Earth Bacteria May Hitch A Ride To The Stars
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 22327 votes
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
Don't worry... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't worry... (Score:5, Funny)
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Beyond the obvious point that very few people urinate directly on their hands, the delivery device is often not sterile. Hand washing afterward is certainly recommended.
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Even if it were sterile in the bladder (which it isn't...otherwise there would be no such thing as a bladder infection), it wouldn't remain sterile as it passes through your plumbing and out of your body. Ask your doctor what kinds of critters they see in urine samples sometime.
Re:Don't worry... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't worry... (Score:5, Informative)
"What are the causes of UTI?
Normally, urine is sterile. It is usually free of bacteria, viruses, and fungi but does contain fluids, salts, and waste products. An infection occurs when tiny organisms, usually bacteria from the digestive tract, cling to the opening of the urethra and begin to multiply. The urethra is the tube that carries urine from the bladder to outside the body. Most infections arise from one type of bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), which normally lives in the colon."
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Re:Don't worry... (Score:4, Funny)
I should hope so. I rue the day my urine (possibility of a kidney stone not withstanding) comes out "solid." Ooof
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Justification? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Justification? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two thumbs down for cliched half-truths on this article.
-GiH
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It is not necessarily incorrect. If the probability is generally known but small, we can fairly safely extrapolate that to lots of planets and stars. However, vastness of space does not necessarily increase the likelyhood that say unicorns or fairies will exist somewhere. This is because we don't know the probability of those in the first place, and multiplying an unknown probability by a known expanse (the size and age of the universe) still gives you an unknown result. (Kinda like dealing with SQL nulls. One unknown factor "spoils" the results.)But there is no standard measurment of potential existence. A thing exists or it dosen't. The existence of things can be more or less plausible, but potentiality is immaterial to an instantiated system. There are a set number of stable configurations for matter. The combinations may seem inifinte, but that's just because they are a vast set - they can be named and numbered. They are not infinite. And the probability as proof thesis requires infinite instantiation to function.
Or to put it another way - if we live in a finite universe, then it has finite objects, and extrapolating from potential to probable fails.
-GiH
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-GiH
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Now, how many of those numbers are 7?
Infinite possibilities and all possibilities are very different things.
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Re:Justification? Sun must hit planet then right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Justification? Sun must hit planet then right? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Justification? (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, it doesn't take human launched stages to get bacteria from Earth to other planets. In fact, odds are, we've already had bacteria from Earth touch down alive on Titan [planetary.org]. The K-T dinosaur-killing impact alone launched about 600 million rocks from Earth into space. As we now know, Earth rocks tend to be infested with microorganisms, and most rocks that are ejected won't kill the bacteria on the inside (spalling has already been demonstrated to be gentle enough). The sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars bear the brunt of the impacts. Mercury and Mars impacts are harsh, due to tenuous atmospheres. Venus impacts are more gentle, but obviously, Venus is a hellish inferno. However, Jupiter can eject fragments further, and that's where things get interesting. About 100 objects strike each Galilean satellite However, with their weak to nonexistent atmospheres, they hit very hard -- 8-40 km/s. You'd be lucky to have even proteins survive. However, Titan has a huge atmosphere, ideal for aerobraking. From this one impact, about 30 Earth meteorites hit Titan within a few million years. They enter the atmosphere at 5-20 km/s, brake, break into fragments, and the fragments hit the surface intact.
Summary:
"That's food for thought -- could Earth have seeded Titan with microbial life? If Gladman's simulations are correct, the material has definitely gotten there in the past. Gladman added, in conclusion, that "if you ever had atmospheres on any of the [presently] airless satellites, they could have acted as aerobrakes" just like Titan's would today."
Re:Justification? (Score:4, Informative)
Orbit capture is an extremely improbable event. In a pure two-body situation it can't happen at all: the approaching body will either hit the primary body or zing by it in a hyperbola. Something has to decelerate it during a critical period as it's arriving, and that means there has to be a third body in the right place at the right time. A wandering rocket would have to experience thousands of encounters to have a realistic probability of being captured in one.
rj
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. Thanks AC, you cleared up my confusion (expressed in my post just after yours) about how orbital capture works in a 3-body system.
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The problem I see with GP is that I don't think a multibody system would change the outcome of case (a). If the trave
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In a 3 body system, say a star, a planet, and the expended stage, the stage could possibly "reverse slingshot" with the planet. That is some momentum is transferred from stage to planet. The planet is barely affected but the stage could then enter an eccentric orbit.
It's also worth considering that in space, the stage and a star alone are not a pure 2 body system. Space, especially near a star is not a perfect vacuum. Drag could also possibly allow a capture into a VERY long orbit.
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Screaming (Score:4, Funny)
Think of the Xenomorphs, you insensitive clod! (Score:2)
Future S.O.S (Score:5, Funny)
Not looking forward to that letter (Score:5, Funny)
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And in 5 million years, will there be a new (Score:2)
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Counterattack! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Counterattack! (Score:5, Funny)
Can bacteria survive the re-entry temperature? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This rocket stages will _miss_ the next star in 40.000 years. They wont even get _close_ (i.e. a few AU) to one the next millions of years.
entropy is a bitch, and thats a long, long time.
