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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.""
The scary thing about the Andromeda Strain was that it wasn't a bacteria. It wasn't even a virus. It wasn't even organic, moreso a complex molecule that happened to reproduce using heat.
In other words, some journalist is looking at how long life forms we know and love(?) can survive the harsh conditions of outer space and finding an opportunity to use the term "Andromeda Strain"?
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that there are micro-(or even macro-)organisms drifting through space feeding on UV radiation.
After all, we thought a lack of light would doom the sea floors to lifeless oblivion only to learn that life had adapted to feed on the what was available. Why should we assume that bacteria drifting through the void of space haven't evolved in a similar fashion?
Surely, if life came to earth in meteors then one would also expect the moon to have had a few impacts from these types of meteors too? My reasoning being its close proximaty to Earth and the shear number of visible craters on its surface. The bacteria may not have flurished on the moon because of the unsuitable conditions but wouldn't wee still expect to find the dormant spores on the moon? If they can survive millions of years of space travel then surely they can also stay dormant on the moon.
The only argumnet against this is that there was only one meteor which had the spores and it crashed on Earth. But this must be extremely unlikely (that the only life bearing meteor landed on the perfect planet). It must be more plausable to believe that there are a reasonable number of these meteors and some crashed to earth and some to the other planets in our solar system.
thiobacter concretivorans?
i would be interested in the publication describing this fascinating creature, as none of the standard microbiological/taxonomical databases seem to know it. if somebody could help me out, please?
Shouldn't a world's record exclude goings on in space?
The second evidence was from growths observed from using potato dextrose agar as medium and the microorganism could be identified as staphylococcus pasteuri. Rod-like bacillus and fungus (engyodontium albus de Hoog) were also found.
I have no problem with the idea that microorganisms can travel through space, if we find evidence for it.
However, these claims strike me as dubious: these are organisms adapted to earth environments. Staphylococcus pasteuri is grown at body temperature and isolated from human vomit, and Engyodontium album is a eucaryote. Neither of them seems like a good candidate for a space bug, and both of them seem like somthing you would easily get if someone doesn't handle sterile samples carefully. You'd also expect big differences in sequence data.
If space is full of spores for organisms highly adapted to earth environments, that's a much, much stronger claim than merely claiming that space is full of spores. If they are extraterrestrial, where are these supposed to be coming from?
The most plausible explanation for these particular results is terrestrial contamination. If they want to prove anything more, the experiment really needs to be repeated many times and under different conditions. And they really should find some differences in the DNA sequences.