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The Threat From Life on Mars
sweetshot97 writes "According to the UK site, Times Online; future trips to Mars that will have probes return with samples of the martian surface may contain deadly microbes of course, foreign to our world. The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for. What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there. "
How horribly horrible.
- From the Department of Redundancy Department
Brilliance doesn't need a sig.
Odds are that any lifeform that is adapted to live on Mars will pretty much die immediately on earth, unless contained in an area that has a Mars-like climate. I wouldn't be too worried.
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Its incurable and we have no cure? Talk about a one, two punch...
caritj.org
sticky microbes :(
The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for.
Wisdom from the Department of Redundancy Department.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
..welcome our new bacterial overlords!
The headline would read:
"New Flash! Your Martian Probe May Give Mankind Incurable Rash of Death!"
I can see it now ... "Not sure where your computer is boldy going? Make sure it's using trusted Mcaffee anti-virus software ... it's what astronauts on Mars use" *cut to video of astronauts dying from lack of proper inoculation*
or something
-- (Score:i , Imaginary)
Stuff gets ejected off the surface of Mars and ends up on our planet anyway. All sorts of organic stuff can survive the journey too. This is a non-item if ever there was one.
Did he inhale?
"The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for." I thought we had cures for incurable infections. Thanks for clearing that up.
There's over 6 billion of us, you know...some of us will survive, after we adapt. (We're more like the freakin' Borg than we want to admit).
We have to regretfully accept the fact that there will always be some people fear the progress we make and stand in it's way. Martian environment is not so much different from our's, it's just not a friendly. We may find microbes there that can resist extreme cold and heat, but there is no need for them to be resistent against antibiotic or immune systems for there are none.
In Orson Wells' War Of the Worlds, why do the Martian invaders die of our everyday diseases, but humans don't die of theirs?
"I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles."
"The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for." I posted this redundant reply repeatedly at 08:20 AM in the morning.
Sig? We don't need no stinking sig....
Life here has spent millions of years adapting and evolving defenses against such threats. Considering the massive amount of interactions taking place here, our microbes are likely far more dangerous to any life that may be there.
It's worth noting that the early US space program was worried about similar things. This is not a tremendously new thing - it was worried about during the Apollo program.
I think a thousand more knowledgable individuals right here on slashdot have said that it's a non-event since any bugs that have managed to evolve on Mars, will, in all probability, have no inkling of Human biology. They are unlikely to thrive within Earth's ecosystem - at least initially.
I failed chemistry, badly, so I can only repeat the experts.
WAR!!
News from days ago - Stuff that mattered!
Can't understand words of more than one syllable? Try the version from Rupert Murdoch's other UK tabloid, The Sun.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
When people start stirring up this idea, they need to be reminded of the fact that Earth and Mars have been trading meteorites for millions of years. There are plenty of Martian meteors already on this planet, and doubtless plenty of Terrestrial ones on Mars. Any 'infection' that was going to happen would already have taken place quite naturally.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
"What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there."
yeah.. well.. because those probes weren't sterilised, right? not that they would survive too well there anyways.
seriously, this is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar from news and very faaaaaaaar from crackpot theories that matter too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Didn't they make a movie about this type of thing back in '71?
- passion
There's plenty of incurable diseases on earth today, and bacteria transfer over from the strangest places. Even with the rich life Earth has, we still haven't seen any all-conquering all-devouring super-micro-organism-to-destroy-anything here yet. Why would they exist on Mars?
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Until we actually find a single trace of life there this is all due to an overintake of Hollywood crap.
TCAP-Abort
You gave Mars herpies!
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Unless these pathogens have evolved from something found on Earth (or vice versa...creepy), it's probably pretty unlikely that they will be bacteria (or viri, for that matter) per se. I think it would be fair to assume that any martian pathogen would be a totally new beast.
That said, however, given that there are no macro-scale living things on Mars to infect, its pretty unlikely that it would have any mechanisms in place to handle our immune defenses. While this cuts both ways (our immune defenses would also be woefully ill-prepared), our immune system is good enough to have generalized responses queued up to handle just about anything (think about inflamation, etc). This is not to mention that the pathogen is unlikely to have any idea (if you'll excuse the anthropomorphism) how to infect the human body in the first place (how to cross from the lungs to the blood stream, how to infiltrate mucous membranes, etc).
I think we'll probably have to look for the apocalypse somewhere other than in the form of a martian plague.
caritj.org
Actually, it does that when you look for recursively. It doesn't find it, but recommends recursively. Check dictionary.com if you don't believe me.
Is long far more probable than we got infected by a mushroom/squid/worm/elephant specific disease, that have at least a similar biochemistry and even very similar ADN, than getting infected by an alien disease, be from Mars, Titan or Beta Eridani.
...and there is only one cure.
Accutane.
First, we would need to launch a mission to Mars, manned or unmanned, to secure and return to earth core samples that might provide evidence for or against DNA as the organizing scheme for the Mars life form. Having accomplished the return of a biological sample and determined the presence or absence of DNA, we are then faced with a quandary.
Read the full Article
If this is true, we shouldn't worry too much.
