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Science

An Earth Lifeform Suitable For Mars 23

Posted by timothy from the quick-let's-bring-some-up-there dept.
selectspec writes: "The nytimes is reporting on the discovery of a thermal vent-dwelling organism that thrives on hydrogen in an oxygen and sunlight deprived environment. Scientists believe this organism could flurish in the harsh environments of Mars and Europa."
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An Earth Lifeform Suitable For Mars More

An Earth Lifeform Suitable For Mars

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  • if they actually tried to set up a minature colony of these organisms on Mars, and then a recover it a few years later. Too bad NASA would never receive funding for anything like that.
    • I wonder how cockroaches would fare.

      It would be interesting to draw up a list of pestilential vermin (i.e. roaches, fungi, moulds, dandylions, various beetles, etc) that are impossible to eliminate here on earth and analyze how they might do in the harsher clime of mars.
  • The BBC story on this was linked [slashdot.org] this morning. I suppose this doesn't quite count as a duplicate...
  • We don't have enough terrestrial difficulty with Biological Invaders [fundyforum.com], that we can't afford not to deliberately contaminate other planets!

    Really, this resides in that remarkable region of human hubris that lies between the rediculous and the irresponsible.

    Too bad Clarke's humming, black monolith isn't really around to nanny us.

    • Oh we would -so- be going nova right now. (ref: 3001).

      I'm sorry, but clarke has to be on crack when he thinks we could stop an AI such as that with a virus or 5,000. I mean, hell. If its going to emulate, i'd assume it's going to run it in a seperate domain. Then the worst that could happen is it gets a cold and turns a little grey.. right?

      I'm telling you, the last thing you need is a pissed off, uberpowerful monolith. I bet it was designed by a woman.
    • The scientist don't plan to put the organism there, they say that if this organism could live there, there could infact already be life on Mars or Europa.
    • I'm sorry, but we need to start colonizing other planets. Our whole economy and culture is based on growth, and we're running out of places to grow.

      The aborigenese of the south pacific isles used to leave "usefull" seeds on every deserted island they landed on. That way, if anyone else ever got there a few years later, they'd have something to eat or heal them there.

      Mars seems lifeless, so does europa. Lets start introducing life there, an that way when we're getting ready to move there, the terraforming job will already be well on its way.

      Its not like we've found precious ecosystems we should protect! They seem lifeless! Barren! If there are life-forsm there, they aren't thriving, maybe a competitor or two would do 'em good. Maybe they'll eat the things we send there and it'll jump-start the ecosystem!

      Survival of the fittest.
  • They've finally discovered : (drumroll) DUST!

    Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.
  • Is there an areologist in the house [slashdot.org]? This is your last chance to step forward for at least 4 hours, or until another editor wakes up and reads the post queue before checking the dailys/weeklies, if so.

  • rats (Score:2)

    by Perdo ( 151843 )
    Introduce rats.
    Then cats to kill the rats.
    Snakes to kill the cats.
    Mongoose to kill the snakes.

    Use terestrial bacteria to terraform mars to make it fit for... nothing.
  • No one is talking about introducing this or any other organism to Mars in this article - it is simply making the point that life can be found in a wide variety of habitats where we might not know to look for it. Stringent protocols are in place to prevent the spread of Terran microbes to other planets.

    Life might be present on Mars under the ice caps or deep underground in a geothermal "Eden", and could thrive in a hypothetical Europan sea. Some of these environmental conditions (subzero ice) are present on Earth - by studying them, we learn what to look for, an important step if we send robotic or manned missions.

    I for one would like to see a serious program of robotic exploration of Mars and Europa as a precursor to manned missions there. Researching extreme conditions on Earth is a step in the right direction.
  • And I think people should open their wallets and start spending a bit of money on getting them there. I mean, of course, humans.
  • In some scifi novel there was an idea about terraforming Venus with a strain of bacteria / fungi, which might be capable of reversing the really massive greenhouse effect.


    I don't remember which novel it was, and whether this could be at all possible in practice.

    • The reason that we have never tried to terraform Venus is that we don't even know what the surface looks like, and it's environment is WAY to hostile for anything. The thing is a big HOT sulfer ball. Mars has relatively habitable temperatures. Given more greenhouse gases, it will be able to trap heat better, and make it easier for us to keep warm (we'd probably have to stay indoors on the dark side though). Yes, there are some bacteria that thrive on the hot sulfer gyesers, but if we don't even know what the surface of venus looks like, it's not worth the time and effort starting out with a completely new planet where we already have thousands of bits of more info about Mars.
  • This sounds like the begining of a bad sci-fi movie
  • They talked about this during a segment of Talk of the Nation Science Friday (on NPR) last week. It was a pretty interesting discussion. They also talked about how you could make a battery from some microbes, a fishtank, some mud, and graphite rods... pretty cool...

    Jan 18 TOTN [npr.org]
    (you can listen to it in RealAudio)

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