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Italian magazine claims Phoenix contaminated Mars with terrestrial bacteria
Juramike
post Sep 12 2008, 04:52 PM
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"those bacteria (if any) will freeze [maybe to death] once Heimdall crater will be covered in ice and Phoenix Lander entombed like a farao in a few feet of carbon dioxide." wink.gif


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marsophile
post Sep 22 2008, 04:37 PM
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The bacteria spores may survive a few million years until the next high obliquity period. At that point, conditions should become more favorable, and the bacteria may start to reproduce rapidly. So Mars may have been contaminated, but in slow motion for now...
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01101001
post Sep 22 2008, 06:09 PM
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QUOTE (marsophile @ Sep 22 2008, 09:37 AM) *
The bacteria spores may survive a few million years until the next high obliquity period. At that point, conditions should become more favorable, and the bacteria may start to reproduce rapidly.


... at which time, those revived bacteria might find their way to one of the thousands of human garbage dumps on Mars where they can meet up with long-lost relatives in the cozy confines of, say, a disposable diaper or half-eaten meal from a nearby fast-food place.
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Shaka
post Sep 22 2008, 09:17 PM
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cool.gif Get a load of the Kim Stanley Robinson-from-Hell! A regular "cock-eyed, rose-glasses optimist" ain't you!
A few million years of human evolution and we'll still have pooey Pampers and Big Macs!
I may throw up.


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My Grandpa goes to Mars every day and all I get are these lousy T-shirts!
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Guest_jumpjack_*
post Oct 2 2008, 07:26 AM
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QUOTE (gallen_53 @ Sep 3 2008, 07:31 PM) *
Your little critter must endure the following obstacles on the Martian surface :

1) low temperature
2) no liquid water because the atmospheric pressure is too low
3) strong oxidants like perchlorates
4) ionizing radiation, e.g. secondary cosmic rays and short wavelength ultraviolet

You can probably find some weird extremophile that could survive each of the above obstacles
but is there anything recognized as "life" that can survive all four?

I suspect not.

If life exists on Mars it would have to be deep under the surface (deep dark life metabolizing hydrogen).
I might add that a similiar argument could be invoked for life on Venus, i.e. it's deep under the surface.
However I doubt that we'll have the technology to detect Venusian life anytime soon.


I wonder if such a kind of life form could actually exist among the thin dust layer and the ice plate below: maybe the 10cm thick dust/sand layer could protect mircobes from ionizing radiation, and missing contact with air could prevent ice from sublimating upon temperature raising?
Maybe this can't happen near poles, but maybe at the equator a very thin melt ice layer could exist among dust layer and ice layer?
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