Moderate this comment
Negative: Offtopic Flamebait Troll Redundant
Positive: Insightful Interesting Informative Funny
Nothing to see here
"What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there."
I know I always find potential genocide funny.
Are a million to one... he said.
Learn to Improvise
One of the main problems now is the lack of funds for such programs, esp for probes we send out of Earth. On the other hand, any probe returning from Mars will be heavily guaranteed - not just for safety reasons but for scientific ones as well.
BTW, the chances of Martian life surviving on Earth is going to be close to nil since the reducing atmosphere will oxidize anything that hasn't already had a few billion years evolutionary head start to protect themselves from it. [Yes, I know it won't be zero.] And Mars doesn't look like it had enough oxygen in it's atmosphere to effect evolution anytime in it's history.
Ciao
What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there.
That IS funny! Haaahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaaaaaaa HAAAAAAHAHAHAhahahahhahahahhaaaaaaaaa
What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there.
Not so funny.
Alien microbes are less dangerous (to us) than our own terran microbes.
Truly alien microbes may or may not thrive in our bodies.
Earth microbes, on the other hand, already know how to live in our bodies. A mutant earh microbe can readily mutute into virulent new forms.
This was the gist of The Andromeda Strain.
-kgj
-kgj
we could do with a good ELE around here - cut the crap.
If there is life on Mars, it may well have come from Earth - long before the failed Soviet landers.
If there is life on Mars, it has already reached here via meteorites.
And looky -- we are still alive!
Oh, and there are over-lapping environments all over the place: below ground, hot springs, acidic rivers, etc.
I also think that scientists at the various agencies have thought of this and sterilised the probes as best they could.
I know they have thought of and done that in the past. I recall stories about the extreme efforts taken to disinfect the earlier Viking series mars landers before sendinng them. The dual concern was to avoid risk of earth life wiping out any mars life and false positives on the instruments that were attempting to detect mars bacteria.
That the article brought this up makes me think it's just a hand-wringing, speculative, piece of fluff/filler, possibly inspired by the War of the Worlds story, rather than anything based on ome accepted theoretical grounding. (Unless, of course, the theory is that humans are bound to foul up anything they do. "Bad, Bad, Woodchip Mill / Good old Outback Bill.")
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
IIRC, the novel Andromeda Strain was about a crashed earth space probe that was contaminated with earth bacteria. The originally harmless terran bacteria was exposed to cosmic radiation which caused it to mutate into a deadly pathogen. While itself not likely, I find that a more likely senario than extra-terrestrial life. BTW, in the book the pathogen evenually mutated back to its harmless form once it got back to normal conditions.
For example, because there were no heat resistant, space worthy (radiation resistant) memories back then an advance form of magnetic core memory memory was used. So this thing had VERY little memory. All data had to be stored on board for later transmission. The storage was done on magnetic tape. But of course the "modern" plastic magnetic tape could not be autoclaved. So they went back to the original magnetic tape: a steel band.
The atmosphere on mars has orders of magnitude lower pressure than ours. SO one cannot use a conventional pressure gauge. And an ultra sensitive baritron (capicitively measured diaphram gauge) would never have survived baking. (modern ones are become more robust). So insted they implemented a new kind of pressure guage never used before. It consisted of three temrerature sensors on stalks at right angle and some heat sources on stalks. By measuring the time history of the temperature reading they were able to use a mathematical heat transport model to back out the wind direction, velocity and pressure.
This device turned out to be amazingly robust and kept its calibration over years of service. No lander since then can claim the accuracy of this original weather station.
Later probes were not as thourgouly baked in part because they were so much more complicated their components could not withstand it.
As for bacteria living on mars. There are already earthly bacteria that could survive. For example take Radio-durans whose preferred environment is the high radiation environemnt underneath the hanford waste tanks. It can withsand having its DNA sliced in to tiny bits and still recover. It evolved on earth to live in extreme oxidizing conditions, turned out radiation damage, complete desication, and other stresses were a freebie. Things like antrhax spores can live decades, maybe much more, in a non-vegitative form.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I thought this problem was already somebody's job, why haven't they asked him about it?
Our Man In Black
It would be great news if there was life capable of surviving both Martian and earth climates, because that would mean we could terriform Mars.
As far as bacteria from Mars that might infect earth, let me put it this way: what about bacteria from the deep sea being brought up by submarines? What about bacteria from deep in the earth's crust being being unearthed by drilling operations? What about all of these micro organism that inhabit exotic environments on our own planet that we risk releasing into our habitat all the time? What happens to them?
Tersely put: they die.
It's evolution, my friends. Organisms have specialized to compete in their own biological niches and developed the best tools available to do so, at the cost of performing well in alternative environments. Any organism introduced from such a foreign environment as I've mentioned, even if it could survive our human environment, it would be horrifically outcompeted by the existing organisms in our ecosystem and die handily.
Notions of a superplague from another planet wiping out life on earth are strictly fantasy stories which ignore real evolutionary fact.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
The idea is that any Martian bacteria evolved independently of ours, so we have evolved no resistance to it.
