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Bacteria From Beer Lasts 553 Days In Space
An anonymous reader writes "Some specific bacteria colonies from Beer (the place, not the beverage) left for several days outside the ISS actually survived extreme temperatures, UV and other radiations, lack of water and all the like. They were later brought back to Earth for examination: such resistant bacteria may be the base of life support systems or bio-mining on colonies off Earth, and of course for terraforming, eventually. No clue in the article about how dangerous those bacteria might have become after the exposure or when they'll start eating their examiners."
Just goes to show how difficult it will be to confirm whether or not any life found on Mars was there to begin with, or was introduced accidentally.
Mars probably stablized geologically several hundred million years before earth and may have been the earliest source of life in the solar system. Then glancing meteorites infected the rest of the solar system with Martian life before it died out there.
The survival capabilities of various earthly extremophiles are, indeed, extremely impressive. Particularly the ones resistant to extreme dessication, the evolutionary changes for which often happen to confer substantial radiation resistance.
The trouble, though, is that for this to be useful to us, they need to do more than survive(if survival were an issue, we could just put them inside the spaceship, not outside), we need them to be capable of metabolism and reproduction in extreme environments. You can transport in a climate controlled spaceship, and grow in a biodome; but if your tardigrades or bacteria just shrivel up and go into stasis when you put them outside they aren't going to get much done.
There are a fair number of organisms that basically shrivel up into an invincible spore, resistant to just about everything, when life starts to suck. If you put them outside on mars, they'd probably be just fine a century later if taken in and re-hydrated. It's just that they would have done basically nothing during that time...
Cue references to the Andromeda strain and all, but this is too much in line with the story from a typical Doctor Who episode.
Bacteria from a small English fishing village have returned from a space trip to be examined on Earth. Next thing you know, someone will be alone in a room with these samples, it will get dark, ominous music will play, and you will hear a single scream. Next the researcher will appear, appropriately tentacled, infecting everyone else on the base. UNIT will come in to help solve the problem. Everyone in the town will die, and life will continue.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
... Beer is a dish best served cold. And it is very cold in space.
Now you know why woman with yeast infection are to be avoided at all costs.
i begin to think less about the idea that we can seed the universe with hardy bacteria
and i begin to think less about the idea that life on earth was seeded exobiologically
i begin to think less about sending life out there, or about how life got here, and i instead think more about the idea that it simply doesn't matter, that it's been a wide four lane two way street forever, and everywhere, that life is boringly common
i begin to entertain the notion that the reality that is most likely, as we explore more and more outside our planet (and eventually, our solar system), that we're just going to find that the basic chemical machinery of life everywhere, dormant or vaguely active, is on the surface of everything, waiting to seed and grow on anything it touches
that life is simply mundane and ubiquitous (although mostly hibernating and waiting and unable to realize its full potential)
and then the REAL story will be looking for and finding what i'll call "complexity magnifiers": special intersections of energy source and hospitality (like liquid water and a sun) where the machinery of life is allowed to turn into amazing agglomerations of increasing complexity... until things like us humans can become reality
and then the real search, the ultimate game of discovery, will be to classify, find, and otherwise make contact with other "complexity magnifiers," wherever they may be or whatever they are, across the universe. and that this will be our ultimate promise in existence, what you could call our purpose (self-discovered)
whether we choose to exploit and destroy those "complexity magnifiers" and whatever or whomever we find there, and grow like a virus, or whether we choose to communicate with whatever is there already, as take care to hold our darker nature in sober check: that will be the ultimate commentary on the entire existence of homo sapiens: tragic mistake or wise benevolence?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seriously, we don't have to be afraid of "mutated strains from space" too much. If some would be indeed different, that would simply mean adaptation to their particular environment - which also means less suited to Earth one & when brought back: typically outcompeted by "terran" strains.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Pff, bacteria... A couple years ago we had animals survive the outer space - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade . It was just for 10 days but nobody is sure how long they really can survive - they can enter some kind of stasis state where they don't need water for decades.
This is obviously part of why Ford had Arthur consume 3 pints of beer that fateful morning...
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
smoke this first
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Pfftt...
I for one welcome our Mutated Beer Creating Overlords!
That is life originated elsewhere in the universe and spread through it over the eons. To some scientists the machinery of life appears so complicated that it could rarely arise despite quadrillions of earth-like planets. Spreading between the stars after one likely instance would be more likely.
Limited panspermia states life arose once in the solar system and infected every other suitable place: Earth, Mars, Io, Titan, etc., through rare meteor collisions.
But that is not what happens in real life..
Take African Honeys Bees for example. They have to fight so many tough predators in their home environment, that when you introduce them to a bunch of pussy predators in South America, they DOMINATE the landscape.
I'd hate to see how badass a bacteria must be that survived on Mars and in deep space.
Since I am not a native speaker of English, I can only speculate but "Bacteria From Beer Lasts 553 Days in Space" sounds very strange to me, shouldn't it be "Bacteria From Beer Last 553 Days in Space"? I mean "bacteria" is the plural of "bacterium" after all!
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
olsmeitser writes
"The evolution of life on earth is fairly well documented."
The origin of life is different from its subsequent evolution. Far less is known about it. Paleo-biochemists have focused on creating the fundamental six-chemical citric-cycle from raw chemicals and have lots of difficulties. Robert Hazen has wonder Teaching Course volume on the Origin of Life which spends a couple hours on this topic, which I strongly recommend listening to.
Craig Venter's synthetic biology experiments hint the minimal survivable life configuration is about 400 genes and 2000 chemicals. He has been systematic deleting genes and chemicals from the simplest known cells to see what the minimum must be before death.
Also writes: "unless the bacteria have evolved warp drive there really is no realistic way it could spread to other star systems"
Life has been found buried deep in the earth six miles down. It may not have had contact with general biosphere for tens of millions of years. This suggest that modestly sized rocks may behave as interplanetary "arks" even if they take millions of years to traverse solar systems.
How well to African honey bees do in Antarctica?
The differences in the environment between Africa and South America are not big. For that matter, the differences between the environment in Africa and Antarctica are not that big relative to the differences between the environment between Earth and Mars. When African honey bees take over Antarctica, we'll consider your argument not entirely silly... but still flawed.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I remember in my BioII class we were given an 'experiment' to flip a penny one hundred times and record the results. We were the only group that did not record 50% heads and 50% tails. Our professor insisted that we had made a mistake, and that with this 'large' number of flips we would have absolutely reached 50%.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin