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Bacteria on the outside of the International Space Station
- api 9y agoI can't help but keep wondering if "life originated on Earth" might not be the last geocentrism. It's only speculation at this point but it's one I've harbored for many years. Part of this is because of how common we've found organic materials to be in the universe, and part of it comes from how poorly other geocentric ideas have fared.
- carapace 9y agoI'd love for this story to be true but it's almost certainly not, the bacteria must be terrestrial. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tersicoccus_phoenicis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tersicoccus_phoenicis "It has only been found in two spacecraft assembly clean room facilities..." Maybe it's not T. phoenicis but it's not ET. (However, if it somehow turns out to be alien, that seems to be to imply that interstellar space must be swarming with bacteria, yes? For the ISS to have encountered some already?)
- api 9y agoYou're probably right in this case, but as for the last part consider that the Earth is a gravity well and the ISS has been in space for a very long time. Earth is going to draw in particles and the ISS has had plenty of time to catch them.
- sitkack 9y agoThen shouldn't the Earth Moon Lagrange points have bacteria in them them as well? Or Geosync satellites? Plenty of places to look.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoSure, but we aren't holding to this form of biological geocentrism for no reason. We've never seen any definite proof of life on any other planets. Given that science is an evidence-based methodology, it makes sense that we would assume Earth-based life is the only model of life until proven otherwise.
- jackmott 9y agoif we wanted to be perfect logicians we would assume neither but believe the geocentric case to be a likely possibility.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y agoIf we want to be perfect logicians, then there is no reality or absolute truth in anything, but that's just a bit pedantic IMO ;) Conclusions at some point need to be made to progress.
- mikeash 9y agoWanting to be perfect logicians is an oxymoron, as there is no perfectly logical reason to want to be one!
- triangleman 9y agoHi jackmott FYI you are "hellbanned" which means nobody can see your comments. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The mods on this site are overly strict and quick to employ such a harsh tactic, IMO.
- tgb 9y agoIt's worth noting that geocentrism wasn't held onto for no reason either. At least the ancient Greeks had solid logical reasons for believing it: if the Earth orbited the sun, then there would be parallax visible between the stars since the Earth's position among the stars is changing throughout the year. Yet, there is none. Therefore the Earth is fixed in space. The error of course is that the stars are really unimaginably far away and hence there is parallax but it's practically indiscernible. The Greeks thought the stars being that far away was the less likely answer to the apparent lack of parallax than the Earth simply being the center of the solar system.
- lancebeet 9y agoThis theory is called panspermia for those who are interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
- reubenswartz 9y agoThere are plausible theories about how life arose on Earth. If you want to assume it came from somewhere else, you either have to invoke some kind of magic, or assume it happened somewhat along the lines that it would have done on Earth, then arrived somehow. It just kicks the can down the road without solving anything, IMO.
- swift 9y agoThe hypothesis that life on Earth originated elsewhere is somewhat independent of abiogenesis, really. At least in my experience, most supporters of the former also support the latter.
- avian 9y ago> It just kicks the can down the road without solving anything Panspermia is an attempt to explain one inconsistency in our observations so far: it appears that life spontaneously emerging from inorganics is hugely unlikely. On other hand, geological records show that life appeared on Earth very soon after it became viable. If life on Earth originated somewhere else, then this discrepancy can be made to disappear. For example, abiogenesis only needs to arise once within a large radius around Earth and within a much broader time margin. Hence it can be a very rare event while still not making early life on Earth a unique event in the universe. I don't personally believe panspermia is likely. But it is a valid theory (although without much supporting evidence as far as I know).
- reubenswartz 9y agoIt's certainly a valid hypothesis. And stronger (any?) evidence for possible life on Mars or Venus would possibly support this. With a sample size of 1, and loose record-keeping from ~4B years ago, it's hard to tell, but we don't really know if it took life 1 day or 500M years to evolve once it was chemically/geologically viable. We do know that life was very primitive for > 1B years (not even eukaryotic, let alone multicellular). We also know that space isn't teaming with little biologically active spores from other worlds (unless it is and the government is covering it up, of course), which suggests that in the vastness of space, life doesn't really hitch rides on asteroids or comets and colonize the galaxy accidentally. And if some beings were doing this on purpose, why not send more advanced life forms or robots?