Think about how European diseases nearly exterminated the native populace of North America. Mars is much more isolated from Earth than Europe was from North America, and we have no experience whatsoever in fighting the diseases it may harbor.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
For those of us old enough to remember the moon landings, history is repeating itself. The same worries about a "moon plague." The special "van" in which the lunar astronauts were quarantined. And how can I forgot a scary book and movie called the "Andromeda Strain," about a plague from outer space. Ahhh, to live in the late 60s and early 70s... Hey wait, bell bottom jeans are back. So are corduroys. And those sneakers, I wore those in high school. I'm in a timewarp. Anybody for a midnight showing of "Rocky Horror Picture Show?"
"This is a FOX News Alert! What you don't know about Martian probes could KILL you! Stay tuned for more information after the break - I mean after the break after the break - aww, fuckit, we're reporting a 10 second segment at :55 after."
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
They said the same things when we went to the moon, and i dont remember any major outbrakes of 'moon bugs' back then....
While the chances are really remote, that dosent mean one should throw caution to the wind..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In order for bugs to kill us they generally need to have an intimate biological connection with us. It's far more likely that an 'AIDs' type microbe will hatch from the rainforest, rather than from extraterrestrial soil. Remember, most murders are domestic affairs!
NOT living in Korea when you get older...
What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there.
How funny? +5 Funny? +5 Stupid more like...
We all seem to be forgetting that NASA and the news media are far smarter and better informed than any number of experts that can be found. In turn they know that there have been massive civilizations on Mars that were wiped out by horrible microbes. They have also found these Martian civilizations had long range space vehicles, practicle hydrogen fuel cells, etc but unfortunately there computers were affected by the Y2K bug and all the information was lost. A tragic yet dangerous story all around.
Hi, Ken. I see you've found something to do with your time, now that you're off Jeopardy. Welcome!
-1, Redundant
What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there.
Funny? Funny?! Our new Martian overlords don't think so, you insensitive clod!
an icon with Uri-Geller's face will do fine.
Working for necessity's mother.
This same fear occurred during the Apollo moon landings. So the returning astronauts were quarantined in a modified Airstream trainer on the aircraft carrier that picked up the capsule. Yet the unit was poorly sealed. The astronauts noticed ants in the trailer!
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
of anything coming from Mars
was a million to one, he said
The chances of anything coming from Mars
was a million to one
but still, they come.
(From Jeff Wayne's musical adaptation of H.G. Wells story)
Organic life and bacteria/virii have been involved in a never-ending arms race for millions, if not billions of years. They come up with a new vector for infection, larger organics evolve a way to counter that infection and so on, ad infinitum...
The chances of an alien retrovirus having the necessary enymes to inject a DNA strand into a human cell are pretty close to zero. The chances of any bacteria being able to survive a highly evolved immune system are also pretty close to zero. I would call this a non-issue.
Why in the world would Martian microorganisms evolve with the ability to infect Terrestrial organisms? What's the "selection pressure" for that? What advantage is conferred by the ability to infect organisms that 99.9 *ad infinitum* Martian organisms will never, ever encounter? How would such a selection pressure manifest itself?
Without serious, plausible answers to these questions, this concern really strikes me as more appropriate to a b-movie than serious space exploration. Now, I *like* b-movies. But still.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Not "Radio-durans" but "radiodurans", or to give them their full name Deinococcus radiodurans...
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
really, let's worry about that if we send the first landers that actually bring stuff from mars. Right now there is nothing remotely dangerous...
One of the most amazing discoveries from apollo 12 was that when they removed the camera from the surveyor robotic misson that landed a two years earlier, and returned it to earth for analysis , they found human throat bacteria on it, even though it was returned in a sealed, sterile container.
p er iments_III.html
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo12/A12_Ex
One of the astronauts on the mission later remarked that he considered it the most incredible discovery of the entire Apollo program.
My rights don't need management.
What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria
:|
LOL you're right! that's hilarious!
hahahaha
"Earth Attacks!"
-judging another only defines yourself
-1 redundant
just like this post!
--
So while in theory, we could get something that would kill off everything on earth no matter what, say something with the virulence of Ebola and the hardiness of Anthrax, it's more likely we would get something less virulant. Something that would kill millions before we developed mechanisms to deal with it. Think of how long HIV has been around and we still haven't learned to deal with that. And HIV is a slow spreading disease.
So, why would the Chinese pursue it? The reason is that they want to grab a sample of Martian bacteria. It would be an excellent addition to their arensal of biological weapons.
So how long before we start dumping our nuclear waste on the moon?
I won't touch this one because others have already.
What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria
I hope that's funny-weird, not funny-ha-ha.
If there are no humans on Mars, the bacteria will be incredibly ill-suited to infect them. After all, the immune system destroys practically all bacteria that get in that don't have special defense mechanisms.
I for one bet that our bacteria could kick their bacteria ass!
Of course, I also say 'viruses' instead of 'virii', so I'm probably off base here.
Oh...hey...a real question: When, exactly, are humans sending a craft to Mars that has the capability of returning? We can barely get one to land successfully now.
