.com/Title?0066769
Pretty good fictional presentation for its day, but if this story about Mir is true, could easily become all too real.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The fungus are INSIDE the spacecraft. They are common household/human fungi, who are doing very well thanks to the suitably odd environment inside of MIR.
This is why we must put a booster on Mir and jack it towards the sun.
Put sensors on the POD (Piece Of Drek), if you need justification.
If fungus is growing OUTSIDE the craft, then a crashdown might not be the best idea.
Unless you're a car-hater, in which case you could take some fungus and spread it in Manhattan garages... Ahhh. Clean air.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I seem to recall that the Puppeteers weren't looking to get rid of a threat--they were looking for a home. Their population had grown so incredibly large that they needed the space available on the Ringworld and wanted to set themselves up as rulers. A little superconductive-eating plague was applied and the Ringworld was quickly seen as something to be avoided at all cost by outsiders. Not a bad plan, until Teela Brown was sent there...
Yes, this is true.
The most notable anaerobic process is probably alcoholic fermentation, in which yeast (an anaerobic bacterium) converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Yeast, if I'm not mistaken, are not bacteria. They, like our space friends, are fungi (eukaryotes).
Fermentation, the kind that produces alcohol, has a major aerobic phase, if I'm not mistaken. Anyone who makes beer will tell you that the first stage of fermentation requires lots of oxygen (the "wort" must be well aerated before adding yeast).
O2 is required to oxidize the sugars into EtOH. A byproduct of this process is CO2, which also carbonates your beer.
There simply is no (none) known way to completely sterilize anything on earth. Every attack against bacteria (and fungus) gives good results- up to a point.
You use soap. Antibiotics. Radiation. Ultrasound. You use vacuum. Use water and pressure. You curse them and you kill 99.9999% of them. It never matters. They survive, and they come back, and multiply again.
Quite simply, the entire Earth is completely infected with bacteria. Wherever there is a exothermic reaction on earth, they are there. Every dust partical large enough to support one has one. Every drop of water, every grain of dirt has them in abundance. All animals are covered in bacteria. Hint: you don't use soap against dirt, you use it against bacteria in dirt.
Yes we need them to survive, but we don't like that, and we don't like them. But, even in conditions which no animal can survive, like vacuum, they still infect and eat and reproduce and sometimes freeze dry to wait for water to come alive again.
The lesson here is: we are dirty, we are infected, and we always will be. Everything we build, every place we put it, every time we do it, will never be ours alone.
-Ben
I may be off a bit, but are you sure it was the puppeteer that sent it? I thought the fungus was just a result of an overconfident race who didn't prepare for such a thing.
Very well done! I could hear Kent talking as I read it.
_______________
you may quote me
...do you ever get that "not so fresh" feeling?
Was that out loud?
Will this ever stop? Just two articles down, doesn't it say:
Red Space Station Infested With Bugs?
Well, we've got an Earth environment in orbit. But it's an environment that is not balanced. We need to add things that eat fungus, and things that eat those things, and things that eat those things that eat the fungus... but none of them should eat wires...
The Andromeda Strain, copyright 1969.
Why don't you pour some into a fish tank and then ask the fish?
:wq
The fungi described are all the common molds you find when food in your house goes bad. Penicillium is the common greenish mold, and the other two are the common white, gray, and black molds. Fungi are among the most durable organisms on the face of the earth - it should come as no surprise that they would survive on Mir (or in other spacecraft). Lichens are primarily fungi, and they survive in some of the most inhospitable places on earth. Their primary food source in space is skin, hair, and other "stuff" we humans regularly shed, along with the organic materials built into the spacecraft - insulation and stuff like that. The greatest risks they pose are possible damage to the spacecraft and the astronauts possibly inhaling large quantities of spores. Inhaling the spores can sometimes cause severe allergic reactions, which can be life threatening.
"Bite me, it's fun!" - Crowe T. Robot
I'm sorry to say, but there's a big difference between the environments of Mars and the outside of Mir. Mars is much friendlier :) Plenty of CO2, quite a bit of warmth(relatively speaking), radiation shielding, some good wind to spread the seeds, etc., etc..
Boy, who knows? We might have already started colonizing Mars, by unkowingly sending along some bacteria with the rover and its friends.
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
So, Douglas Adam is wrong and the StarTrek movies are right - it is not that we live in "the unfashionable arm of the galaxy"; any visitor needs Warp capability to get through the fungi.
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
(they don't take showers, for example)
Actually they do. Space station != shuttle.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This fungi could be put into good use! It can be used to clear space junk..
:)
Eg. A small space scarft could home in on pieces of space junk, and spray it with the fungus colture.. In a few weeks time, the space junk gets eaten, and our astronauts / cosmonuts are safer
The article is terrible. The author is trying to make it sound like the Adromeda Strain when it's apparently just a growth from the the astronauts not being sanitized enough. I also thought at first it was fungus growing outside, but the article only mentions fungus growing inside.
stupid 'science' reporters.
I can see the headlines now:
"Cure for AIDS found in fungus eating MIR!"
