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. "

Comments

Move along, move along

[KontinMonet]

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.

Re:Move along, move along

[Thingummywut]

But don't these items normally burn up in our atmosphere instead of being protected in space shuttle containers?

No worries

[rixkix]

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.

Incurable?

[hyfe]

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?