What would be 'funny' (WHO picked that word for the summary - geez!?) would be if a microbe from Mars made it back here and turned out to be harmless to all forms of life, BUT killed the AIDS virus.
AT&ROFLMAO
makes me wonder whether the current houpla about formaldehyde and methane on mars isn't merely based on spreading bacteria which got carried there with the first probes some decades ago which found a dead but for them habitable world and spread about.
Man, that was actually funny for me...
Yeah, free Ipod! He is innocent!
I for one welcome our new incurable microbiological overlords that we have no cure for.
why two similar moderated so differently. Come on, get some priorities!
..welcome our new bacterial overlords!
Well... (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 05, @03:16PM (#11001003)
I for one welcome our incurable bacteria that we have no cure for. Or something.
I for one.. (Score:5, Funny) by themadphysicist (813419) Alter Relationship on Sunday December 05, @03:18PM (#11001012)
Yeah, free Ipod! He is innocent!
Quite simply, we should go there. Far better to have several die rather than millions/billions.
But I suspect that the human guinea pigs will survive.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And redundant statements that we say over and over again.
The pressure on Mars is ~600 Pa. What is wrong with using a convection enhanced Pirani gauge? There's nothing more conventional than that.
Do you think that no one has thought of a solution yet? It would just require an advanced clean room. As of now, you have the clean room, it is at a low pressure. The reason for this low pressure is so that if there is a leak anywhere, outside air comes in, and inside air stays in. With things from mars you just need a more complicated one. You will have an outer room that is at low pressure, so that outside air would go in, and inside air goes out. And the inside room will be at high pressure so the inside air goes out, and outside air goes in. With this set up martian air will leave the room, and not allow any earth air to contaminate it. And the outer wall will bring earth air in so that martian air can't get out so nothing is contaminated.
Earth and Mars exchange meteors far faster than life evolves. Scientists have found 30 Martian meteors so far on earth. And that doesnt count the majority that fall into the ocean or get buried.
I'd go even further and claim that Earth life originated on Mars. Mars probably geologically stablized earlier than earth. Mars had water and more air earlier in its history. Then Martian meteors could have "infected" earth.
Ugh. That totally sucks.
Expert: The chances of us getting contaminated with infectious Martian material are slim. But we do know one thing for sure.
CNN Analyst: What's that?
Expert: If we do become infected, it IS George Bush's fault
Apparently, this Chinese is lying -- again. Over the course of 30 years, the North Koreans kidnapped 15 Westerners from Japan. Only within the last 2 years has Pyongyang confessed to this horrific act, and the Japanese government is working overtime to win the release of all the victims, not just the 5 that Pyongyang has released so far.
You smell like a Chinese.
I've heard of Duran-Durans surviving over two decades in the worst of conditions: bad hair, bad music, bad media.
They are incredibly adept.
I wonder why all the focus is on humans being infected with some new disease. I would be more worried about something more fundamental in the ecosystem, after all by far the majority of bacteria on earth don't give a hoot about humans. I'm thinking the bacterial equivalent of kudzu in the southern US, zebra mussles in the Great Lakes, Eurasian milfoil, purple loosestrife, and all the other cross ecosystem disruptions the human race has caused by its explorations.
Martain Cooties. Eww.
There is no sig
I heard Duran Duran on the radio!
This would be a good place to remind all you good clean young suburban Americans yearning for the stars that your country is bankrupt, trillions of dollars in debt to foreign banks, and increasingly hated by billions of people throughout the world because you're unwilling to deal with actual world problems, preferring instead to spend billions of dollars of other people's money on outer space fantasies best left to Hollywood.
Don't worry or concern yourself too much. This is just a standard reality check notice that I add to all Slashdot subjects about the necessity of wasting more and more money on space exploration. You can just ignore it and go back to your space fantasy now.
Don't worry or concern yourself too much. This is just a standard reality check notice that I add to all Slashdot subjects about the necessity of wasting more and more money on space exploration. You can just ignore it and go back to your space fantasy now.
"What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there. " ohh, nasa did not think of that... they can calculate how far away the galaxies is, but still they can't use their brains :/
Pseuodo scientists have determined that all progress and research is very deadly AND will kill us. They are all recommending that we "leave the Martians alone and go home and read the bible."
The Chinese claim that this story is a lie. Such is the nature of the Chinese bigot.
By the way, Pyongyang admitted to the kidnappings about 3 years ago.
Your joke comes 6 minutes after mine and was worded less funny. You fail it, I'm afraid.
Dear /.'ers,
We must colonize the new world and create a free society where our privacy freedoms will be honored.
There will be risks, we may die of new diseases, we may encounter things we've never seen before.
The rewards are plentiful. Who's with me?
Translation
We should all worry about farting Martian bacteria wiping out the human race as punishment for meddling in the affairs of other planets.
Y'know, when you put it that way...
Back in July, I posted a troll comment that used exactly the same reasoning as this article. It was an article about bacteria in Antarctica that had been isolated for thousands of years. My comment was:
We humans aren't going to have any immunity to these microbes that have been isolated for 500000 years. I hope whoever's studying these lakes takes appropriate precautions against both accidental release and theft by terrorist organizations.
