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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. "
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?
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.
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.
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!)
"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one," he said.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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? """
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
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.
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.
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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.
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...
an icon with Uri-Geller's face will do fine.
Working for necessity's mother.
Maybe, maybe not. Terrestrial microbial life-forms have had millenia of evolution and competition to fill every available niche in their available environment; how will Martian microbes compete, let alone thrive? How many extremophiles have been dredged up from their remote terrestrial locations and then caused terrible plagues?
Caution is appropriate here, but the article seems to be hinting at a "let's just stay home and lock the door and hope no one bothers us" attitude that would have kept mankind safely ensconced in the Olduvai Gorge.
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
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
Because the humans who got close to the Martians all died terrible deaths by raygun or poison gas. Bacteria is slow in comparison ;P
And then what are the odds that microbes from Mars would be able to survive in a human environment? And if it did live in a human environment, would it be able to spread at all considering it has had no previous experience trying to spread in any organism that exists today?
This is rediculous news akin to people being afraid of meteors for possibly containing alien fungus that will eat their brains.
As I alluded to in the post above, "hospitable" is an entirely subjective term. I find bracing autumn days to be most pleasant; the average Iguana will likely have the opposite opinion.
Until we actually find a single trace of life there this is all due to an overintake of Hollywood crap.
it strikes me that this is one of those things that it is better to be safe than sorry about. the very fact that we have zero experience with non-terran life forms seems a pretty good reason to take precautions against them.
Go back to watching your Hollywood movies and leave us in peace. If you think it is wiser to spend billions on Hollywood junk (yes, most of it IS junk) than on real science then have the UN start paying Hollywood's fees after we withdraw. And move Hollywood and the UN to Paris. If you are an American, I hear there is a group helping folks like you pay for a bus ticket to Montreal. Then, you can go up there and live off of American third world welfare, American defenses, pay all of your taxes into a system that allows you to wait in line for months for second rate emergency medical care, AND, claim to have invented all kinds of cool things without spending any Canadian dough on real research.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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...
Linux (and most other Unix) zealots can't handle that kind of humor because their favorite kernel really doesn't do "fairness" properly: the kernel of any quality OS would limit the load on the machine that one login can create.
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!"
Funny, but for every time someone says something like that and it really is their last words, there are a billion times nothing happens at all.
Of course, a life where nothing ever happens might be worse than death.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
While I can't stand this AC, it should be noted that this is the first time he has made a valid point. Whether it was accidently or on purpose, I don't know.
Theres no telling what a Martian microbe would do in a Terrestrial environment, and there's no reasonable basis for making predictions. It might not even be an organism per se, but rather silicon-based life. The only categorical solution is not to bring anything back until the place has been thoroughly explored, in detail. It's a one-way trip, boys.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-