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What happens when we'd put some microbes there now?
by NanoWar 5y ago
What happens when we'd put some microbes there now?
- csunbird 5y agoWe probably have done this already, with the man made machines that we had sent. Although the NASA tries to sterilize the robots/rovers, I doubt that they can kill every bacteria and some of the bacteria are known to somehow survive when exposed to space as well.
- Thiez 5y agoEarth bacteria require liquid water (amongst other things). Thus far none of the rovers have landed in a lake, so it's unlikely that earth bacteria will be spreading any time soon.
- karmakaze 5y agoWhat's more important: knowing if Mars had/has life on it or having life on it?
- levosmetalo 5y agoI’m more concerned what happens when we bring some microbes from Mars.
- paulpauper 5y agothings that go to mars tend to stay there
- ceejayoz 5y agoThat's changing very soon. Perseverance's mission includes collecting and storing samples for a return mission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_sample-return_mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_sample-return_mission
- astroflask 5y agoAnd also things that have gone to Mars in the past have blasted off chunks of Mars into Earth.
- daveguy 5y agoAndromeda Strain makes a good story, but viruses and bacteria tend to evolve with their hosts and environment. It is unlikely that any virus or bacteria brought from mars would have a serious impact on humans or our environment. We probably aren't good hosts to something that's been evolving in martian conditions.
- agumonkey 5y agoInteresting, maybe they plan to never bring anything to Earth's surface .. maybe use ISS as an 'air gap'
- x86ARMsRace 5y agoI've been curious about this recently actually. What are the downsides of "seeding" a plant with life to study how it evolves?
- jakswa 5y agoThe fear I read is that we might be accidentally eradicating any life we don't yet know about, if we introduce life from earth.
- bouncycastle 5y agoDon't we already to this on Earth?
- ben_w 5y agoYes, but it’s not helpful for research.
- ben_w 5y agoMeans it’s hard to tell, if we find life there later, if that life was native or if we put it there.
- anikan_vader 5y agoIt becomes much more difficult to determine whether the planet contains indigenous life once you've introduced life from Earth.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoi think it's safe to assume it doesn't. And a few plants in a tiny section of mars will hardly ruin the evidence anyway.
- CardenB 5y agoWhat makes you think it’s safe to assume that Mars has no life?
- mr_toad 5y agoThey’d die. For some reason the ‘beneath its surface’ part of the headline got left off this submission. The surface of Mars is an anoxic toxic irradiated frozen desert.
- johnchristopher 5y agoMost likely we'd be able to determine they are from earth from their properties and from their locations and from their small numbers ?