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How likely would it be that extraterrestrial microbes evolved for living in clouds would have just happened to evolve to also be pathogenic in humans?
by zaptrem 6y ago
How likely would it be that extraterrestrial microbes evolved for living in clouds would have just happened to evolve to also be pathogenic in humans?
- stupendousyappi 6y agoHow likely is it that a virus evolved for living in civet cats just happened to evolve to also be pathogenic in bats and humans?
- mullingitover 6y agoWe get infected by bird viruses all the time, and they're not even mammals. A virus that evolved in mammals infecting different types of mammals is very likely.
- rsynnott 6y agoQuite likely; we’re pretty closely related to those, and multiple species viruses show up all the time. It would be more surprising, though, to find a virus which was pathogenic to, say, both us and archaea, and any Venus life is probably more different to us than archaea are. A bacteria analogue is possibly more of a risk; those can be less fussy.
- aortega 6y agoNot likely, except if it were somehow, coerced to evolve, like, in a lab.
- lurquer 6y agoHow likely would it be that terrestrial immune systems evolved to fight Venusian microbes?
- Grangar 6y agoIt could be as simple as a microbe that eats an elementary molecule in our bodies that is so foreign our immune system can't spot it. No need to target us directly.