5 ms·

maybe they were already there?

• metalmangler 2y ago
  unlikely anything that could survive a billion years of hard radiation,hard vacume, zero humidity, and wild temperature swings..... and then spring back to life is going to be instantly recognisable as "not from here".And as the sample return capsule was leaking asteroid dust everywhere when it landed, if it is alien, we are so fucked. There is a vanishingly small chance that life could endure space as a spore of some kind,but it would require bio mechanisms that are unknown, and as of yet, inconceavable. What it does point to, is just how tennatious life is here on earth and how easily it gets around,inside of our biosphere, and to the general problem of building truely hermetic capsules and seals,and handling protocalls. A related problem is the study of the element iron(fe), which in its purest form us the most expensive substance on earth. This is because iron will combine with almost anything, from any source, under any conditions, to the piont that, introducing any instrument or probe to actualy test the sample...contaminates it. So the study of pure iron, is exceptionaly challenging. Likely that the asteroid sample has been compromised just by the closing mechanism bieng jammed with asteroid dust, and it never realy sealed. The moon missions were plagued with dust and dust has disrupted operations on mars ,this would make 3 for 3.
  • AlotOfReading 2y ago
    Lab and semiconductor grade iron isn't notably expensive or difficult compared to other materials. It's just that there are few reasons to purify it beyond what's commonly available from supply houses, unlike more interesting materials like silicon or cesium.
• malfist 2y ago
  Article talks about it. Known Earth microbes. If it was already there it would have been something novel
  • Stevvo 2y ago
    They dismissed it as being from earth based on "Population statistics", not determining them to be known earth microbes.
    • tbrownaw 2y ago
      From clicking through to the study, that was counting the microbes over time, measuring the growth rate, and noticing that there would have been a lot more if they'd been there since the beginning.
  • K0balt 2y ago
    Unless panspermia is much more common than usually imagined. If much of the thousands of tons of extraterrestrial debris that falls to earth every year was teeming with microbes we might not easily tell the difference. But I very strongly suspect this is not the case.
• dredmorbius 2y ago
  Population statistics indicate that the microorganisms originated from terrestrial contamination during the sample preparation stage rather than being indigenous to the asteroid. From TFA.
• ngneer 2y ago
  Not sure why this was downvoted. First, it could have been written tongue in cheek. Second, this is a perfectly legitimate and admissible explanation, that must be ruled out. Maybe it is very easy or trivial to rule out, as attempted in another comment, but it is important to keep all options open for scientific rigor. I believe the fact that the first scan did not reveal such life is a strong indicator that these organisms were introduced later.
  • renewiltord 2y ago
    I think maybe the first step in this scientific rigor is to read the article. On the other hand, maybe scientific rigor is primarily in the amount of repetition of ideas already dismissed. Perhaps the most rigorous scientists simply repeat the same hypothesis unchanged when another of them finds evidence to dismiss it. I have heard tales of a truly scientific rigorous civilization. Every human there replicates every study. They’re currently confirming that using cutting rocks to tear flesh is advantageous to survival.
    • ngneer 2y ago
      I could not tell by the comment whether the article was read or not. I try to give the benefit of the doubt. Your sarcasm is hilarious, but you are attacking an argument I never made (i.e., strawman).