- yosito 9y agoSounds slightly surprising, but the exterior of the ISS is not a sterile environment. There are thousands of ways terrestrial bacteria could have ended up there. I guess the interesting thing is that the bacteria seem to be able to survive the extreme environment. But that's hardly a new discovery about bacteria.
- agumonkey 9y agoWhat's there around ? solar rays for sure. Enough gazeous particules ? but that's it isn't it ?
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoMaybe it's a matter of time? I mean, there's quite a bit of UV from the Sun baking that surface every day. Perhaps those bacteria would eventually die if they are not being replenished from somewhere.
- askvictor 9y agoHere are some rough calculations on the matter: https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/
- QAPereo 9y agoRemember that human feces ended up in orbit, although not from recent sources.
- godelski 9y agoThis is CLEARLY clickbait. Why is this on the front page of HN? It is currently ranked #7!! Article tldr: There's bacteria on the outside of the ISS. We've found some before and this isn't new. BUT THIS TIME IT MIGHT BE ALIEN!!! Why? Well... because it COULD be.
- marze 9y agoUnlikely to be ET, but deserving of careful study. All extreme life is interesting.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoThe suggestion that the bacteria is extraterrestrial in origin is absolutely ridiculous. Much, much, much more research is necessary before such a claim can be made. The speculation on Shkaplerov's part is hugely unprofessional.
- antonvs 9y agoShkaplerov appears to be a very accomplished pilot - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Shkaplerov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Shkaplerov. It's not clear why anyone would pay attention to his claims about exobiology. The journalism is unprofessional, too, although that's not news.
- douglaswlance 9y agoThat's how you get the clicks bro.
- alexanderstears 9y agoI wonder if there's a translation issue here? bacteria that spawned on the ISS' exterior would be extraterrestrial but not alien.
- CodeTheInternet 9y agoCouldn't this simply be from an astronaut sneezing on a glove prior to a spacewalk, then grabbing a handrail? We already know about water bears that can survive in space, so why not bacteria.
- joshvm 9y agoPretty much - even opening the air lock will do it. > The former cosmonaut, who spent nearly a year in orbit back in the 1980s, said that outer surface of ISS is “heavily contaminated” by the waste products from engines of the arriving spacecraft, atmospheric discharges from the station during spacewalks by the crew and other factors. https://www.rt.com/news/181472-iss-marine-plankton-space/ https://www.rt.com/news/181472-iss-marine-plankton-space/ There is also evidence that bacteria get carried up on air currents and the ISS orbits low enough that it can intercept this stuff. (note that while this is widely reported, there doesn't seem to be anything actually published, and the air current theory is, well, a theory). There are several papers on interior contamination though, e.g http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0923250805002627 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0923250805...
- hgdsraj 9y agoWhat if it is extraterrestrial in origin but also exists on earth (originally coming from elsewhere)? How would they know the difference then?
- antonvs 9y agoIf the alien organism originally evolved independently of life on Earth, then analyzing its genetic material - its equivalent of DNA - would tell us a lot. We haven't yet found any organisms on Earth that have evolved independently, so an organism found in space that has a different genetic structure from Earth life would be a good bet for being alien in origin. An alternative, albeit unlikely, possibility is that Earth life was originally seeded from somewhere else - panspermia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia. In that case, Earth life and (some) alien life would have a common origin, and we'd have to examine the differences in its DNA to find out more about its history. Even in that case, it ought to be possible to determine that the organism had branched off from Earth life long enough ago to make it a candidate for alien life.
- wil421 9y agoIf comets supposedly brought us water why not life? I just read an article yesterday about an asteroid from another solar system[1]. Maybe there was a Prometheus-esque comet with some single celled life in it. [1]http://time.com/5033026/mysterious-object-confirmed-another-solar-system/ http://time.com/5033026/mysterious-object-confirmed-another-...
