[meteorite-list] Did Life Arrive Before the Solar

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu May 5 16:54:48 2005
Message-ID: <427A87F2.4738563A_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Ron, Marc, List,

    Oh, gosh, another Space Age myth bites the dust! So much for the moon-loving
streptococci! I took the account from several web sites found by Googling "surveyor
bacteria." Never trust a strange web site that offers you candy...

    The story of the Tardigrades in the Mars Jars, I read back in the Seventies, and
now my conscience (and compulsiveness) will compel me to dig through all my old
periodicals until I find it. The term "Mars Jars" is common. See:
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041129101229.htm>
    From NASA itself: <quote> Many common earthly micro-organisms can survive under
Martian conditions. Scientists have put samples of soil in containers called "Mars
jars", where the atmospheric temperature, composition, pressure and dryness are close
to those of Mars. Some of the micro-organisms in the samples always survive. <unquote>

    But the term does not originate with NASA's Viking program. Sagan mentioned the
notion in the Sixties and Von Braun in the Fifties. So, I will try to track down the
earliest Mars Jars and see if they have Tardigrades in them...

    Something in the back of my mind suggests the first Mars Jars may have been
constructed by Hubertus Strughold, the father of Space Medicine and the author of a
1953 book on Mars called "The Green and Red Planet." (Strughold, H. The Green and Red
Planet. Albuquerque, New Mexico: The University of New Mexico Press, 1953).

    The Panspermia theory has a really nice web site. Every theory should have a web
site.
<http://www.panspermia.org/>

    For some original speculations about life on Mars, try A. H. Treiman, "Thinking
About Life on Mars: Dangers and Visions", presented 20 March 1997, at the 28th Lunar
and Planetary Conference in Houston, Texas.
<http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc97/pdf/1433.PDF>

    Oh, and I was wrong about the size of Tardigrades which I gave as 200 microns.
Some of the really BIG ones get up to 500 microns long -- that's a gigantic half a
millimeter! They still look like Gummi Bears, though.

    Now, on to the quibbles.

    When I said UV radiation was rare, I was referring to interstellar space. Far
from any star, all light is scarce, and most of an interstellar journey will be far
from any stars.

    As for temperature, the chemical-eating critters that flourish in deep ocean vents
where the deep ocean pressure keep water liquid at high temperatures of 350-400
degrees C. It's not known yet whether the vent water contains organisms, but the
surrounding waters have bacteria that work up to 130 degrees C. So, I was jumping the
gun on the question of vent bacteria...

    Marc points out that "extremophiles live in environments that are extreme compared
to what we live in. They are still limited in what they can withstand, and all of
them still require water, an atmosphere, and protection from radiation." However, the
SEM chamber is the target of a electron beam cannon, not a duplicate of space
conditions.
    And, extremophiles are adapted to their particular extreme environment in as
limited a fashion as we are adapted to temperature climate, plentiful water, and
spring sunshine. All organism love what conditions they are suited to live under.
The question is not could a terrestrial extremophile of one specific kind or other
survive an interstellar trip, but is there an extremophile whose preferred extreme
environment is interstellar space? Is that possible? Could they exist?
    Oh, sure, once they float down into the atmosphere of a planet, they get spoiled
by all the soft living they find here and before you know it, they're not astronauts
like their multi-great-grandaddies were. These kids today...
    As for where they would exist, that's simple. In interstellar space. In other
words, are there Space Bacteria? There is a long list of organic molecules found in
interstellar molecular dust clouds, as Fred Hoyle loved to point out. Lunar soil
contains a low level of detectable porphyrins. Chlorophyll is a porphyrin. We don't
assume the Moon had plants, but that it accumulated from space. The Pathfinder
mission performed a chlorophyll detection search in the infra-red and found two small
patches near the lander that met the criteria for chlorophyll. Not proof, but
intriguing.
    I wouldn't be the first to suggest interstellar organisms; I'd be at the end of a
long line.

    But if Marc is right that "life arises just about every time that the conditions
are right... It is entirely conceivable to me that life arose on Mars and has
retreated deep into the crust, and that life exists on Europa." If there are three
places in the solar system with life, there are probably a few more we haven't got a
clue of (I like Titan), and if there's that much independently sourced life in our
system, it's probably the same in every similar system (about 20% of all stars?), then
our basic conclusions are functionally the same: The little buggers are everywhere!


Sterling K. Webb
----------------------------------------------------
Ron Baalke wrote:

> The Apollo 12 astronauts retrieved the Surveyor 3 camera and cables, threw them in
> a bag, and upon careful inspection up their return to Earth, they discovered
> bacteria in the camera. Since no quarantine efforts were made, the bacteria
> most likely came from inside the Apollo capsule or from the researchers
> inspecting the camera on Earth.
>
> Ron Baalke
> _____________
Received on Thu 05 May 2005 04:54:10 PM PDT