"Russian economy booming thanks to "research" done on MIR"
"Slashdotter hailed as being the next Jenner"
[ ]
All well and good, but you can't put the astronauts, themselves, into an autoclave! The spores are caried on ->US- not in boxes in the cargo hold.
That's what I said when they produced the first show...
But, after all, can't you just let those unfortunate beings who are so clearly inferior to your amazing intellect have a little fun? -------------Visit Myrkyr: Get eaten by a Vonskr.
---------------------
"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
So much for Crichton. :)
I thought that Crighton's story was about cultures of bacteria sent up into space by scientists to study the effect of cosmic radiation on them. Andromeda Strain wasn't about ET bacteria.
(nil)
--Fesh
"Citizens have rights. Consumers only have wallets." - gilroy
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
It sure gives a whole new meaning to Whirlpool's Space-age fridge commercials!
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Would fungi really be that stupid? I mean, it must have occurred to it at some point that eating through the spacecraft that you're LIVING ON is a pretty stupid idea.
Believe with me, my saplings.
In the 1970's the USSR placed on mars a probe that contained a piece of paper with the signature of Leonid Bhreznev on it. Do you really think they sterilized it?
I'm just reading KenMcLeod's "The Sky Road" and it has a the amusing reflection that scientists arrive on mars to find it is being very slowly
terraformed by microbes descended from Leonid Bhreznev's sweat.
Erg. Creighton. I can spell, I just forgot to.
(nil)
Water is recycled, waste is placed in used cargo ships and burned with them in the atmosphere.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Are you nuts? Size of the organism has no bearing whatsoever on the vapor pressure of its internal fluids. Fungus, paramecium, ameoba, etc are are still basically contaminated WATER! In a vacuum that water would evaporate quickly through the semi-permeable membrane and leave behind the dessiccated organic remnants of the cell.
:)
No outside atmospheric pressure - no living cell.
Go back and study your ninth-grade biology; Assuming of course you've already had that advanced class
Since when has 'lack of oxygen' = vacuum?
And, as far as I can tell, the article did not make it clear that the porthole growth was outside the station. Portholes are typically constructed in layers, and the layers are likely to have some gas between them.
For those of you who didn't manage to make it past the second paragraph of the article, the fungi are from earth and were accidentally carried on by humans.
I think the most important question is: Are any of the mutant fungi psychedelic? ;)
There is a magnetic anamoly above the Northeast portion of South America that creates a significant depression in the Earth's magnetic field. The higher orbit of Hubble passes through that area and it does have a significantly increased radiation field.
sheah, and then wind picks 'em up and deposits the fungi across thw rold, eating the rest of the worldy garbage :)
Jeff Eidsness Site Manager - http://thatcalendarplace.com
my fridge is remarkably similar to this. I have at least one friend who refuses to go into my kitchen, for fear of catching something science hasn't named yet. I came back from one holiday, and found this container of green stuff. It was really quite pretty, sort of like a rolling hills, covered in grass/moss, but in miniture. I wonder what it was to begin with.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
I'm half-anxious and half-afraid to hear what bizarre disaster is going to happen next. Watch out, someone might DDoS some Russian servers in Siberia and send some nukes coming our way! Be prepared, if there's something that history has taught us, it's the fact that sh*t happens.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
This seems like an all-to-appropriate metaphor for our planet's decaying interest in space exploration. Thirty years ago we were racing to put a man on the moon. Now we're racing to...um, watch our spacestation get eaten by mold because there isn't any such thing as an astronaut janitor.
*sigh*
That, I suppose, is the wonderful thing about living on a dry campus. Just seventy miles from WSU and their infamous riots (I wonder why my hometown college of CU doesn't get similar coverage...), I can remember one time in my four years here that we've had to step in puke, and that because the guy didn't make it to the shower.
But with that crazy cosmonaut they just took down, I would rather go without showering up there...
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
It's nice to know that all those cheezy sci fi movies were right.
My house........
I live in the deep south and the summers here are just hard as shit on the siding. Don't even ask about the palmetto bugs!
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Nah, it's probably some mould brought up by an ineffective space program run by the over-compartmentalized Soviets. As for the radioactive mutation, I'd say its more likely sprung from the Chernobyl disaster than the mild solar winds!
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Decades of science fiction notwithstanding, it now seems the great threat to space exploration comes not from technologically advanced alien races, but from the same lowly fungi that attack dorm-room refrigerators.
AHHHHHH!!! If this fungus is anything like the one that was in _MY_ dorm-room refrigerator, they need to abandon ship and send it to crash into Jupiter or Uranus! Towards the end I didn't even open the fridge. I threw the whole thing away. I shudder to think of what it looked like by that time. SHUDDER
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
But isn't that how Dave solved the problem in 2001? He, being in his space suit, vented the spacecraft (the name escapes me), and enters HAL's control room to completely deactivate the system by removing the CPU. Consider the fungus a living HAL.
Though I must agree with the second reply that it would most likely cause the MIR to implode... Maybe if you opened two at once? Or created soem sort of slow ventalation system, or just stopped repairing all the leaks...
