Slashdot Mirror
How An Andromeda Strain Might be Strained
An anonymous reader writes "For the world-record holder as the longest surviving bacteria in space [6 years, Bacillus subtillis], it turns out that among the multitude of dangers [cold, vacuum, UV, lack of nutrients, etc.] the greatest stress of all is intense ultraviolet radiation. In the next two years, new space station experiments are slated to test the panspermia hypothesis--also popularized in Robert Zubrin's "Entering Space", but dating back at least 150 years in the scientific literature. Recent balloon experiments, have rekindled alot of the controversy, but NASA Ames scientist, Rocco Mancinelli, concludes: "In my opinion, for a spore, it's quite likely.""
So we could have all originated from something blown out of an Alien's nose - that sure explains a lot.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
In other news, an invading alien race has left us for health reasons. Apparently we are the descendants of their common cold.
"In the first, she made a sort of layer cake, alternating layers of spores with layers of soil or clay, etc."
That just ruined my appetite for the day. Anybody want the rest of this layer cake that I'm not gonna eat?
I'm sheltering a strain of politically persecuted plant seeds in my fridg - keep 'em cool, dry and dark. Some have been in there over 10 years and will sprout in a week of warm, damp and dark.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
With aloe vera, of course.
As I kid, I'd read a story, by Stanislaus Lem IIRC, in which the Earth seeks admission to a Galactic Congress of sorts. After reviewing Earth's pedigree, we are denied memberships on the grounds that the primordial ooze from which we're descended was actually the result of illegal dumping by some aliens. The specifics of the story escape me, but I recall that after purging their septic system on the young and lifeless Earth, the aliens responsible added insult to injury and stirred the pool of waste with a stick, in a clockwise direction, which imparted onto our DNA a right-handed chirality, which is apparently considered mongrel by everyone else in the galaxy.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Humans are just a vehicle for the improved survival of cows. Cows have succeeded in training us to protect and care for them. Their numbers have increased into huge herds on every part of the globe. They are now competing with penguins to get us to take over Antarctica.
"That any existing life died out and had to start again, or the "panspermia" theory of life arriving on the meteors themselves." The fact remains that men can still turn the most innocent statements into something sexual. In layman terms "Huhuhhh . . . He said sperm"
We, beings of Jupiter, do not agree. Liquid water that you are talking about is nothing but insanely hot and barely maintainable substance. Only in our high energy labs such material can briefly exist, and obviously no life can thrive in it either.
Besides, everyone knows that liquid, pleasantly warm (+20K) methane is most optimal for life. Water that you speak about is just a heresy.
Signed,
88736662-99923662 Jr.
I rather like the use of 'You gram-positive, sporulating prokaryote!" as an epithet. It has much more class than "Yer mother uses Windows!"