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Common yeast can survive Martian conditions

(phys.org)
90 points geox | 6 comments | 14 Oct 25 22:57 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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WalterBright ◴[22 Oct 25 23:40 UTC] No.45676543[source]▶
We should be dropping bags of extremophile organisms into the Martian atmosphere to get a start on terraforming it.
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ChuckMcM ◴[23 Oct 25 02:39 UTC] No.45677596[source]▶
Yeah, and you want to explain to future generations why we could have had a happy relationship with Mars but no, we gave it a really bad yeast infection and now it never wants us anywhere near it? Hmmm? :-)

I heard an interesting speculative talk about why we should be putting hard microbes on every planet and moon in our solar system because we'll probably cause an extinction event and perhaps the other celestial body could get a head start on evolving a better form of intelligence.

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rekenaut ◴[23 Oct 25 03:40 UTC] No.45677934[source]▶
Potentially a much greater filter is going from unicellular to multicellular life, no? If it likely took billions of years to get from unicellular to multicellular life on Earth, and only (hundreds of) millions of years to get to life that can conduct spaceflight, then perhaps microbes wouldn’t be the best way to attack this problem (I’m assuming you’re talking primarily about unicellular microbes, of course).
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ChuckMcM ◴[23 Oct 25 04:29 UTC] No.45678174[source]▶
Well in the talk the presenter was talking things like tardigrades which are multicellular. The challenge with tardigrades (and any multicellular life) is that you want it to be reproducing (and hence evolving) so it has to be able to do so under conditions on the body you drop it on too. Again, since the talk was speculative there were various speculative ideas such as ice penetrators to put them into the liquid under the ice of moons like Enceladus.

Evolvable being the key of course. Many, if not most, folks I've met in the scientific community are intensely opposed to this sort of open ended experimentation. NASA has a whole team that insures things we send to other bodies are not carrying any organisms (single cell or otherwise) for this very reason.

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1. palmotea ◴[23 Oct 25 05:04 UTC] No.45678309[source]▶
> Many, if not most, folks I've met in the scientific community are intensely opposed to this sort of open ended experimentation. NASA has a whole team that insures things we send to other bodies are not carrying any organisms (single cell or otherwise) for this very reason.

That's the scientific community being parochial and self-interested, though. Their priority is writing more papers, and if that means holding the rest of us back, they're fine with it.

Didn't Carl Sagan (in Cosmos?) or someone propose leaving all of Mars as a nature preserve for the benefit of any microbes that happen to live there? That's just wasting the closest, best off-planet colonization opportunity.

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2. arunabha ◴[23 Oct 25 05:49 UTC] No.45678559[source]▶
> That's the scientific community being parochial and self-interested, though. Their priority is writing more papers, and if that means holding the rest of us back, they're fine with it.

Is it? To me, this sounds awfully similar in construction to 'The devs are always worried about tech debt and architecture, but they just want to polish their resumes to hold back the product' speech we are prone to hear from PM/MBA types.

Why would you prefer to believe a random outsider's view (scientists are holding us back) over people who have built professional careers working in the field(a.k.a scientists)? Especially when you provide no evidence to back up your claims?

3. bayindirh ◴[23 Oct 25 07:44 UTC] No.45679291[source]▶
> colonization opportunity.

Some things are better left as-is. Not everything is up for grabs. Seeing the grappling effects of "seizing opportunities" on the Blue Marble and thinking that we can continue doing the same everywhere we can touch is...

telling.

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4. pfannkuchen ◴[23 Oct 25 09:39 UTC] No.45679994[source]▶
Spreading into new territory is a fundamental human instinct. It’s how we ended up being spread out across the entire planet. Tut tutting ain’t gonna change that, people are still going to follow the instinct. See: religion’s attempts to control sexual instincts in humans. We would at least need to respect the instinct and give it a robust outlet, not just expect people to suppress it for the good of… some rocks?
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5. bayindirh ◴[23 Oct 25 11:35 UTC] No.45680671{3}[source]▶
> for the good of… some rocks?

This is a perfect portrayal of what I'm talking about:

    - Forests: "some" trees.
    - Water bodies: "some" water.
    - Agricurtural land: "some" soil.
    - Causalities: "some" people.
    - Whole ecosystems: "a couple of" animals.
Minimizing our bad influence on our planet and wanting everything for oneself caused the problem we're currently in. Most humans know no moderation, and putting it out as "this is our instinct, innit? We can't do anything about it but to follow it, eh?" is the biggest continuous mistake we're doing as a species.

If we assume that we're the most advanced organism on this planet (which I doubt) which is meant to rule it once it for all (which I doubt), we shall do a hell of a better job of not burning it end to end and make it inhabitable for ourselves and everything else living on it.

This is shortsightedness, veiled as a god syndrome.

A god which cooks itself to death. For more money. A bitter irony.

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6. throwpoaster ◴[23 Oct 25 12:44 UTC] No.45681168{4}[source]▶
Space is big. Colonize colonize colonize!