[meteorite-list] Electromagnetic Space Travel For Bugs?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Jul 24 16:53:41 2006
Message-ID: <200607242051.NAA10028_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9601-electromagnetic-space-travel-for-bugs.html

Electromagnetic space travel for bugs?
David L Chandler
New Scientist
July 21, 2006

Life on planets such as Earth or Mars could have been seeded by
electrically charged microbes from space, suggests a new study.

Since the discovery of meteorites from Mars on Earth in the 1990s,
people have speculated that living microbes could have travelled back
and forth between the two planets, perhaps allowing one planet to seed
the other with life.

The problem with this idea is that such a trip could only happen after a
huge asteroid collided with one of the planets, with an impact large
enough to blast rocks off the planet's surface, and such strikes are
extremely rare: just a handful are thought to have occurred since the
solar system formed.

However, a new study suggests there may be a much gentler and steadier
way for microbial life to leave a planet and travel to other worlds -
and even from one solar system to another, something even the biggest
impacts could not do.

The startling conclusion grew out of work by Tom Dehel, an electrical
engineer at the US Federal Aviation Administration, who was
investigating how electromagnetic fields in the Earth's atmosphere can
affect GPS satellites and disrupt their use for aircraft navigation. He
presented his findings at the biennial meeting of the international
Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), in Beijing, China, this week.

Dehel calculated the effect of electric fields at various levels in the
atmosphere on a bacterium that was carrying an electric charge. He
showed that such bacteria could easily be ejected from the Earth's
gravitational field by the same kind of electromagnetic fields that
generate auroras. And these fields occur every day, unlike the
extraordinarily large surface impacts needed to eject interplanetary
meteorites.

Near-vacuum

The measurements of field strength vary greatly at different levels of
the atmosphere - the strongest ones are near the surface, generated by
thunderstorms. There are large gaps where the fields have not been
measured directly, but assuming the fields extend through the whole air
column, there could be an ongoing, sustained process of lofting bacteria
high into the atmosphere.

Since the upward forces of the magnetic field would balance the force of
gravity for tiny organisms, they could float in the upper atmosphere for
years and reproduce there, giving them a chance to evolve capabilities
to endure the hardships of that environment, including coping with
strong UV and a near-vacuum. Such organisms would thus be well equipped
to endure the rigours of a journey through space, Dehel told New Scientist.

The idea that microbes could be electrically levitated into the upper
atmosphere was first suggested in 1908 by chemist Svante Arrhenius, but
until recently there had been no direct measurements of the strength of
electric fields high in the atmosphere to show whether the mechanism
would work to propel microbes away from the planet.

Other researchers have already demonstrated that some bacterial spores
can survive in conditions thought to exist in interplanetary space, and
then be revived. So the possibility of interplanetary spread of life is
plausible and deserves further investigation, Dehel believes.

Charged microbes could also be propelled outwards from a planet at high
speed by "magnetospheric plasmoids" - independent structures of plasma
and magnetic fields that can be swept away from the Earth's
magnetosphere. Hitching rides on these structures could accelerate
microbes to speeds capable of taking them out of the solar system and on
to the planets of other stars.

And because of the potential for a steady outflow of the particles
pushed by the electric fields, a single life-bearing world might seed an
entire galaxy with life, claims Dehel.
Received on Mon 24 Jul 2006 04:51:07 PM PDT