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Bacteria Found On ISS May Be Alien In Origin, Says Cosmonaut (independent.co.uk)

Posted by BeauHD on from the out-of-this-world dept.

Kekke writes: Lots of buzz around this. Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov took routine samples from the outside of the International Space Station during a spacewalk. These samples were analyzed and found to contain bacteria that must have come from somewhere other than Earth or the ISS itself. "Bacteria that had not been there during the launch of the ISS module were found on the swabs," Mr. Shkaplerov told TASS Russian News Agency. "So they have flown from somewhere in space and settled on the outside hull." He made it clear that "it seems, there is no danger," and that scientists are doing more work to find out what they are. The Independent writes, "Finding bacteria that came from somewhere other than Earth would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of science -- but much more must be done before such a claim is made."

9 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Wrong conclusion? by rahenri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just because it wasn't there during the launch it doesn't mean it didn't come from Earth.

    1. Re:Wrong conclusion? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just because it wasn't there during the launch it doesn't mean it didn't come from Earth.

      Just because they thought it wasn't there at launch doesn't mean it wasn't there at launch.

    2. Re:Wrong conclusion? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Low Earth orbit is pretty much part of Earth. Its in our outer atmosphere for a start. Bacteria from the moon (but not from the inside of a camera) would be a big deal.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    3. Re:Wrong conclusion? by Maritz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It will be non-trivially difficult to 'prove' that these bacteria are not from Earth. High standard of evidence to be met. I wish them luck, they'll need it.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    4. Re:Wrong conclusion? by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Given that he jumped to the conclusion based on "There's bacteria there" it might not actually be that hard to prove it to himself.

      I will say though, you're right in a way. Our methods of investigating life are all biased for a very small subset of possible life, even on earth. LB Agar plates grow only a small subset of earth bacteria. Investigations that took sea water and just sequenced the DNA they found in it suggested that an astonishing majority of bacteria on our own planet is totally unstudied. We simply don't know how to grow most earth bacteria enough to study it.

      If this bacteria IS of ET origin, they'll smear it on a plate, it won't grow, and we won't be able to draw any conclusions. If it's of earth origin, odds are good the same thing will happen, and we again won't really know. We'll assume it's earth bacteria because it's pretty obviously earth bacteria, but we won't know.

  2. Mutated bacteria by Ayano · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While in space most likely. The fact that we're even able to classify it bacteria rather than a foreign micro organism is telling.

    --
    I don't read AC
  3. Re:They have DNA sequencer on board by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's like asking why stars and planets exist outside of our solar system. Nature has order and DNA probably exists everywhere and not just on what you assume is our one-of-a-kind little world.

  4. Re:I'm not saying it's aliens... by scdeimos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    More likely it came from one of the dozens of space vehicles to have docked with the ISS over the years.

  5. Re:They have DNA sequencer on board by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yet there'd be little reason to expect any similarity with the DNA codons to protein translations

    Yes, they would likely have a different genetic code, and a different set of amino acids. But it is still likely that the fundamentals would be similar: using DNA codons to specify a sequence of amino acids.

    If we found an alien world teaming with life much like ours here, it would be shocking if we could eat the fruit there, for example.

    As long as we can have sex with their women, who cares about the fruit?