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Well, one really good reason is so if we *find* Martian life, we'll be pretty sure that it is from Mars, or at least got there from ancient impacts with Earth and didn't tag along on the last space flight. This is why NASA doesn't want Gallileo to crash into Europa (or whichever moon they think has a chance of life).
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
Is it space fungus, or earth fungus that survived into space?
I didn't think that spelling looked right... ;-)
As far as I can recall, the organism's space-bound origin is generally unknown. They WERE aware of it's existence, but (1) did not know what it was-- it did not satisfy classification by any of the five kingdoms, and (2) they did not know where it came from.
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Do not taunt Super whacky space fungus!
Poor astronauts.. Now they have to wear sandals in the shower, just like the rest of us. As a university student who wakes up to a bathroom floor covered with piss and puke from the frat-boys, I would take a little space-fungus anyday!
The problem being, of course, that the anerobic bacteria still thrive in some sort of gasseous or liquid solution. It says nothing for bacteria living in the vacuum of space. And, true to the atricle, it also says nothing about FUNGUS living in the vacuum of space.
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
As pointed out in the Space.com article, this stuff orginated on Earth, it just hitched a ride with the crew and then started growing all funky. I think a lot of people are assuming this stuff is *from* space, which, as sensational as it sounds, is just not true.
In the novel, it turns out to be a potent force for both danger and salvation.
If the Gentle Scientists can't beat the fungus, it may be a neat move to try to find ways to make it outright useful.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Sorry, but lactic acid is not responsible for muscle soreness after exercise. It is responsible for the burning feeling during exercise.
Oh man, what an incredibly funny post. Kent Brockman is one of my favorite characters :)
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Yes, all well and good, if you live inside a comic book. What about in the real world?
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
didnt those things eat plastic at some point? Damn that Crichton! He's done it again.
Writing a book is one thing, putting fungi into space is quite another, GOOD DOCTOR...
breaking glycolysis down into pyruvic acid
glycolysis
I have no answers, but I do have questions.
Could this pose a threat to other orbital bodies? At least Mir has residents who could do a bit of cleaning once in a while. Not so, your typical comms satelite. Space could end up looking like my kitchen; full of fuzzy dishes.
Could we use these fungi to biodegrade all the space junk that has been left daggin' about up there? Let them eat the Iridium network into safe little itty-bitty pieces. I know it's a really long term exercise, but the price is right!
Could we make fungi the first Lunar or Martian colonists, possibly even paving the way to a long-term, low-cost preliminary terraforming experiment?
While the fungus itself may not be able to exist in total vacuum, I have NO doubt that its spores could float about for many years until they land on another metal, plastic or even rock substrate. So I suspect it could spread. The onliest thing is, do we let it happen by accident, or do we make some effort to harness it?
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Wait a second, I thought that fungus, being a life form required air to propogate (as in Oxygen) now maybe I am wrong here, but is it not true that space abhors a vaccum? This actually sounds more interesting than you would take it at first glance...
Are these molds native to MIR? existing nowhere else? what did they spawn from or did they hit something in space? Why am i for some reason reminded of Crichton's Andromeda Strain?
But these molds, are they growing near fissures in the space station where they are getting oxgen? or are they actually existing in the vaccum of space?
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Heheh, good ants reference from the Simpsons where Homer Simpson crashes into the Ant Farm. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
This is not space fungus. It is just a bunch of fungi that have hitched a ride from Earth to space, and happened to survive, even thrive. Surprising, yes. But it seems a lot of people think that these things are extra-terrestrial or something strange and new. They are not. Same old mold and shit we got here on Earth... just living in a new environment that we didn't expect to find them in.
"Oh no! Carrottop...Rush Limbaugh...this rocket isn't going to a new planet, it's being shot directly into the sun!"
Further proof that a good plan for life can be copied from The Simpsons.
------
Let me give you the lowdown
Not a lot of room for divers huge, multicellular organisms such as you and me, but plenty of room for hundreds of colonies of the tiny organisms that moulds are made of!
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
I'll bet this has something to do with Homer sabotaging Mir.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Yeah, but the fourth space station will stay up! And that's what our children will inheret-- the strongest space station in these parts!
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
I can understand these things growing INSIDE the cabin. Lots of moisture probably, and heat. I read the related article, but is this stuff actually growing OUTSIDE mir? That would be kinda wacky, fungus growing in a complete vaccuum. Maybe there is some sort of CO2 and H20 rich microenvironment just outside of mir that it can use to grow. One thing for sure, to is that there is a LOT of radiation flying around in space. The article points out that it could cause the fungus to mutate into something more virulent. Don't panic though, because I think most all of the mutations would be lethal, especially since it has adapted to live in a weird environment like that. Of course it's that one wacky mutation that slips through that can make something weird happen. But from what i've studied, it takes a pretty freaking long time for random mutations to confer major advances in the way a complex organism lives.
That's because verything NASA does, including disasters, is much more efficient than the Soyuz projects. For example, (despite NASA's foreknowledge of the problem with the o-rings) the Challenger explosion happened within a matter of seconds, and by time anyone in Mission Control actually saw the flames coming off the main tank, there was no time to warn the astronauts. What good would the rocket do then, other than more efficiently destroy the remains of the capsule when it exploded?
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Well, this is a very interesting development. Of course, those of us in the real world are going to have to wait for a while as they figure out exactly where the fungi came from, how it grew, and its life cycle. The only thing we can guarentee is that new age "gurus" will probably use this to convince even more suckers that "There is life out there" (of course, there may be, but not the sentient, ready-to-make-first-contact life they allude to), and even in more extreme ones will use this to further the notion of halucionagenic mushrooms as a communication agent spread accross the universe by some ancient species...
Damn, the next pagan get-together is gonna suck...
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
Doesn't anyone else find it odd that the place is still inhabited?
In context? Consider that there are still millions of people that still live in the formet Soviet terrirories... Most Soviet buildings are falling down, too. And anyone who would want to drink water downstream on the Dnieper (I believe that's the right river) from Chernobyl...
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Actually, I'm rather fond of the rendering, Micro$oft, myself!
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Sigh.
Yet another individual who didn;t bother to read the original article...
As an Historian, this type of misuse of sources mortifies me.
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Would a spary can work in minimal gravity? Not only is there the stability problem for the sprayer, but how well would the Lysol stay on the surface? I recommend Lysol antifungal wipes.
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Some dumb fuck will be all like, "HOLY CRAP! Wow, I'll make a million dollars if I let this thing eat all the flesh off my body?! I don't need that shit anyway, do I?!"
Someone'd volunteer. Hell, you'd get a line around the block. (Great time to hire a sniper; take out all the stupid people at once.)
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Now there's a comparison I've been unwittingly waiting for for a long time--> MIR = a Trailer house...
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
I wonder if this was all caused by someone going up w/ a bad case of athlete's foot.. or maybe a funky fingernail disease. Someone shoot up a bottle of *BOOM* Tough Actin' Tinactin(tm)
Correction-- Yeast are FUNGI. There are no such thing as Funguses.
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Nowhere does the article claim fungus is growing on the outside of Mir.
Email: slashdot3@FreeMars.org (Address will be abandoned when it gets spam.)
Or maybe I can't. *shame*
Just looked it up, and it is Crichton.
(nil)
Come on now, I know everyone wants to endure several weeks of cosmonaut training in order to go up to a 20 year old space station that might blow up at any time and has fungus growing inside it. Sign up here! Oh and don't forget the chance that the rocket you are on going up to Mir might blow up too.
It wasn't Mark Twain. Napolean said it, and he may not have been the first.
-Pete
Now, if it was a hoax, then I wonder how I saw a commercial for it during the closing ceremony of the Olympics. But it does seem pretty incredible to me that an _American_ company would want to send someone to a floating piece of junk. (No, wait. I said "American." Never mind..)
Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
-- haaz.
Doesn't that prove taht space can support life, even at the simplest level? Isn't that how earth started? Way too many theories to lead in to with this one...
öööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööö
How Jaded Are You?
...with earth fungus/bacteria. We've already sent several probes which LANDED on Mars. I'm sure our cleaning of the spacecraft weren't 100% effective and there is (formerly Earth-) life on Mars right now.
But why is the rum gone?
Maybe not fun, but I had a cousin named Gus who was mildly amusing at times.
-Pete
I just moved from Tullahoma.
Viruses would be much worse, especially those M$ ones that end in "95," "98" and "2000" with the words "Windows" and "Office" in front. If you are wondering why the space budget is so high, I would suspect that much of your taxpayer dollars are hard at work going to Redmond.
This is especially important given that one of these viruses may have brought a naval carrier to its knees. Imagine what kind of damage a M$ virus would do in space, especially if it mutated due to the radiation.
thats hard vaccuum. the fungus can only attack from the inside where there is life support.
he who has the fastest cart always has the best lie.
I guess NO ONE READ THE ARTICLE. jeez.
"There is no evidence that fungi have ever affected the health of the crew, or threatened the integrity of critical systems, said Jeffrey Manber, president of MirCorp, the Amsterdam-based company that has leased the rights to use Mir. He said that the situation hasn't threatened MirCorp's business ventures, which include sending the winner of a sequel to the television show ''Survivor'' to the station. "
If I read ONE MORE POST about how this is going to affect the show, I'll scream. Read the freaking story.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
This could be a good thing. If a fungus can be cultivated in a vacuum, then can we cultivate other types of plant life in a vacuum. Could this be a source of food for an extended space voyage?
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
It's been a while since I read it, but this sounds very similar to (the opening to) the Andromeda Strain :
Satellite falls to Earth, having picked up a virulent virus/fungus (or did the virus/fungus ride up with the satellite and mutate under radiation?) and infects a desert town. The US Government captures it and takes it to a lab to study it, whereupon it promptly eats through rubber seals and escapes from the lab. Further mutations ensue, yada yada, and in the end it mutates into something mostly harmles. Whew... disaster averted.
Isn't MIR going to have to come down soon? What are we going to do to make sure that this (possibly) mutated fungus doesn't escape?