It got 17 direct and 78 indirect replies, and made the July issue of Trollback magazine. Sometimes I wonder if the reason Slashdot has so many trolls is because the editors are trolls themselves.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Despite the significance of this threat, we have to get samples anyway. Scientific knowledge cannot be gained without taking risks, and the long-term benefits of having the knowledge outweigh the short-term risks.
your sig begs the response - Atheists don't fly planes into buildings in the name of God. They do it in the name of Nietsche...
What the hell is so funny about this? Right when the bestseller list features Guns, Germs and Steel, conventional wisdom finally accepts how foreign contacts sparked the plagues that devastated first "bubonic" Europe, then "reservation" America, and every region of America is fighting losing battles against marauding "alien" species. Some people try to tell NASA and other researchers that innoculating other planets, like Mars and Europa, is even more disastrous. They go ahead and innoculate Mars, and will recklessly bring back our own infestation. Thanks for possibly the last plague of our civilization.
--
make install -not war
that is there was some form of microbial life on Mars, we could have inadvertently killed it a long time ago.
"Such a cellular disease, like a bacterial or protozoan infection, would be dangerous only if it killed you faster than your immune system could react. It wouldn't have the specialized defenses against immune systems like our own, which diseases here on earth use to cause trouble."
And that, of course, would make it the safest kind of disease. The faster a disease kills people and the higher the mortality rate the less likely it is that the disease would escape quarantine.
Since we're talking about a six month trip back from Mars the quarantine of the astronauts is built-in. All we need to do is sterilize any equipment that comes back to make sure nothing was sticking to the outside of the ship.
These Bacteria of Mass Destruction have been ignored far too long. Time to liberate Mars!
Dont let it land on earth, set up an orbital research facility and do your reseach there
thanks for coming out
back in the day we didnt have no old school
I thought this was going to be another outsourcing story.
Whatever else happens, I hope we've already seeded Mars' atmosphere with a bacterium that eats semiconductor!
The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for.
Incurable means that we have no cure for it, why say it twice?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Because where else would the bacteria have come from except from a prior mission?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
until we hear stories about 'liberating Mars' from the 'evil axis of bacteria' :D
War of the worlds... 50 years later... Who'd a thunk it?
Insert Sig Here
Sure. ... "they were
And NASA, at the time, thought that it was
doing the "right" thing about contamination.
The only problem is, is that autoclaving and
UV irradiation DOES NOT KILL all microbal life.
It only makes the "survivors" the very toughest
of the bunch. Microbiologists have discovered
microbes living more than a mile underground
that eat rock! And oceanographers have found
microbes thriving in the hot vents of the ocean
floor, where their thermometers have literally
melted. Re-examination of both the sterilization
process and the materials used, NASA has reached
the conclusion that 100% sterility (no microbal
life) on stars-bound craft was not possible.
That said, there is no reason to believe that
some "cross-pollination" between Earth and Mars
has not been going on since the beginning of
time. Any attempt that NASA or ESA (or PRC)
makes to return "samples" to Earth will only
accelerate that process.
The "war of the worlds" is going on right now,
but on Mars, and at the microbal level, ever
since we landed craft there. Like the line from
the "Alien" movie series stated
with us the entire way".
The push to put men on Mars will far outweigh
the ability to detect and preserve whatever
life already existed on Mars, anyway. And for
true "terraforming" to commence there, someone
is going to have to make the decision to massively
and deliberately contaminate Mars with microbes.
It's worth noting that it is suspected the Soviets did not bother AT ALL to sterilize thier Mars probes. Also, Zond 2 which was intended to only flyby Mars actually crashed, it was certainly not sterilized.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
At least it's not a cure for which we have no known disease!
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
It's worth noting that it is suspected the Soviets did not bother AT ALL to sterilize thier Mars probes.
Can't....resist....urge:
In Soviet Russia (especially near Chyrnobol), Mars probes sterilize you.
Table-ized A.I.
Viking Landers were "boiled"
and they *still* tasted like chicken
Table-ized A.I.
Because on Mars, there is no intelligent life to make your broad generalisation.
... yet!
Which may mean they've all been eaten by the biological equivalent of Microsoft!
It's just that on Earth, our Bill Gates didn't find a way to have his software run biological entities
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
Since when did the planet mars eject enough matter to create a meteorite that would survive entry into our atmosphere?
Self-referential sigs are rarely entertaining.
Because he's CmdrTaco and that's what we've come to expect out of him :\
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
Mars is dead.
CHTORR!!!
Shades of Grayden
There, now you're doing it too!
The best example of bacteria from earth surviving harsh conditions: bacteria on surveyor 3 survived almost three years on the moon before they were brought back by the crew of Apollo 12
I for one would like to see a sample return mission soon from mars, but would like to see the samples returned to the ISS first for quarantine and study. This gives the ISS a true scientific mission, and allays many general population worries about a super-bug scenario. I for one would take the risk of a direct return mission, but in light of the recent failed Genesis return mission, I can see a great deal of public agitation in the making. This article at Space.com seems to indicate NASA is still planning on direct return. I realize that this keeps costs down, but for NASA survival and funding I would think public support should be more paramount. Its easier to get 10 billion approved for something the public supports as opposed to a billion for something the public is worried about.