- antonvs 9y agoIs is possible? Yes. Is it likely compared to the alternative? No. Comets are theorized to have brought us water from within the solar system, so the comparison doesn't really apply unless life evolved in our solar system but somewhere other than Earth. Here's some of what has to happen for life to cross naturally between planets in different solar systems: 0. Life evolves somewhere else 1. Somehow, some of that life ends up on an asteroid heading out of that solar system. The mechanism for this is pretty iffy. In the case of the ISS, we took those bacteria with when we launched, and they still haven't left Earth's gravity well. 2. That life survives the multi-millennia trip to another solar system, on an airless rock exposed to interstellar radiation for millennia. 3. The asteroid with life on it happens to hit a planet that can support that life. 4. The life isn't all destroyed in the blazing fireball caused by its descent through an atmosphere. Each of those events has a probability, most of which are very low. To get the probability of the overall chain of events, multiply all the probabilities together, giving a much lower probability. For life to evolve on Earth, all that's needed is step 0. Therefore, without even trying to assign actual numbers, we can see that the probability of life having originally evolved on Earth is far higher than it having come from somewhere else.
- sgt101 9y agoThe Independent was a great newspaper, but it collapsed some years ago and the website is just baloney.
- guilamu 9y agoGuys, come on, this is The Independent...
- GrumpyNl 9y agoAnd this is how we bring live to other planets. These bacteria will survive somewhere on a planet.
- dustfinger 9y agoEarlier this year, Russian scientists announced that the "Test" experiments had found a range of different organisms that had been brought up from Earth and seemed to be surviving by clinging onto the ISS's hull. The above quote from the article suggests to me that there is a good chance that some of the bacteria remained on the hull long after the experiments performed by the Russians earlier that year.
- greggarious 9y agoDoesn't the ISS blast human excrement out into space? Maybe that explains the bacteria ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- johnhenry 9y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/bridaineparnell/2015/09/15/pooping-stars-nasa-reveals-what-happens-to-human-waste-aboard-the-iss/#69947bfe2b09 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridaineparnell/2015/09/15/poop...
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoActually, they ship it down to Earth during the resupply missions.
- greggarious 9y agoMy bad, I may be crossing some wires and thinking of certain trains.
- johnhenry 9y agoI am by no means an expert, but I linked to an article above that indicates that you were right all along. Specifically "... is ejected from the station and burns ..." though there isn't much else to support for this.
- Spare_account 9y agoI'm getting conflicting information from NASA on this. According to the first link (PDF, sorry), waste is disposed of in re-entry craft. But according to the second link, it's ejected to burn up in the atmosphere. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/issrdc_2013-07-17-1600_carrasquillo2013.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/issrdc_2013-0... https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/infographic_yearinspace https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/inf...
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- otakucode 9y agoCulture it, fill a probe full of canisters of the bacteria, and fire them directly at Europa. Spreading life should be of more importance than preserving the absurd idea of "pristine" environments for the selfish reasons of future scientists not wanting to do 4 minutes extra work determining whether the thing they observe occurred before or after human action changed things (as if such a distinction actually matters in the slightest).
- cup-of-tea 9y agoWhy Europa? Why would you want to introduce a foreign bacteria that could potentially wipe out any possible life there? Why is spreading life important?
- m3kw9 9y agoAny type of leak can contribute to this bacteria. Maybe there is some benign bacteria that was stuck on the outside from earth that will thrive in such environment
- JoeDaDude 9y agoThere are a handful of scientists attempting to collect life forms from very high altitudes using balloons. In one instance [1] they discovered UV resistant bacteria. Could it be remotely possible that high altitude species have managed to live on the ISS? [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318094642.h...
- ReedJessen 9y agoSo... You found bacteria on your swab while orbiting the largest and only known source of bacteria in the universe and you think it might not be from that largest and only known source of bacteria? Bah! click bait...
- sempron64 9y agoIf bacteria have survived on the surface of the ISS, I wonder what we have introduced to the Moon and Mars (and maybe Venus!) on landers. Perhaps they'll be covered in a biome soon.