
'Super bacteria' survives for three years outside space station [video] - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-54029521
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phobosanomaly
If you just want to read about the bug, this was pretty interesting:

Biology of extreme radiation resistance: the way of Deinococcus radiodurans. -
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3685888/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3685888/)

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thdrdt
About radiation: I once accidentally microwaved ants (trying to 'sterilize'
potting soil) but they survived. Turns out more people microwaved ants and
they found multiple reasons for their survival.

The main reasons are that they can transfer heat very easily and they do not
contain much water relative to their volume.

So there is probably a lot more life that can withstand extreme conditions.

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Apofis
You're forgetting the wavelength of microwaves.

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sidcool
Wow. This significantly increases the probability of microbial life on
Asteroids, and even Panspermia.

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dmix
3yrs (projected 8) vs potentially thousands, hundreds of thousands, etc for
interplanetary, or beyond, is still a ways to go.

Article mentions it would likely be buried in the rock though, so potentially
different environmental conditions?

The fact we've found >100 rocks from Mars on Earth from meteorites is pretty
cool though.

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jacquesm
That's true, but that's a 'half life' like situation. Start with a large
enough initial colony and there will be enough time to mutate for some
individuals to develop a new bag of tricks. At some initial fragment size
(say, a good chunk of a planet) you might end up with something that can make
it to the next star system and still be viable in some way.

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hoseja
We're talking about spores, no? Spores do not evolve.

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jacquesm
Spores have to get to the point where they can be spores. So the organisms
that give rise to the spores do evolve. And technically spores are still alive
(they are single cells, just better protected than normal cells and they don't
perform any reproductive activity while in their spore state).

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hbarka
From the NIH, raising the question of a cosmic origin

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7358766/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7358766/)

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lioeters
A far-fetched hypothesis, but I enjoyed the science-fiction-like imagination
and the facts used to support it.

> Both these enigmatic diseases make sense..under a Panspermia in-fall model
> and the evidence consistent with such a model is critically reviewed.

> ..an exceptionally bright fireball event was seen on October 11, 2019..[in]
> NE China.

> If a fragment of a fragile and loosely held carbonaceous meteorite carrying
> a cargo of trillions of viruses/bacteria and other primary source cells..,
> may have entered the mesosphere and stratosphere at high speed ~ 30 km/s,
> its outer, loosely-held envelope carrying a biological cargo may have got
> dispersed in the mesosphere stratosphere and troposphere.

> ..The possible link of sunspots with pandemics..is worthy of brief further
> discussion. The present cycle has seen the lowest minimum for well over a
> century.. Sunspot minima are associated with a weakening of the
> interplanetary magnetic field near the Earth, which in turn allows easy
> ingress of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) and electrically charged bacteria and
> viruses to the Earth.

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082349872349872
Conspiracy theory: _homo sapiens_ is just the result of a long-running
breeding program shepherded by a bacterial conspiracy whose aim is to colonise
the moon, and perhaps even mars?

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mrkstu
This seems to basically confirm the likelihood that Mars has been getting
living materials all along. And potentially the other way around[0].

[0]:[https://archive.fo/SGTma](https://archive.fo/SGTma)

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thdrdt
Do you think so? 3 years is not a very long time in space.

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olliej
What’s the temperature in outer space? The ones my wife uses for long term
storage of samples is -80C I think, and that’s good for years - but I guess
“good” in this case may just mean “dna remains that can be processed”

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cbanek
Temperature is a tricky concept in space, since you're in a vacuum and there's
not much of a medium to really transport heat energy between objects.
Therefore if you're in the light, it can heat you up. If you're in the shadow
of something (or the side facing away from the light), it can get cold. This
is why a lot of spaceships rotate to try and distribute the heat.

Also getting rid of heat is tricky, since there's no air to heat around you
(and therefore take the heat away from the object). You can also get rid of
heat by radiating it, so the ISS for example has radiators with big surface
area for getting rid of heat.

In space though, you're also at risk of things like cosmic rays which could
impact and destroy or damage DNA.

If you're far enough away from a star, it's a couple of degrees above absolute
zero, or about -270C.

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Chris2048
Did the bacteria still have food/sustenance? Did they hibernate?

I'm not sure in what kind of conditions they survived in space for 3 years.

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zxcb1
It is also worth considering the long-term evolution of microbial life in
these environments; the health of those aboard and risks of contamination on
return.

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estomagordo
So what? I've lived for much longer than that outside the space station and
I'm okay.