All of this said, I would like to address the Andromeda scenario. I have never read the book, though I have read several of Michael Crichton's other books. I do own the DVD and have seen the film several times. I only have 2 quibbles with the movie version (and probably the book version as well). Why do all the organisms in Andromeda Strain evolve in lock step? Even when separated by hundreds of miles and in completely different environments? Most organisms radiate when evolving. Andromeda's microbes all evolve into a benign form that is then killed before it can evolve again.
The other nit-pick, why does clotted blood instantly turn to powder? I would think it would turn to a gooey, slimy, red jell like normal clotted blood. A scab is only solid and dry because it is exposed to the desiccating effects of air. Also once clotting starts, why does it race through the body? If the circulation stops due to clotting in one area, how does what is inducing clotting continue to travel through the whole body to induce clotting everywhere?
Minor nit-picks aside, I loved the movie, and you sometimes need to overlook a few details in order to motivate and move the plot along.
On to my last, and maybe most important, Andromeda Strain inspired point, and on this subject I am going to reverse myself a bit. What if life in the Universe is common, but only the microbe variety? What if it is rare and unlikely that multi-cellular life can arise because super strain type bugs like Andromeda kill them. The Andromeda strain envisioned by Michael Crichton was completely waste free, assimilating all Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen (albeit in a very specific ratio). Andromeda was more like a crystal than an organic, and one could imagine an Ice 9 scenario arising with such an organism. This would explain the Fermi Paradox, though not in a manner I'm hoping for. On the other hand, if we ever do detect signals from other Intelligences in the Universe, and they are relatively close by, then this would suggest such super bugs are unlikely.
Given the proximity of Mars, should such a super bug live there, we probably would have been exposed by meteorites from Mars already, so again I'm not so worried about our immediate neighborhood. And with a 4 billion-year history of life on Earth, I won't lie awake worrying such a bug will arrive tomorrow.
Letter To Iran
We'll get to purchase valuable martian real estate from its ignorant bacteria after infecting them with trojan horses!
Read jack phelps dot net
It seems that we only should fear bacteria from Mars if there is some there in the first place. I am more worried about the little bugs that almost ate Val Kilmer when he was on Mars.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING!
Smallpox decimated the native American population, which had no exposure to the disease since their migration from Asia. It is not safe to assume that we have effective defenses aqainst an alien bacteria, virus or other proto-life form.
> Later probes were not as thourgouly baked in part because they were so much more complicated their components could not withstand it.
(puff, puff) I don't know about the landers but I'm thoroughly baked.1) The combined EU is larger (people and money) than the US, and is therefore a more important market. And they don't spend so much of their budget on national weapons manufacturers. I think clearly at this point they, and not us, have the big pile of cash.
2) Without incredibly cheap goods (and this now includes just about anything we can buy here) made cheap thanks to slave labor in the free trade zones of China, the price of just about everything we buy would go up in the US -- significantly in most cases. The worst thing that can happen to an economy (worse than recession) is inflation. The price of stuff going up uncontrollably would be disastrous to our limping economy.
I'd wager that China would have a heck of an easier time living without the US than the US would trying to live without China at this point. Heck, they're *our* creditors (how did this happen? Floored me when I found out. They lend *us* money to keep the lights on.). In isn't the 1950's anymore, and the world's changed (and changing).
Back on topic (and in reply to the GP), I still don't understand the mentality that decries the pittance (in relative terms) that is spent by the US on space compared to (say) the DOD. This is especially worrisome given that a technological edge is one of the sources of wealth for the US (and has been the entire time the US has been "at the top").
Besides, whatever happened to the pursuit of knowledge as its own end? A little curiosity or sense of wonder? I guess we're too busy watching reality TV and going to the mall to care about stuff like that. And in the meantime, while we sit getting fat on our shiny inexpensive Chinese furniture, the Chinese are positioned as a country that lends the US money. Incredible.
Jesus, whats wrong? The possiblity that an alien microorganism is compatible with our bodies is as big as chances of running windows in a soccer ball! (I was going to say linux, but you ppl make it run even on a dead badger) The'res so much stuff (proteins, Ph, temperature, DNA, what else?) that we have more chance of finding intelligent life on mars than finding an infectious microorganism. Think a little. You dont get all the diseases your dog get, and man and dogs have been living togheter forever. You cant expect some alien disease (that, gasp! may not even have similar cells) to create some kind of disease. Well, If we really find something... Im all for alien lifeforms, but the martian microorganisms... hum... not convinced yet.
"The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for." WTF?!! I thought using the word "incurable" in a sentance meant you did not have to use the phrase "no cure for".............
Insert Pithy Quote here.
In my opinion, any bacteria that managed to make it through the space travel to Mars probably deserves to be the first to infect a new planet ;-)
(As opposed to having humans infect that planet first, with dirty politics, AOL cd-roms, mcdonalds and taco bell franchises, and microsoft based operating systems...).
