ISS Studies Show Bacteria From Earth Could Colonize Mars 103
As reported by Tech Times, research conducted aboard the ISS has shown that Earth bacteria
could survive the rigors of travel to Mars better than might be expected.
"Research into bacterial colonization on the red planet was not part of the plan to terraform the alien world ahead of human occupation. Instead, three teams investigated how to prevent microbes from Earth from hitching a ride to the red planet aboard spacecraft. It is nearly impossible to remove all biological contaminants from equipment headed to other planets. By better understanding what organisms can survive in space or on the surfaces of other worlds, mission planners can learn which forms of microscopic life to concentrate on during the sanitation process. 'If you are able to reduce the numbers to acceptable levels, a proxy for cleanliness, the assumption is that the life forms will not survive under harsh space conditions,' Kasthuri Venkateswaran of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of all three papers, said."
how long? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:how long? (Score:4, Insightful)
Forever, because terraforming Mars makes no sense.
Just think about it: Here on Earth, we put more and more plants under greenhouse because greenhouses are simply better for plant growth than the natural environment.
Any terraforming of Mars would not only take almost forever but would result in an Antarctica-like climate were you would still need greenhouses anyway. It just makes much more sense to skip the terraforming-part altogether and just use greenhouses without any terraforming.
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The greenhouses have waste products, like smoke. Where should these end up?
The sky would not stay clear enough to keep using greenhouses. The planet must have a way to stabilize itself as a huge waste-recycling plant / ecosystem.
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I have not done the math, but a good start might be slamming the mother of all comets into the planet to both blow most of the atmosphere away and to introduce a planet's worth of liquid water. Then dump massive amounts of engineered plankton on the planet to start fixing the CO2 and also start
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Venus and mars are hopeless for long-term Terraforming. Mars mostly lost its atmosphere due to solar wind ablation and Venus will lose its the same way eventually. No matter how established we ever got there, we'd have to live close to radiation shelters for the inevitable solar burps due to the same reason the atmospheres are doomed - no magnetophere to divert the solar wind around the atmosphere.
Adding more water to Venus would probably make the atmosphere worse and even if that managed to be cleared the
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The main problem is the solar wind, it consists of fast-moving particles that can give enough push to ions and atoms in the atmosphere to achieve escape velocity. But solar wind is very thin, so it's not like it'll be an immediate threat.
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Do not waste products from your greenhouse. There is NOTHING that comes from a greenhouse that is waste or you have been doing it WRONG.
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---
Keep the humans off of Mars, we will infect it. As long as we clean out bots we send there we should be able to get by with remote surfing the sands of Mars.
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Split the difference and send Yogurt cultures to Mars. It may not produce anything Earthlike, but, who could resist a YUMMY Red planet?
OK to leave a few bacteria (Score:2)
Everyone knows that sterile and almost sterile are close enough for government work.
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APK. APK. (Score:2)
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Won't you please just go away?
No. you're trolls and scum that need to be adjusted to getting a bit of what you dish out and can't take.
Could always file your complaints here:
info@start64.com
Or give him a call and ask him to fuck off... is it Peter Panisz, or Panisz Peter? Anyway, I'm guessing this is him...
http://website.informer.com/Pa... [informer.com]
Company: Panisz Peter
Address: Kossuth Lajos u. 51 Dunabogdany 2023 HU
Phone: +36.203367173
Fax: +36.203367173
2 most popular domains of this owner:
start64.com
android-x86.info
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But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:
Somebody needs to visit this dude - it's Guiliani Time!
Who are you? (Score:2)
But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:
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Oh but you haven't got any wings, sonny.
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Angels don't exist.
There are several angry baseball players outside that would like to have a word with you.
Article summary doesn't match article content (Score:5, Informative)
And article makes no such claim.
It says spores would survive to Mars, which isn't surprising.
Once there, then what?
No singificant amounts water, no source of nutrients to digest, no oxygen to convert sugar to energy. temperatures around -40 celsius, possibly toxic soil and atmospheric pressure low enough it might affect metabolism otherwise --- and little shielding from ultraviolet light (no ozone layer).