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
I would like to claim prior art on this one so that when "Mission to Mir" comes out this fall, i can sue the fsck out of CBS and never have to work...
and that means more posts for you guys!
Bo-nes....we need more anti....bacterial soap!
Damnit jim, i'm a Doctor not a custodial engineer!!!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Trust the russians to build a space station from a carrot.
Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway.
"Am thinkink we should be startink vodka distillery on space station, da?"
--
Doesn't anyone else find it odd that the place is still inhabited? MIR has had a string of old-age problems the past few years... judging by the content of the report, fungus could cause a fatal failure--imagine if a weakened spot in a viewing port developed a crack. Complete, nearly instantaneous decompression. Ouch.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Soyuz rockets don't use amil/geptil pair. Instead they use liquid oxygen and kerosene. Hardly a dangerous fuel :-) Details are here.
space fungus might eat you
Yeah, NASA calls those 'space suits'. And by the way, does anyone know the non-technical term for the highly absorbent underwear NASA provides for suits in lieu of actual plumbing?
Liquor
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
"As usual there is little (intelligence) to be found at /. It never fails to amaze me how low the reading comprehension on this site is. I'll bet if you read the second (of three) sentence again, you'll be the first to discover a strain that DOES live in space!
Nothing in the article states that the Fungi live on the outside of MIR. I'm not willing to make the assumption that Hemos made when writing up the header. While it's possible (even likely) for spores to survive exposure to the hard vacuum of space, the lack of an atmosphere should keep them from living in space. If they do find fungii outside, that would be major news, especially if it's growing.
--Mike--
Shoot me now...
Groan!
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Actually, the Ringworld would never have been safe enough for the cowardly puppeteers. They wouldn't risk the danger involved with a break in/large impact on the Ringworld. Similar reasons are why the Pak probably didn't build it.
Check out the Larry Niven Mailing List. It's larryniven-l@bucknell.edu
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
All the comments about fungus from outer space attacking the Mir and possibly satellites is amusing but the fungus in the article is _inside_ the space station, not outside. It was brought up from earth and lives on normal nutrients. It only damages metal and plastic as a by-product of its metabolism. From the space.com article about this which is more informative:
"All the space microorganisms found inside spaceships originated on Earth," she said. "Most of them got into spacecraft on Earth and some of them were brought aboard with the visiting crews
...
Subsistence for the microorganisms was certainly not the metal, glass and plastic of those devices, said Natalia Novikova, a deputy chief of the Department at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow.
"They consume organic stuff which consists of skin epithelia, lipids and other products of human activity," Novikova said. "These products get into the station atmosphere from human breath, sweat etc....and stick to the station's surfaces."
I just hope this stuff isn't a relative of the green stuff from the meteor in "Creep Show". :)
"I drank what?" -Socrates
If you were that serious, you'd read the article and find out they are, in fact, terran fungi.
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
how the hell can anything live without oxegennot to mention water or atmospheric pressure, or without something to sheild itself from ultra violet radiation.
Except for the fact that State and Revolution (by V. I. Lenin) is an apologetic for Marxism and is actually much better for Comprehending Marx than trying to read the source material...
Yes, in practice Leninism and later Stalinism fail to live up to the ideals of Marxist thought. But Lenin died before achiving his ideal and Stalin had no intention of trying.
Actually, he proved that the core flaw of Marxism is that it fails to recognize that people are basically evil (Genesis 3), especially in collective, and will serve their own interests before others (Machiavelli, The Prince).
The extremely negative treatment of individuals here who failed to read the source article proves that. Instead of pointing out that the article says [insert comment here], they are berated and condemned. Hence, socialism even fails at the level of intellectual forums!
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Persistant, itchy, flaky, space station?
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
You're Hemos posting anonymously, right? Sneaky of you to change the article before posting this! I coulda sworn the bit about the fungus "inside and outside" the station wasn't in italics when I read the article last night.
I personally think that the fungi was shot at us from another lifeform to prevent us from exploring space... What do you think? Also, how's our billion dollar communication satellites doing with this? The hubble? Phil
Scary considering this post to /. last week:
Slime Mold Demonstrates Primitive Intelligence.
Personally I see a great take off on The Planet of the Apes, where instead of human astronauts returning to Earth after eons in space, only to find apes have evolved into the dominant sentient life forms on the planet, we instead have a space ship crash to earth in the distant future carrying a mutated fungus that is now sentient (and can move freely) that takes over the Earth replacing humans as the dominant sentient life form.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I wonder if they'll still do that TV show where the winner goes to Mir, could be interesting to see space fungi eat a whole in the side and the (un?)lucky winner gets sucked out into the great beyond. Maybe then reality TV could be canceled.
Open Source, Open Standards, Open Minds
"There were areas you wouldn't want to stick your hand in."
*blecht!*
PointlessGames.com -- Go waste some time.
MassMOG.com -- Visit the site; Use the word.
Yeah, I know. Sorry.
-Pete
Space laboratory for fungus-based pharmaceutical research should also be interesting - after all, with the conditions being really good for mutations, they may discover new drugs created by bacteria sooner.
