The Threat From Life on Mars 469
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. "
Rumsfeldian poetry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rumsfeldian poetry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rumsfeldian poetry (Score:5, Funny)
To understand recusion, one must first understand recursion.
Re:Rumsfeldian poetry (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Chinese Poetry (Score:3, Funny)
Ladies and gentlemen, the above post is brought to you by the same kind of folks that vote for Bush (i.e., your capacity for rational thought has to be this impaired).
Let's follow the argument presented by the poster:
If it doesn't scare you that people like this are allowed to vote, you aren't paying a
Odds Are Against It (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:5, Funny)
Heh heh heh.
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, a life where nothing ever happens might be worse than death.
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:5, Informative)
If anything microbial survives on Mars, it would most likely thrive in out environment.
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:3, Insightful)
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 b
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:3, Funny)
It is now waiting for a spaceship to bring it to fresh new blood.
That's the main line of my new book. You like it?
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:2)
Cysted? It's not even *alive*. What are you talking about?
A.
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:5, Informative)
More to the original poster, they do not 'cyst'. The reason that you can't cook prions to death is because they aren't alive in the first place. By the time you heat a prion to the point where it isn't a prion, your meat isn't meat anymore. Even the dog won't eat it.
A.
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:3, Informative)
It's kind of like those bacteria and tube worms [noaa.gov] thriving on the ocean floor in sulfuric acid at 300C. Drop their temperature below 150C, and they die.
*If* there were anything living on Mars in the first place, it would die long before we ever knew it got here.
But hey, anything to keep us safe from the Martian threat. Somebody's been watching too many bad scifi movies [ram.org].
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:2)
*If* there were anything living on Mars in the first place, it would die long before we ever knew it got here.
Thanks for that, there is only one sort of bacteria, and it lives in sulphuric acid at 300C. There can be NO other lifeform ergo we are all safe.
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:2, Interesting)
That's a rather breathtaking generalization, even for Slashdot.
We're talking about a whole planet here with nearly as varied conditions for life as on Terra. Here is a mid-level overview of Mars Seasons, Weather, Exploration, Life [uchicago.edu]. A cursory look at Atmospheric Temperature, Seasons [washington.edu] and Pressures [washington.edu], reveals that Mars is remarkably similar to our own planet. If recent research has proved anythin
Viking Landers were "boiled", Pathfinder was not (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, because there were no heat resistant, space worthy (radiation resistant) memories back then an advance form of magnetic core memory memory was used. So this thing had VERY little memory. All data had to be stored on board for later transmission. The storage was done on magnetic tape. But of course the "modern" plastic magnetic tape could not be autoclaved. So they went back to the original magnetic tape: a steel band.
The atmosphere on mars has orders of magnitude lower pressure than ours. SO one cannot use a conventional pressure gauge. And an ultra sensitive baritron (capicitively measured diaphram gauge) would never have survived baking. (modern ones are become more robust). So insted they implemented a new kind of pressure guage never used before. It consisted of three temrerature sensors on stalks at right angle and some heat sources on stalks. By measuring the time history of the temperature reading they were able to use a mathematical heat transport model to back out the wind direction, velocity and pressure.
This device turned out to be amazingly robust and kept its calibration over years of service. No lander since then can claim the accuracy of this original weather station.
Later probes were not as thourgouly baked in part because they were so much more complicated their components could not withstand it.
As for bacteria living on mars. There are already earthly bacteria that could survive. For example take Radio-durans whose preferred environment is the high radiation environemnt underneath the hanford waste tanks. It can withsand having its DNA sliced in to tiny bits and still recover. It evolved on earth to live in extreme oxidizing conditions, turned out radiation damage, complete desication, and other stresses were a freebie. Things like antrhax spores can live decades, maybe much more, in a non-vegitative form.
Ken? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Viking Landers were "boiled", Pathfinder was no (Score:2)
Re:Viking Landers were "boiled", Pathfinder was no (Score:3, Insightful)
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
proces
Re:Viking Landers were "boiled", Pathfinder was no (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:2, Insightful)
This is rediculous news akin to people being afraid of meteors for possibly containing alien fungus that will eat their brains.
Article is a troll (Score:3, Interesting)
We humans aren't going to have any immunity to these microbes that have been isolated for 500000 years. I hope whoever's studying these lakes takes appropriate precautions against both accidental release and theft by terrorist organizations.
It got 17 direct and 78 indirect replies, and made the July i
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:3, Informative)
One thing everyone seems to be forgetting about our environment is that Earth's atmosphere is filled with deadly poison Martian microbes haven't been in contact with for billions of years, if ever - Oxygen.