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Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sera
Fools! (Score:2)
Just four.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's unlikely to just happen to pass through the "disk" around a star where the planets are at near parallel angle, more likely to come from "above" so to speak and hence unlikely to hit much - of course my understanding of astronomy approaches zero.
Not to mention sterilized by close encounters with a radiation source (like say a star)...
I doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
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As the ancient Greek said who could only dream of going to space: "Always upwards...."
I think, one day, our descendants will read such statements as, "space is just too big" and mildly smile....
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"hey, how condecending those ignorant fools were throwing around idiotic analogies!".
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I prefer:
"The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination."
RegardselFarto
towel? (Score:2, Funny)
Not A Worry (Score:5, Interesting)
But even if this is the case what's the big deal. The big reason we want to prevent contamination of mars and similar bodies is for our scientific interest (don't mess up our later experiments). If these organisms colonize some distant planet why is this a bad thing? Now some planet that didn't have any life at all now does. Maybe in a billion years it will evolve spaceships and explore the universe (hell maybe that's how we happened
Either life is common in the universe in which case we just foster a little bit of microbacterial competition (our diseases aren't going to infect complex multicellular aliens) or life is uncommon and we seed a planet with life that might not have otherwise had it. Either way whats the problem?
Blasphemy! (Score:2)
Gas Giants and Infections (Score:2)
But if it does hit a gas giant, it is fairly likely to survive because of the thick, fluffy atmosphere. I think hitting a gas giant is more likely than a star because anything entering a star's solar system will still likely have angular momentum and thus orbit the star. This is where Jupiter-like objects will snag it.
Now, it may be possible that once Jupiters are in
Um (Score:2)
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Trial By Fire (Score:2)
Not the place for this... (Score:2)
Look, it's just a random throwing-it-out-there speculation. That's what comments are for in Slashdot, surely - not actual stories!
[rant]
Too late now. (Score:2, Funny)
Oblig... (Score:2, Funny)
A debt owed to Columbia; (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A debt owed to Columbia; (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not suggesting than no organism can surive reentry, just that this isn't a valid precedent.
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I must have slipped into an universe with an alternate taxonomy...
The Earth sheds rocks... (Score:2)
By the way, they missed one. Pioneer 10 and 11 were identical spacecraft, both had upper stages that have left the solar syst
How about... (Score:2)
wishful thinking or just stupidity? (Score:2)
how did they come up with that?
thats like saying, am throwing up 4 balls in the air, am sure one of them will hit the moon.
space is curved, there are gravitational fields everywhere. chances are that the rockets would be locked in an orbit of some sort or crash somewhere due to the fields.
1.64 light years? (Score:3, Interesting)
Correction to article (Score:2)
Actually, the article is incorrect. Pioneer 11 will get within 1.65 light-years of the red dwarf AC+79 3888. That will happen sometime around 42,400 AD. Currently, it's about 16.6 light-years away from the sun.
Interestingly, by the time Pioneer 11 reaches AC+79 3888, the red dwarf will only be about 3 light-years away from us (as it's hurtling through space in our general direction).
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Chances and pipedreams (Score:2)
Now, let's be generous and say that this piece of space junk somehow gets into the gravity of one of aformentioned minuscle pieces of light. Let's take this almost improbable chance into account. Now our piece of space
Killing Cylons (Score:3, Funny)
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We may really be Martians (Score:4, Informative)
Some these all together and you can make a case for bacteria first evolving on Mars and then infecting earth through meteroic hitchhiking, this happening billions of years ago. then they evolved on Earth while Mars became hostile to life.
This, from Space.com? (Score:2)
The only way this improbable event will ever happen is if there was a nice cup of really hot tea powering those boosters.
Panspermia (Score:2)
Bacteria isn't really the matter, spores are a much greater threat to contaminating the rest of the universe and can happen easier than through space launches.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia [wikipedia.org]
Spores can survive in space for a fari amount of time as they are resistant to much of the radiation they might encounter there. Furthermore, is is supectec that they already are capable of floating in the air to the upper atmosphere and leaving earth's gravity well. If that is the case then we have been
DNA is thermodynamically unstable (Score:4, Informative)
How life came to earth - accidental (Score:2)
If you assume that other beings have intentionally or inadvertently sent objects into space then the likelyhood of spreading life surpases that of evolution from scratch.
As a gift from planet Ert, we sned you... (Score:2)
With out luck... (Score:2)
This article shouldn't have ever made it (Score:2)
Lucky Bacteria (Score:2)
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Being exposed to the near-vacuum of space for an extended period of time, aren't the bacteria likely to be "pulled apart" at the molecular level?
No, contrary to popular opinion, vacuum does not suck
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
No.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answe
Vacuums are basically harmless. There isn't much difference in the forces involved between being in a vacuum and being at twice ordinary Earth pressure. In fact, humans can survive being unprotected in space for short periods of time, with no permanant damage:
You will of course die if you don't get some oxygen fast. Don't even try holding your breath to get an extra few minutes - the pressure will damage them. Just let the air escape and hope for rescue.
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Isn't that what they call "a stranger"?
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-nB
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