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Bacteria Found On ISS May Be Alien In Origin, Says Cosmonaut (independent.co.uk)
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."
Just because it wasn't there during the launch it doesn't mean it didn't come from Earth.
After all this time, the extraterrestrial life that we found ended up being a proverbial bug on the windshield of the ISS?
They have miniature DNA sequencer on board, they can find out if it matches at all with any sequenced earthly strain. (I have one also, it is a MinION by Oxford nanowire technologies. Although not perfect it should be capable of sequencing this).
If it truly of extraterrestrial origin it should be immediately obvious as it is would have diverged very far from the âoeTree of Lifeâ (thatâ(TM)s assuming there are any similarities at all).
It, would also be incredibly valuable and not just from a scientific standpoint. Just a single completely novel protein has caused multi-billion dollar biotech revolutions. Here would be an organism with potentially thousands.
The claims of alien bacteria on the ISS are being met with widespread skepticism.
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
What'd I tell you? I said aliens coming. I tole you and you didn't listen.
They're our space brothers coming to protect the President from all the haters and libs. Oh, it's happening, now. Bet on it. Check fucking mate.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The ISS orbit is so low it is within the upper reaches of our atmosphere. That is why it has to be given regular boosts to keep it in orbit. Though super thin, it does encounter enough atmosphere to induce drag.
Just as we have found unusual organisms in the deepest oceans and even miles down in rock, we should expect to find bacteria at the limits of our atmosphere and even beyond. It should also be expected that they have evolved dramatically, as organisms living off of heat and sulfur deep in our oceans have done.
There are some out of this world organisms right here at home. I'm not even sure how you could prove extraterrestrial origin. Almost anything you find could just be evidence of a previously undiscovered unique ecosystem 100+ miles up.
It's sort of neat to imagine the possibility of some life form surfing around on the auroras in the thermosphere.
ISS har for 20 years been orbiting - a close distance - around a planet with gazillions bacteria an microbes, and been visited by more than a hundred people, and it was lanuched through the atmosphere containing lots of microscopic life, and as soon as bacteria is found on the outside, it is considered likely to be of alien origin?
Gimme a break!
I would be very surprised if we could keep it completely clean from earthly contaimination, even if we are talking about the outside.
They will also learn that the Cigarette Smoking Man does, in fact, smoke on the ISS.
What does "not there at launch" mean? The ISS has had multiple modules installed over the course of many years, almost 20 at this point. And bacteria is notoriously hard to kill. Martian probes undergo a thorough sterilization before launch just to avoid contamination of mars by earth bacteria, and between scrubbing and radiation and vacuum and etc. Nasa still isn't sure they've killed all of it. And yes bacteria can survive in space.
All of this makes it seem fantastically likely that, hey it's just earth bacteria. Stuff can grow almost anywhere.
This 'bacteria' will be analysed and found to be a mixture of borscht and jizz.
It's called Panspermia, if it really is non-terrestrial, but odds are very high that it's terrestrial.
Despite sterilization we have found bacterial colonies many times on our space hardware, and they've always been from Earth.
Not only does it only take a single bacteria to survive and reach that location, as the article mentioned, there are things that can loft microorganisms to insane altitudes. I have doubts they can go as high as the space station, but there are rockets they can hitch a ride on, and again, it only takes one to start a colony.
Don't forget that "just because it wasn't there before" only means that it was undetected for some reason, maybe because it was too small.
And also, even if they don't have a match to a known terrestrial DNA sequence, still doesn't mean it's alien. It could just be that their database isn't complete. Actually we know the database of microbial DNA is not complete, so that's a given.
Now if it doesn't match anything from Earth, and it's not close enough to be related to any known microbe, and an analysis of it's DNA doesn't show any real matches of any terrestrial DNA sequences at all, then it might be alien. (There are lots of shared sequences among all life on Earth, since they all share common ancestors, it's just some are more closely related than others.)
If it's DNA uses something other than AGCT or AGCU, then it's almost guaranteed it's non-terrestrial/alien.
A few years ago there was a woman in Germany that seemed to have been involved in all kinds of spectacular crimes, mostly murder. Her DNA was found on various crime scenes that seemed totally unrelated, She must have been the most wanted criminal for a while and was called the "Phantom". There was a $400,000 reward put on her head
Of course it turned out in a slightly different way than police had expected. The DNA that was found was actually from a female factory worker packaging the cotton swabs that were used by German police to collect DNA, so these DNA traces were simply a contamination. Here is the whole story: http://content.time.com/time/w...
You can expect something similar from the bacteria on the ISS. Everybody of course wants some spectacular news, but unfortunately there are far more mundane ways how the bacteria could have ended up there.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Because bacteria can travel through interstellar space and hit a space station orbiting Earth, but bacteria can't travel a few thousand feet from Earth to a space station.
Czech language for absolute beginners
Agreed. Imagine you have an 8 inch volleyball, drenched with syrup. A quarter of an inch away, almost touching the syrup-coated volleyball, there is a coin and you find microscopic traces of syrup on the coin. How do you guess the trace of a syrup got on the coin?
Most likely, it came from the big ball of syrup right next to the coin. Or maybe somehow syrup came in from outside and got on the coin, without ever making it 1/4 inch further to get in the volleyball. Which seems most plausible?
That's the scale we're talking about with ISS. Earth is 8,000 miles diameter, 25,000 miles circumference. The atmosphere extends to 6,200 miles up (exosphere). ISS is below the exosphere, in the thermosphere. ISS is only 250 from the surface - nearly touching the ground.
As someone else hinted, IIS is also travelling 18,000 miles per hour. At that altitude, there are roughly 4,000,000,000 air molecules per cubic meter*. Meaning ISS is colliding with billions of air molecules per second. It would be surprising if they didn't get a bug on the windshield.
* Yeah I used imperial and metric in the same post. Get over it.
More likely it came from one of the dozens of space vehicles to have docked with the ISS over the years.
Hard to believe any bacteria could survive the collision velocities involved with an orbiting object, whether they floated in from space or up from the atmosphere. They were there when it launched.
The bacteria is not alien, it comes from north Korean missile launches.
Now you may argue that there is little difference between alien and north Korean, but north Korea is still on Earth.
The sort of mutation that you might expect to find in an environment with tons of radiation flying around?
And, while interesting, it's also basically unprovable. We can't prove that the bacteria didn't come from Earth, at best we can prove that we've never seen that bacteria on Earth. We also can't prove it did come from Earth, at best we can prove that it exists on Earth.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
APK, you are a lying, ignorant, willfully dishonest, no-class, spamming, racist, moronic cunt with nothing to offer anyone. Again, I have zero time for someone as worthless as you. Stop wasting your own obviously worthless time by trying to stalk me around the site you dumb sack of shit.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black