Article title is fun proof of what happens when someone with to no interest/education in science tries to interpret information and draw a conclusion.
Re: Article summary doesn't match article content (Score:2, Insightful)
The story is so recently stolen from the Reddit front page that it's still viewable there within a few "next page" clicks.
The real problem you're noticing is Dice and the hacks like timothy not giving a fuck about Slashdot, let alone education or science.
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A sad truth.
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like dropping naked people on the north pole and saying "go forth and multiply".
That sounds like my only chance!
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Nature can surprise you... Given an energy source and materials to make copies with (mostly, water) bacteria can do pretty impressive things, and moreso if one gets in a groove and spreads across a new planet without competition.
They can GET to Mars (Score:3)
Exactly.
The article says that they can GET to Mars... in ensporulated (inactive) form.
I can even believe that they can survive on Mars... in inactive form.
But can they metabolize and reproduce and spread once they get to Mars?? That's a lot harder. Mars is cold. Mars is dry. Mars is irradiated with UV.
I could imagine that some organisms that are simultaneously extreme cryophiles, and halophiles (any water that is liquid is going to be very saline) and also radiation tolerant might survive... but these o
Re:They can GET to Mars (Score:4, Informative)
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we just should infect mars with life and watch life do it's thing , it would find a way to survive and may be even invent new ways and form a new type of creatures in millions of years ! you don't have to gain any thing just find a way to infect it with life
What could possibly go wrong?
Re:Article summary doesn't match article content (Score:5, Insightful)
No singificant amounts water, no source of nutrients to digest, no oxygen to convert sugar to energy. temperatures around -40 celsius, possibly toxic soil and atmospheric pressure low enough it might affect metabolism otherwise --- and little shielding from ultraviolet light (no ozone layer).
And yet life lives here on earth under those conditions - middle of the desert, at the poles, thousands of feet under water.
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There's life that may well survive on Mars but what are the odds that it'll infect a spacecraft? Eventually we could send a cocktail of extremophiles and let nature do its thing but it would be nice to have a look around first.
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But we wouldnt be sending extremeophiles to Mars. They would be regular "goldilocks zone" contamination, like from someone's skin or a sneeze. These bacteria would not be adapted to Mars and would die instantly.
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Yes but are there any microbes that survive all of those in an active form at the same time? I don't disbelieve that some inactive microbes could essentially hibernate on Mars indefinitely. However certain conditions need to exist for those microbes to flourish.
The little critters near the thermal vents in the bottom of the ocean are pretty tough but ultraviolet light isn't something they've ever had to deal with and its unlikely they have any protection against it. Same with anything in antartica. They can
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Well, let's see.
There's some water at the martian poles.
Send a holder that can survive being plunged 10 feet into the martian surface shouldn't be hard.
LOTS of bacteria can survive, or even require, 0 oxygen - anerobic bacteria. I'm sure that a few of those can survive 1 or 2 other requirements of Mars.
Solvent (Score:2)
A basic "unit" of life on Earth is a "cell". A cell contains solvent (i.e. fluid).
Mars doesn't have the atmospheric pressure today to support most of the simple liquids available in any quantities in the universe.
Both water and ammonia would sublimate on Mars today ( solid evaporates directly to gas, skipping liquid phase like a block of carbon dioxide melting here on Earth) --- ammonia is sometimes
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Title of TFA = "Bacteria from Earth can easily colonize Mars"
And article makes no such claim.
Article title is fun proof of what happens when someone with to no interest/education in science tries to interpret information and draw a conclusion.
You obviously know nothing about writing headlines.
https://www.arcamax.com/thefun... [arcamax.com]
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We know that life arose on Earth pretty much as soon as the ocean formed, and there's
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Be nice to have a look around first. See if life has already migrated there or begun separately.
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How about cockroaches? (Score:3)
NASA May Put Greenhouse on Mars in 2021 (Score:2)
In other news:
NASA May Put Greenhouse on Mars in 2021
http://www.space.com/25767-nas... [space.com]