Anaerobic bacteria don't tend to have very good lifetime estimates when exposed to oxygen.
Re:Odds Are Against It (Score:2)
MY GOD! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:MY GOD! (Score:3, Funny)
Then we'd have a problem! I think.
Re:MY GOD! (Score:2, Funny)
incurable^*/s(curable/2(char*(s)) | grep cure > fart.txt |
Disclaimer: I know jack shit about regular expressions
Re:MY GOD! (Score:2)
Wow, moderators sure get offended easily. Is using forkbombs sacrelige in your world?
Re:MY GOD! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MY GOD! (Score:5, Informative)
This is a fork bomb. The first part is a decoy, but look at the last portion:
It creates a function called : which takes no parameters (). The function creates a copy of itself and forks into the background with :&. Then, immediately after the function declaration :(){...}; it calls itself with :. There's a better one where the "payload" of the function is :| :&, which pipes one into the other and forks into the background...
I for one.. (Score:3, Funny)
Here's your chance, Mcaffee! (Score:5, Funny)
or something
Move along, move along (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Move along, move along (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Move along, move along (Score:5, Informative)
All in all though, the idea that a bacteria would cause a incurable disease is at the extremly long end of near insane thoughts. Any foreign bacteria would not be adapted to our natural defences against diseases, let alone some of our more complex immune system responses. And as others have pointed out, this completly forgets about that as I also pointed out above, that bacteria can and would have survived the trip from mars to earth.
Quickshot
Re:Move along, move along (Score:5, Insightful)
Diseases had already adapted to infect humans when they were introduced to the Americas. Very different from the scenario the article is talking about.
Re:Move along, move along (Score:2)
Re:Move along, move along (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Move along, move along (Score:3, Interesting)
"The common influenza virus can indeed go back and forth between people and their pet ferrets. Dr. J.B. Bruederle, former president of the Chicago Veterinary Medical Association and a vet with a special interest in ferrets, said it's relatively common for owners to transmit the flu to their ferrets." Link [ip2m.com]
More than unlikely (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:the idea (Score:2)
I have often wondered why it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I have often wondered why it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the 1898 H.G. Wells original story (of which the infamous radio play was just a dramatization, not the original source material), the Martians were eating earth foodstuffs and water and it was basically food poisoning that did them in.
To wit:
And from the epilog:
( I would like to thank The Literature Network [online-literature.com] and google for their assistance in the preparation of this post. No martians were harmed in the research. )
( oh, and I wouldn't lose much sleep over Martian bugs - there are plenty of diseases in strange corners of our own world against which we have no defenses - I's rate this whole article "-1 : FUD" )
Re:I have often wondered why it is... (Score:3, Funny)
No worries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No worries (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No worries (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No worries (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No worries (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it can. There is simply no possibility that human virulence could have evolved there. Virulence is a complex process, and it's simply not going to happen "by chance" in the absence of a host. I'd worry far more about new bugs from antarctic ice cores (and I'm not worried about those either).
It would be wiser to send automated electron microscopes to Mars if we want to sea
Alternative version, for those of lower IQs... (Score:5, Funny)
Martian meteors (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Martian meteors (Score:2, Interesting)
Then how come we're not finding our bacteria on mars?
Either (a) no bacteria here can possibly live or evolve to live on Mars and probably vice versa, or (b) your premise is false and the whole 'meteorite' process, with its extreme heat and cold and no oxygen, does a pretty good job of killing interesting bacteria (that is, any infection that was going to happen has NOT necessarially happened).
if (a) we're safe -- and people seem to think it unli
Re:Martian meteors (Score:5, Interesting)
stupidness prevails. (Score:2)
yeah.. well.. because those probes weren't sterilised, right? not that they would survive too well there anyways.
seriously, this is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar from news and very faaaaaaaar from crackpot theories that matter too.
Andromeda Strain (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't they make a movie [imdb.com] about this type of thing back in '71?
Re:Andromeda Strain (Score:5, Informative)
In advance of the book's publication, Crichton has written the cover story in today's Parade [parade.com] (Sunday magazine supplement in many US newspapers) giving several examples of such exaggerated predictions.
Incurable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical media scare (Score:4, Informative)
Until we actually find a single trace of life there this is all due to an overintake of Hollywood crap.
HaHa NASA (Score:2)
Probably not bacterial... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Probably not bacterial... (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand will a contamination with earthly germ on mars be a major drawback for science.
