Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: vaskidmark on May 23, 2014, 08:15:58 AM
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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/05/21/curiosity-rover-may-have-carried-bacterial-life-to-mars/#.U386Bs914TV
We humans are known to be pretty generous with our germs. Just as the transatlantic explorers of old unknowingly brought diseases with them to the so-called New World, it turns out NASA sent the Curiosity rover to Mars with its own germs — 377 strains of 65 bacteria species, to be exact, according to a recent analysis of swabs taken before the rover launched.
The discovery will go toward making future missions cleaner, as well as revealing a little more about the crazy stuff life can endure.
A Buggy Rover
Despite the rigorous scrubbing all NASA machinery gets before launching, it’s inevitable that some bacteria will persist. After Curiosity’s cleaning (which admittedly could have gone a little better) researchers swabbed the car-sized rover’s surfaces to see what bacteria they might have missed. And a few of the stowaways seem likely to have survived the trip to Mars. As a Nature News story puts it:
Most were related to the genus Bacillus. In the lab, scientists exposed the microbes to desiccation, UV exposure, cold and pH extremes. Nearly 11 percent of the 377 strains survived more than one of these severe conditions. Thirty-one per cent of the resistant bacteria did not form tough, protective spore coats; the researchers suspect that they used other biochemical means of protection, such as metabolic changes.
It's just continuing in the tradition of Columbus and all those other explorers, so what does it matter now?
So now not only will we be facing death rays, we're going to be covered in alien snot, too.
Way to go, Scientists!
Adding insult to injury - from a comment:
So: scientists analyzed swabs in 2013 or 2014 for a rocket launched in 2011. Very timely!"
Seems like these scientists could easily qualify to get jobs in the VA system.
stay safe.
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Terraforming mars is a really really cool idea... I hope it happens.
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It is not easy to sterilize things outside of an enclosed space. Sterilizing sensitive scientific rigs is extremely hard.
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I think I saw a couple aliens at Walmart the other day. :P
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OMG! There's life on Mars!
Now . . . .
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I'd of thought that eight and a half months of cold and radiation would've ...scoured(?)the bugs clean.
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Here little green fella, how about a nice fuzzy blanket?
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It is not easy to sterilize things outside of an enclosed space. Sterilizing sensitive scientific rigs is extremely hard.
And examination of the Hubble constant and the COBE and WMAP data show the universe is "open" too. So no luck there.
Sorry Berserkers.
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I'd of thought that eight and a half months of cold and radiation would've ...scoured(?)the bugs clean.
No, that will just mutate them so that when/if they return to Earth, we will have a Blob to deal with.
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Can we send grass seed, pigs and cows so when we finally get there we can have meat? To include bacon....
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Here little green fella, how about a nice fuzzy blanket?
Pointy. <wry grin>
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Here little green fella, how about a nice fuzzy blanket?
I larfed =D