The only downsides are that if these mutated bacteria/fungi turn out to be deadly and highly contagious and gets back to earth, it could spell doom for humanity. You could just see Hollywood jump on this kind of story to make the next doom-gloom movie, Armageddon and its ilk.
Why do so few people seem interested in excactly what this fungus is?
What is more sad? "Nerds" who make silly comments, or nerds who make righteous and serious comments that don't bother reading what the article said the fungi are.
---- Eat more Lemmings
(Quoted with respect to Peter S.)
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
Not necessarily. Just because they don't use oxygen, it doesn't mean oxygen destroys them. H.
When up into MIR I go, I
Sometimes find some violet fungi.
Then I linger, darkly brooding
On the poison they're exuding.
With apologies to Roguelet's ABC.
--
Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
Niels Bohr
I assumed the stuff was growing on the inside, and had been carried there in the atmosphere of Earth, or on the bodies of the Earthlings *cough* - sorry, As-tro-naughts.
H.
This article as a whole was tantamount to "Aliens ate my Elvis baby" rubbish. It does no credit to the Globe.
It's a worry when major newspapers become so desperate for column inches they beat up what is essentially a no-story into a show stopper for the space program as a whole.
This "finding" has absolutely no relevance to a humans-to-Mars program. To put up one trivial reason: Mars-tronauts would have plentiful water as a by-product of their in-situ propellant production, thus they would be able to wash themselves and the interior of their spacecraft at will. The expense of trucking water to orbit is one reason that there is a fungus "problem" on Mir.
This reminds me strongly of that other supposed Mars mission "show stopper" - zero gravity. "We can't send humans there, because they'd come out as cripples after 18 months of zero g." BALDERDASH. There is no requirement to send them out zero g at all! A half-mile tether to the upper stage going at about 1 rpm would create mars equivalent gravity for the crew on their spacecraft - with the added advantage of being able to construct floors.
It isn't rocket science! (Well it is but you know what I mean!)
This pretty much refutes the past assertion among the space community that space is too hostile (radiation, extreme heat & cold) to support microbial/fungal life
:)
... it opens the possibility that some area of Mars that we haven't explored closely (ie, a lot) may contain evidence of past/present life
Sources, please. What "space community" ever claimed that? Vague terms like that are weasel words. In fact, it has long been accepted that microbes may be able to traverse space, especially if encased within an object such as a meteoroid. NASA has certainly never taken this view: the Apollo astronauts underwent decontamination and medical checks. NASA scientists studying Mars lander data (Viking, Pathfinder) have warned that Earth-origin microbes could contaminate samples and skew results.
So, now that you've demolished a straw man, where's the rest of your argument?
If fungi, bacteria, etc can survive (thrive!) on the exterior of Mir,
This article did not claim that fungi were surviving on the exterior of Mir. The fungi in question are everywhere inside Mir, which like most spacecraft, is actually warm (heat dissipation is always a key issue) and wet (partly sweat, mostly humidity from breathing). Essentially, the interior of Mir is not far from that of a steam bath, and you know how well fungi can grow in even a regular bathroom or shower.
why not on Mars? Are the environments really all that different?
Actually, most scientists already believe that because everywhere we've explored on Earth has life, no matter how extreme the environment, that the prospects for life on Mars remain quite high. This spacecraft-internal fungus doesn't really change that view much.
Second, what if a probe (or people, someday) sent to Mars isn't properly sterile, and we expose the surface to mold/bacteria from Earth? That would confuse and cast doubt on any findings regarding Mars' biology. Suppose we did find evidence of mold on Mars. How do we know it originated there, and didn't just hitch a ride from Earth? I wonder if they've really thought about that.
As I've noted, they have definitely thought of that. Sterilization is a required component of any lander mission. Spacecraft on earth are kept in a "clean room" environment and contamination of experiments is an omnipresent concern for the scientists.
Even so, there would be experiments that could be done to compare the make-up of whatever mold etc. may be found. If two spacecraft sent to different Mars locations turned up exactly the same mold, and that mold were very similar to an Earth mold, the immediate concern would be that both spacecraft were contaminated and cross-checks would need to be done. On the other hand, NASA is already working on the possibility that microbial life has been transported from Earth to Mars, or vice versa, and back again, at numerous times in the past. Certainly the possibility seems much stronger now than it has in the past, given the suggestive meteorite evidence.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Mir has been taken over, "conquered", if you will by a master race of space fungus. It's difficult to tell if they will consume the cosmonauts or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping it; the space fungus will soon be here.
/. can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground moisture caves.
And I, for one, welcome our new fungal overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted website,
(appologies to the Simpsons writers, i just couldn't resist..)
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end communication
It'd tie in better with plans to market MIR to rich socialites as a vacation destination.
-- Anne Marie
Now, if only we'd sent off all our telephone sanitizers and middle managers, as Douglas Adams envisioned...
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et pa ta ti et pa ta ta
bravo! bravo!
The classic tale of the most bad-ass, plastics-hungry space fungus yet. Read the book, skip the movie.
