Space Lichens

moon_monkey writes "According to a report lichens - a composite of algae and fungi - can survive in space for up to two weeks. An experiment carried out by the European Space Agency saw two species of lichen carried into orbit and then exposed to the vacuum of space for nearly 15 days. These are the most complex form of life now known to have survived prolonged exposure to space. The experiment adds weight to the theory of panspermia - that life could somehow be transported between planets."

At least two weeks, not up to.

[The Metahacker]

"Up to two weeks?"

No, "At *least* two weeks". They were exposed for 15 days and were unchanged.

Lichen and spores are sure durable; I wouldn't be surprised if they could survive basically indefinitely in a cold vacuum.

If it can survive 2 weeks in the vacuum of space..

[gg3po]

...how much better can this stuff fare in the thin atmosphere of Mars? Time to start terraforming!

Re:They needed space to test a vacuum?

[RoffleTheWaffle]

They likely brought it into space in order to determine whether or not it could survive not just in a vaccuum, but also under these conditions, all at the same time:

* Vaccuum. (Of course.)
* Assorted forms of radiation.
* Zero gravity.
* Extremes of temperature.

Those conditions tend not to support life from Earth, and so to see that lichen can indeed survive in space, if only for a short time, is astounding. Not only does this add weight to the panspermia theory, but it also could stand to change our take on the 'qualifications' for a habitable environment completely, raising questions such as, "Could it be possible for more complex organisms to actually thrive in space?"

I for one welcome our moldy overlords.

Re:Feasibility of Panspermia

[plover]

TFA says the layers are mineral based, and if there are enough layers I suppose the outer ones could ablate on reentry providing protection to the layers beneath. It's possible it would provide enough protection for some spores on the bottom most layers to survive.

What I've never understood about that theory, though, is how the life forms got off their home planet and onto an interstellar-bound rock.

composite!!?? COMPOSITE??!!!!!!

[acornboy]

geez you guys are supposed to be geeks, right? Well get the details right, that would be a symbiois not a composite! And i thought anything close to "symbiont" would warm the cockles of your geeky trekkie hearts...

Alien weapon systems

[The Infamous TommyD]

Didn't you see the amount of rock shooting off into space after the Death Star blew up Alderaan? Let's not forget all of the test shots they would have done before that.

Also, we can't forget that it could have been on pieces of the ringworld from Halo.

Two weeks is nothing

[pz]

Terrestrial bacteria were found to have survived for three years of lunar exposure. Apollo 12 Commander Pete Conrad who retrieved the camera from which these bacteria were cultured thinks this discovery is the, "most significant thing that we ever found," in the entire Apollo program.

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast01sep 98_1.htm [nasa.gov]

Re:panspermia

[ThankfulJosh]

I really can't believe that anyone takes panspermia seriously. They are saying it's too hard to believe that life originated here, so let's postulate that there's a more hospital place life could have originated. And that life somehow got ejected from its homeworld without being damaged. Then it traveled through empty, 2.3 kelvin or so space for millions, probably billions of years. It somehow stayed alive, or at least intact enough for its genetic material to survive. Then it entered the earth's atmosphere, necessarily at tens of thousands of miles per hour, and survived that, too. And it survived impact with the ground. Sounds about as plausible as spontaneous generation to me. But the possiblility of God actually existing is "ridiculous."

Solution: A gun with nearly unlimited ammo.

[Hlewagastir]

I would hazard to guess the odds of ejecta striking another planet at much worse than 1:1,000,000. Be that as it may, if I were given a gun that could shoot 1 billion bullets in the stadium, and I fired those bullets randomly while blindfolded, I would be very surprised Not to have hit the target a few decades later when I expended all of my bullets. Just the same with the example of a planet ejecting material over the millenia. It is highly unlikely for any one rock to hit anything, however the odds of one out of an astronomical number of rocks to hit another planet becomes significantly more plausible.