Skaag
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
Now we know why the plot of the DOOM movie is what it is...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_death
"The Black Death (also bubonic plague, and more recently The Black Plague) was a devastating epidemic in Europe in the mid-14th century (1347-1350), and is estimated to have killed about a third of Europe's population. Historical records attribute Black Death to an outbreak of bubonic plague, an epidemic of the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas with the help of animals like the black rat (Rattus rattus). However, today's experts debate both the microbiological culprit and mode of transmission."
"Information about the death toll varies widely from source to source, but it is estimated that about a third of the population of Europe died from the outbreak in the mid-1300s. Approximately 25 million deaths occurred in Europe alone, with many others occurring in Africa and Asia."
In Europe alone, 25 million people dead in 3 years. Wow.
"Humans are the so-called dominant species."
-Joe
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Afri/AfriLouw.htm
---
Why not use the word "adapted" in the place of the word "evolved" when possible?
They're making another one now...
>they die
7 /5 /293?ijkey=3730cf8d37985f953279237f0f650820e4078bf 0&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
a si cs-99/bbasics-01.htmhttp://www.erc.montana.edu/CBE ssentials-SW/bf-basics-99/bbasics-01.htm
How would you know? Almost none of the bacteria can be cultured by any method we're aware of.
Only with the latest "shotgunning" method -- slurry the subject and collect the DNA and multiply copies of everything til there's enough to describe -- are we getting much of a clue how much bacterial life exists.
One small example: Whipple's Disease. You've heard of it? No? Have you heard of "progressive supranuclear palsy" (one of the Parkinsons-like syndromes, incurable).
Willy Ley once, long ago, remarked that analysis is all very well, but you can't tell what makes a locomotive work by melting it down and analyzing the resulting mess.
Now that we have genetic methods, however, we can run a chunk of a patient through a blender, and probe the resulting mess for foreign DNA.
Would it surprise you to learn that the vast majority of organisms haven't ever been grown in lab cultures and so all we know about them is this brand new sort of look?
Example:
". A unique 1321-base bacterial 16S rRNA sequence was amplified from duodenal tissue of one patient. This sequence indicated the presence of a previously uncharacterized organism. We then detected this sequence in tissues from all 5 patients with Whipple's disease, but in none of those from 10 patients without the disorder. According to phylogenetic analysis, this bacterium is a gram-positive actinomycete that is not closely related to any known genus....."
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/32
Oil drilling brings up an incredible variety of living organisms. Why would you assume they die? The don't! They're a persistent problem exactly because, rather than dying, they start trying to reassemble the structure and relationships they probably had down in the pores of the sandstone where they've been living -- and coating the inside of oil pipelines, for example. We call these "biofilms"
http://www.erc.montana.edu/CBEssentials-SW/bf-b
Given the amount of time available for them in geological strata, can we be so sure they weren't self-organized into something quite complicated, before we drilled into the area and pressure blew them out along with gas and oil?
and plants, etc from Earth can be forced to grow on Mars, isn't it a given that things from mars can survive here? It's a two way street.
Since you asked:
www.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
I am not a biologist, but don't infectious bacteria and virii typically have rather complex pathways through which to infect people? How would a Mars pathogen infect an Earth lifeform without ever having been exposed to anything but Mars stuff?
~Ben
Though a valid point, it's something you can suspend to get the joke (or not as the case may be). Not that there's anything wrong with being pedantic, I just founf it funny is all and was trying to explain how you could envision it...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's quite possible that any microbes we (might) find on Mars could actually provide us with cures to many diseases. Because terran bacteria/virii/fungi would not have had an opportunity to develop a resistance to them...
Antisource - antivirus, antispam, antispyware
Could someone explain to me why everyone seem to assume that in order for a bacteria to kill us it has to infect us (or infect anything for that matter)?
It would be easy to totally screw up an ecosystem by introducing a new chemical process into the mix. Something comes along and converts an important soil nutrient into an unusable form, suddenly farms produce less and (more) people starve.
Heck, it doesn't even need to be something that directly effects life at all. Get a bacteria that can dissolve and oxidize iron and watch the chaos erupt as everything made of iron or steel begins to fall apart.
...they knew nothing about the kinds of basic sanitation which kept the Jews alive during the Black Plague, while everyone else died around them.
This became so pronounced that other people (probably their equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security) started lynching Jews for being in league with the Devil. Admittedly, some branches of Jewry are so far up themselves that they can't see out, and treat everyone else literally like cattle (goyim), which would have encouraged the lynch mobs to look for excuses to obliterate them, but the basic difference was still those rules, however badly followed.
This problem was addressed in the most recent issue of Wired (which is all about exploration) In fact, NASA has a whole department for making sure contamination of other planets or of earth doesnt occur. This link is from 2001, not the same story but related. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,42667, 00.html?tw=wn_story_related
As a biologist by trade... the ods of there being potentially harmful bacteria on Mars are unlikely -- such an event lies outside our understanding of pathology.