In Foundation and Earth, by Isaac Asimov, Golan Trevize finds his space ship (and his space suit) attacked by a (planet borne) fungus/mold that appears to feed on carbon dioxide emissions from tiny leaks around seams, etc. It is described as the potentially the most horribly dangerous plague... imagine it infecting someone's lungs. Yum.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Uhhh....can't they find a little bin to put a can of Lysol somewhere...this stuff even kills HIV, I think a little mold won't have a chance, refer to this ad I found after a quick google search.
Professional Lysol Disinfectant Spray Disinfectant Spray-Hospital disinfectant-deodorant is highly effective against TB, MRSA, and HIV-1 (AIDS virus). EPA registered. 19-oz. aerosol can. Original Scent 12 Cans/Case $56.19 Fresh Scent 12 Cans/Case $56.19 Country Scent 12 Cans/Case $56.19 Mountain Air Scent 12 Cans/Case $56.19 Crisp Linen Scent 12 Cans/Case $56.19
WOW! 12 cans for only 56 bucks!...and MIRCorp is spending how many million to combat the problem? Please can I have just one million in "consultation fee's" for my suggestion?
Tweet, tweet, all id10t's out of the gene pool, open swim is over.
..my CueCat is covered with the stuff!
---
I am the dot in slashdot.org
"The fungi that did the damage, Novikova said, included members of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Cladesporium - all very common on Earth."
;-)
Sounds to me like the stuff was on the station before it ever got into space. Like FreeMars said, there's nothing in the article that mentions any fungus growing outside the station.
(still, wouldn't it be a little disappointing if the first "attack" by an extraterrestrial organism was a fungus?)
--Ariston
"I'm never wrong--sometimes reality just disagrees with me."
What did they expect? It's the standard life cycle for all my dishes and containers. They start out brand new, and then after years of faithful service eventually I end up leaving some food product in them for too long and they grow mould so monstrous the only solution is to throw them away. Naturally I think this solution applies to the Mir situation too.
Maybe they should install RH7 on MIR and watch the Fungus and the Bugs fight it out!
Aerobic bacteria require oxygen to live.
Anaerobic bacteria thrive in the absence of oxygen.
The most notable anaerobic process is probably alcoholic fermentation, in which yeast (an anaerobic bacterium) converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. If you've ever been anywhere where they make alcohol, such as the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, TN (I live down the road from it!), and leaned over the vats very far, you can't breathe because of the massive amounts of carbon dioxide produced by the fermentation process. Not to mention it smells terrible.
Probably the most familiar aerobic fermentation is lactic fermentation, which occurs within muscle tissue (as well as other places, like milk, yuck!). A saccharine (such as glucose) is converted into lactic acid, which builds up in the muscle tissue as oxygen is supplied during excercise. It is this build-up of lactic acid that causes muscles to be sore after exercise.
So, yes, this form of life can live in a vacuum. If they break down plastics and metals, I wonder what type of chemical reaction takes place, what type of fermentation is going on. It may be possible to use the byproducts of this fermentations to our advantage.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Recall that the ringworld was in a state of civilizational collapse when it was discovered. The cause? The Puppeteer race was so terrified of the race that created the Ringworld that they launched a nasty space-fungus that devoured the materials of the high-tech devices there. Voila; the downfall of a possibly threatening civilization.
Hmmm...
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
You know when you live in Oregon or any border state of California, you have to go through the inspection..
I mean, I'm just wondering.... The last thing we need is astronauts coming back with metal eating fungi.. :
Most likely is they will find that it is a form brought up from Earth that is living in Mir's "halo" of outgassed gas. I remember hearing once that MIR needed 3-5x the weight of the occupants in gas brought up once every month or so. That means there is a lot of gas being lost into space and some of it will stay like that. Especially since it was first seen growing on a porthole, which are notorious for being the hardest to maintain totally air tight.
Seriously though, as these fungi seem to be inhabiting pressurized parts of the station, theoretically could Mir not be depressurized for an extended period of time?
The lack of oxygen should kill off the fungus... just don't ask me to clean it up.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
The article makes it sound as if this is a lifeform that is not of our earth. The quote above is important.
The article does however bring up some curious questions:
Is anyone really suprised that Mir smells mushroomy? (Have you ever lived or visited anyone in a trailer?)
Zero gravity or not, who is suprised that fungi will grow in a can out in space whith a steady, stuffy environment and thousands of different materials to choose from?
Could mankind be releasing viable spores into all of space with our decaying debris like Mir?
How long can spores remain viable in space and how far could they travel remaining viable? Have they tried to culture psilocybin cubensis in space yet?
In next year's Destination Mir the television show, will the contestants be thoroughly trained in the use of Lysol Disinfectant (not the spray the concentrated stuff)?
-backprop
silly sig follows
Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.--Quayle
In the article, words like "aggressive fungus" and "eat plastics" are used.
And... We have too much plastic waste right here in this gravity well that we don't know what to do with.
So? The obvious thing to do is to put 1 and 1 together, somehow figuring out a way to let those "agressive fungus" meet their "food", - and by G*d we have too much of those "food" here, - in such a way that it won't introduce harmful things to the living things on earth, and walla, one of our modern day's headache is solved !
