Bacteria From Beer Lasts 553 Days In Space 138
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."
FYI for Americans who may not know (Score:1, Informative)
This Beer only smells like piss.
Re:The trick... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Complication for mars missions? (Score:3, Informative)
cross contamination between planets happens a lot more than every few billion years. The rock they found in the arctic has only been on earth for a few thousand years.
Re:Complication for mars missions? (Score:3, Informative)
Pff, bacteria... (Score:4, Informative)
the hypothesis is called "panspermia" (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Complication for mars missions? (Score:2, Informative)
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%.
Well with coin flipping there can be huge variance on the 50-50 depending on the coin and how it is caught or where it lands. Here is an article [codingthewheel.com] I found about it that references some research into it.
Proofreading? (Score:4, Informative)
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!
origin and evolution are different issues (Score:3, Informative)
"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.
Re:Complication for mars missions? (Score:2, Informative)
Do we have to go over this again, retards?
I have two kids.
One is a boy.
What is the probability the other is a boy?
You, as an observer, are NOT guessing about the outcome of events. BB BG GB GG does not apply.
BB(1), BB(2), BG(1), GB(2) applies.
BB(1) = There are 2 boys and he revealed the first one.
You MUST consider the possible premutations of children AND the various options of revealing information.
The above 4 cases are the only cases which could be true in the given situation. BG(2), GB(1), GG(1), and GG(2) are not possible.
Count them up. 2 out of 4 cases involve 2 boys. 50%, as expected.
Information is being revealed to you - you may or may not be predicting genders of future children. You may or may have been told the gender of existing children. All you know is the possible permutations of 2 children and the piece of information given to you.
This case is NOT equivalent to "Given 2 children, given at least one is a boy, what are the odds both are boys?". The revealing of information about a set is NOT the same as stating given conditions. It does NOT matter if the revealed information and given conditions both result in the same exact subset of possibilities.