[X] My Assistant

[Paolo Amoroso]

I have just read a short story by Alex Saragosa published on issue 1067 (29 Aug 2008, pag. 61) of the italian magazine "il venerdì", a Friday supplement of the major national newspaper la repubblica. The story, titled "I batteri terrestri hanno invaso il pianeta rosso" (terrestrial bacteria have invaded the red planet), claims a group of JPL bilogists analyzed samples from the room where Phoenix was assembled and found 26,000 bacterial cells per square meter from 100 different species, including highly radiation resistant Bacillus pumilis. According to the story, these bacteria may have survived the trip to Mars.

I have never heard anything similar from reliable sources (i.e. anything but la Repubblica) . Any info?


Paolo Amoroso

[dvandorn]

No, Mike -- feasibility, by definition, is a projection of what is not only possible but actually achievable, based on your best information. Once something happens, feasibility is a dead concept for that phenomenon.

As for life processes, we're going to have to start thinking outside of the box in order to make any major progress in this area, I think. Life sciences are (rather necessarily) very terro-centric right now. For example, even our Martian life experiments all look for organic compounds, and if we don't find any, we state assuredly that there is no possibility of extant life.

Instead of making the (almost definitely false) assumption that any and all life forms in the universe will *always* be made of what we recognize as organic compounds, that it will *all* be powered by ADP-ATP chemical reactions, and that it *all* will require liquid water and free oxygen to become abundant, maybe we need to start asking things like:

What alternative chemical engines to ADP-ATP can be successfully hypothesized?

What other compounds than classic organic compounds could support life processes? Does silicon have enough chemical reactivity to produce living tissues? Does sulphur?

Completely regardless of its chemical composition, what do life processes *do* that we can identify from probes? *Must* it respirate oxygen? *Must* its internal tissues be water-rich? *Must* it reproduce, and how often?

I know some people have been trying to address these issues for decades -- and yet, we still see Mars probes that are designed to look for organic compounds, on the theory that life *must* incorporate the same compounds it does on Earth.

I personally think that one of the first non-terrestrial forms of life we will find will be composed of something other than organic compounds, and all of the textbooks will need immediate and thoroughgoing rewrites!



-the other Doug