I think this is the best time to buy stocks in NASA and Waste Management.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
on the serious side, I don't think ths is the first time something like this has happened, I seem to recall a strain of yeast had mutated and was able to metabolize the plastic bags it was sold in. Yeast is pretty advanced stuff -- it can skip from aerobic to anerobic resperation (with oxygen / without oxygen) in a few minutes. (this is how beer produces yeast in a beer bottle with no oxygen) ... if yeast can do that, who knows what fungus can do!
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
that wouldn't be a bad name for a band .. space fungus :) ... to bad mine has a name already ...
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I don't see anybody asking this:
Shouldn't falling space debris and meteorites have already brought this horrible space fungus to earth?
Just to get a little X-files-esque, isn't it also more likely it would have fallen during earth's hay-day as a frozen, useless planet, and therefore be lying in wait under her frozen poles?
I'm actually serious.
Ace
Rumors of a secret Siberian launch containing only 16oz of Desenex anti-fungal cream confirms earlier rumors of all this getting started with a bad case of Jock Itch. Much speculation has been focused on the Russian personal hygiene regimine and funding problems associated with finding the solution to the infamous "Sweaty space shorts."
This has two separate but related implications on the search for microbial life (live, remains, fossils) on Mars. First, it opens the possibility that some area of Mars that we haven't explored closely (ie, a lot) may contain evidence of past/present life. Second, what if a probe (or people, someday) sent to Mars isn't properly sterile, and we expose the surface to mold/bacteria from Earth? That would confuse and cast doubt on any findings regarding Mars' biology. Suppose we did find evidence of mold on Mars. How do we know it originated there, and didn't just hitch a ride from Earth?
I wonder if they've really thought about that.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
What exactly happens to "Astro shit/piss"?
Is it contained and returned to earth or
is it released into space? I mean, Im sure
that my house would get covered with all sorts
of funky fungus if i atomized then sprayed my
excrement and urine all over it.
If im just stupid (common assumption;) where
hell did all the mold come from?
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
I just registered spacefungus.com, spacefungi.com, and spacemold.com. Not sure if there will ever be any use for them, but since NASA and other space agencies, etc abroad consider space fungi a real problem I suspect these domains have some value.
.COM, .ORG, .NET, & .EDU Registry) in business :-;
But then again, maybe not...but hey someone has to keep Verisign (the
Anyways, I don't feel the space fungus is much of a problem...unless the space fungus starts growing on the outside of MIR, then it's time to be very worried!
A new fungul bacterium has been found to have entered the space station and as such the station has been placed on a Priority - One alert.
Crew members will begin scrubbing with alchohol every surface area available - maintance member will supervise the removal and supervision of internal cleaning of panels and conduits. THIS IS NOT A DRILL
Will Joe Swinkowsky please come to the medical center for treatment of his athlete's foot. A mutation is suspected.
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
This surprises people? It's MIR!
-You're wearing...A bag? I have misplaced my pants.
At least, there is nothing in that article to imply that any of the fungus is living in vacuum.
Tom
I have discovered a wonderful
You would think they had enough vodka in that thing to kill off any fungus.
Wall Street!
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Sample quote from the article summary:
"By the time we get done, we have to walk away from everything we own, the lost profits, the medical and health costs--it will be well over $300,000, possibly $500,000," she said.
Some experts weren't surprised by Pheatt's findings.They say houses, offices and classrooms around the country have had problems with toxic mold. In Austin, Texas, last month, an elementary school was closed after officials found mold in the walls.
Outside scientists said that while they have not examined the Job Journal employees, the symptoms they described have been linked to the three strains of mold.
end quote
It appears that the 3 strains are the same ones mentioned in the article on Mir.
This is some serious shit here. As for why the business operators of Mir seem to be minimizing this, interesting question.
Note that the group in the office that got hammered was generally there during regular business hours, they weren't sealed in an air tank with the fungi and they still had serious consequences, not all of which were discussed in the article summary.
I'm trying to contact the publisher for more information.
Tech Public Policy stuff
This reminds me of one of the predictions in "Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds",
I wondered what he meant by that, but imagine being on mars, 2 years journey from earth, and noticing the 'red fungus' growing on all the plastic seals of your ship, living habitat, suits etc....
"But he added that the station had ''a strong smell of fungal contamination'' - a smell he called ''mushroomy'' in his book -"
Could these "Space Spores" be psychadelic?
Perhaps this is the reason for Dave's loopy
mellon in the final sequence of 2001.
Incidentally the last part matches up very
nicely with Pink Floyds "Echoes" ; Toss in
some psychadelic space spores and everything
starts to fall into place....or is it melting...
Shit wheres the fucking THORAZINE!? dammit.
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
Would be to blast them with oxygen?? At least any outside anyhow... Right?
dnnrly
S I T E
great comedy company.
Katz is a psycho. I say lock him up in the trunk.
...and probably in more than one episode.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
...send... more... paramedics...
Space Fungus: A Menace to Orbital Habitats
with pictures of damage. Also somewhat more informative.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."