Basically, the vast majority of biologically active entities are not effectively pathogenic to humans (be they prions, catalytic RNAs, viruses, or microorganisms). The few that are have evolved their pathogenicity from being being pathogenic in another high-level organism. Highly pathogenic entities have developed their pathogenicity explicitly by developing in the environment of their human population host.
Since it's reasonable to assume that there have not been humans on Mars for a very long time (I think most people would accept "never"), there hasn't been a population of human hosts to develop pathogenicity in. Whatever organisms do exist only have selection pressure to fit their respective niches in their environment.
A more pertinent question: are there chemical contaminants that may be harmful? Or, perhaps, if there are biologics -- and presuming that they evolved in a fashion as to be functional in the terrestrial environment -- they are most likely to affect other microorganisms, but what and how?
Spanish Catholics no more understood (or even read, for that matter) the Bible than any other Catholics. Consequently, they didn't practice much by way of basic hygeine. Their own infant mortality was atrocious - anyone who survived to adulthood did so mainly due to being immune to whatever was going around. The consequences for strangers were pretty much inevitable.
Damage to mars natural ecosystem should be accounted for and if your considering the price of these projects safegaurding small scale damages should also be a priority. The concept of green projects from the technological edge of space sciences seems unlikely as a neglect of the environment for potential advances in knowledge seems routed. At the same time inovation at cost I would geuss sees some reductions of fallouts compaired to previous decades. This blinded adventurism atleast from a eurocentric veiwpoint is what in the past has caused massive destructions of natural environments and wholesale slaughter of cultures. But heck its a crapshoot anyway. Two sides if your going to do it why not do it right. Why the hell at this point in sciences should we have badly managed projects that say we made mistakes caused we learned. Why can't it be we learned not to make mistakes. Like anything is coming back other then transmissions. We may have more to worry about with our natural environment survival mechanisms by 2012 or 2015 or latter. Unless of course they have a return mission in store. It seems doubtful that return missions will occur befor the up and coming natural fallouts.. unless I'm just misinformed on whats coming up in around 10 years.
Are they sure that the incurable bacteria will have no cure, I mean after all if its incurable there might not be a cure and if there is no cure then we'll all be exposed to incurable bacteria that might infect us with something for which we have no cure...
Did Bush* write this article?
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. - HST
My planet's 4.5 billion years of violent, no-holds-barred evolution at break-neck speed says to all alien microbes, bring it on.
What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there.
Yeah, pretty funny; in fact, hilarious. In your face, Mars!
My guess is just about any that was to get onto the lander would be killed almost immediately upon re-entry. We're not talking simple cooking temperatures here, reentry temps for a spacecraft are usually on the order of 3000 F or 1650 C, this is much hotter than you can get any substance in a simple oven, and is hot enough to boil all of the water out of a small substance like bacteria in seconds, all life forms we know of needing water to survive, this should be fatal to just about anything living. According to this article, the highest known temperature that nay organism currently known can survive is about 266 F , that puts the temperature in the spacecraft at about 6 times the absolute temperature that the highest known organism can survive. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/08/15/cha mpion.of.heat.ap/
With probes, any area where the bacteria could possibly get in would have to be open to air, and with or without a heat shield, should easily get hot enough to destroy any bacteria. The only possibility for bacteria to survive would then be to get in on a manned mission onto the astronauts suits or into the cabin. First off, any astronauts will have at least a 10 month journey on the way back where if the bacteria were to have any negative effects, it would likely be noticed there and precautions could be taken. Furthermore, any spacecraft that large could easily have facilities built in to clean the air of bacteria over the long term using air purifying mechanisms etc.
Furthermore, the climate on Mars being much colder than that on earth on average, I would find it highly unlikely that any bacteria could thrive on the earth at our normal temperatures, much less the extremes of spaceflight.
I, for one, welcome our microbial Martian overlords
If a microbe came from Mars, it would probably get its ass kicked by our Earth microbes and would only thrive in some retreat. However, we don't know whether that retreat would be the human body or food sources. Doh'.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
It sounds like the popular press is blowing things out of proportion again, shockingly. In the original _Science_ article, I counted 78 sentences in Kargel's piece. Out of those 78 sentences, there are only 2 that make any sort of mention whatsoever about the possibility of biological hazards (really, only one of them...the other one talks about the dangers of cross-contamination, which is a different problem entirely). Here they are:
"All possible care must be taken to avoid cross-contamination between Earth and Mars. Before proceeding with sample returns or human missions to Mars, we must review measures for planetary biological protection." (Kargel, Science, Vol 306, Issue 5702, 1689-1691 , 3 December 2004)
Notice how, unlike the popular press, Kargel isn't saying "OMG TEH SKY IS FALLING LOLLZ." He's saying (very, very briefly) that we should maybe have some plans in place in the event that we do find life to bring back for further study.
"The atmosphere on mars has orders of magnitude lower pressure than ours"
How did we know that until we went there and measured it?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
In Orwellian Dystopia, Earthlings infect Mars!
(And were that the case, I think the world would be even more amusingly surreal.)
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I never thought I'd see that day somebody was using "Jurassic Park" to try to win an arguement about science.
I think I need to go drink more.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
...What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria ...
What's funny about this?