Re:Probably not bacterial... (Score:2)
yes you can be damn sure they're not men [textkit.com].
why pretend word wizardry when you don't have it...
Re:Probably not bacterial... (Score:3, Interesting)
I overlooked the possibility that the bug might simply consume a mineral for fuel. A martian germ that consumes various organic molecules found in human tissue could be a big problem. I'm not so sure that our immune system would be competent to handle a bug that simply broke down our molecules to feast on the carbon rings within and that reproduced on its own (without help from the host). Out skin may also not be any defense if it was edible itself.
Given, however, that we would not play the normal role of
Odds (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA scientists may have infected Mars... (Score:2)
Accutane.
Life May Have Originated on Mars (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Life May Have Originated on Mars (Score:4, Informative)
NASA said that after two years of study "a number of lines of evidence have gone away". Several different chemicals and molecular structures were exciting because they looked similar to byproducts of life on Earth. However, these chemicals and structures can also be created without life. Some are even present in deep space on comets, and scientists do not think that they came from Martian life anymore.
The chances of anything coming from mars. (Score:2)
there's pretty much (Score:4, Informative)
One of the main problems now is the lack of funds for such programs, esp for probes we send out of Earth. On the other hand, any probe returning from Mars will be heavily guaranteed - not just for safety reasons but for scientific ones as well.
BTW, the chances of Martian life surviving on Earth is going to be close to nil since the reducing atmosphere will oxidize anything that hasn't already had a few billion years evolutionary head start to protect themselves from it. [Yes, I know it won't be zero.] And Mars doesn't look like it had enough oxygen in it's atmosphere to effect evolution anytime in it's history.
Ciao
What's funny is... (Score:2)
That IS funny! Haaahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaaaaaaa HAAAAAAHAHAHAhahahahhahahahhaaaaaaaaa
alien microbes, terran microbes (Score:3, Interesting)
Not so funny.
Alien microbes are less dangerous (to us) than our own terran microbes.
Truly alien microbes may or may not thrive in our bodies.
Earth microbes, on the other hand, already know how to live in our bodies. A mutant earh microbe can readily mutute into virulent new forms.
This was the gist of The Andromeda Strain [google.com].
-kgj
Returned mutant earth bacteria (Score:2)
Re:Returned mutant earth bacteria (Score:2)
No word from the Planetary Protection Officer? (Score:2)
Our Man In Black [slashdot.org]
If only 'twere true... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:If only 'twere true... (Score:2, Informative)
Invasive, non-native crops or fish represent the relatively benign example. Native American deaths due to European disease would be at the other end.
Martian plague might be unlikely, but the chances certainly aren't non-zero.
Re:If only 'twere true... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tersely put, you're not as bright as you think you are. Many foreignly introduced
Re:If only 'twere true... (Score:3, Insightful)
History repeats itself... (Score:2)
Moon Virus (Score:2)
While the chances are really remote, that dosent mean one should throw caution to the wind..
How funny? (Score:4, Insightful)
How funny? +5 Funny? +5 Stupid more like...
/. should have a new subject: pseudo-science (Score:3, Insightful)
an icon with Uri-Geller's face will do fine.
Apollo 11: Ants in the quarantine unit (Score:2)
The chances (Score:2)
was a million to one, he said
The chances of anything coming from Mars
was a million to one
but still, they come.
(From Jeff Wayne's musical adaptation of H.G. Wells story)
Extremely Unlikely (Score:2, Insightful)
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-
Why would this be dangerous? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The first disease from mars: Space hypochondria (Score:3, Funny)
Amazing discovery from Apollo 12 (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo12/A12_Ex
One of the astronauts on the mission later remarked that he considered it the most incredible discovery of the entire Apollo program.
Re:Amazing discovery from Apollo 12 (Score:4, Funny)
OK - just to be differents.. (Score:4, Funny)
Forget Terrorism, Americans! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This means only one thing (Score:2)
Was news item on the earlier probes. (Score:2)
I know they have thought of and done that in the past. I recall stories about the extreme efforts taken to disinfect the earlier Viking series mars landers before sendinng them. The dual concern was to avoid risk of earth life wiping out any mars life and false positives on the instruments that were attempting to detect mars bacteria.
That the article brought this up makes me think it's
Re:Not funny, sad. (Score:4, Funny)
For sure, we wouldn't want to hurt any of the native flora and fauna teeming across the fertile plains of Mars now would we.
Re:If slashot were FOX News (Score:5, Funny)