What is Digg?88 Comments
- Crimsoneer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+85More likely, we are creating future life...a far more interesting idea.
- Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+66There is no chance of the bacteria surviving to hit extrasolar planets.
1) Only bacterial spores survive the vacuum and cold; actively growing bacteria are killed. Pretty much all the bacteria deposited on those stages will have been in actively growing phase, and most wont even have been capable of forming spores.
2) The spore is effectively dead - it has no metabolism even though it can start up metabolism again if favorable conditions return - this is part of the reason why spores are so resistant to adverse environmental conditions. This also means it is incapable of repairing damage to its DNA, and every second it's in open space it's hit by hard, DNA-shattering, radiation.
3) The travel time to the nearest star is in the billions-of-years range.
4) There are far fewer planets suitable for life than there are stars or planets unsuitable for life.
5) In the unlikely event of the stage hitting a suitable planet, it'll likely burn up.
So... we have a small number of rocket stages carrying a small number of spores for a billion years or so in hard vacuum and hard radiation, thoroughly destroying their DNA, before burning up on entry of what in all probability will be a gas giant or a star.
The "do not hit Solar planets" rule was good, though - spores quite possibly could survive long enough to hit, say, the jovian moon Europa - the best bet for life outside Earth. Hitting Europa with unsterile debris would be really, really, disastrous, as it would make suspect any findings there (once we stop pissing about with our dead rock of a moon and start exploring the interesting places in our solar system). - TopBanana, on 10/12/2007, -1/+61I'm picturing an alien civilization stumped by how these little creatures could build a spacecraft
- Quellman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+55It's nice to know we are fighting possible alien life with biological warfare.
Think of what aliens don't know about cooties for example. - PATSCRU, on 10/12/2007, -1/+35launching preemptive strikes against yet undiscovered alien life.
watch yer backs, milky way dwellers, Earth is asserting it's dominance. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22why would the lower stages be sterilized and not the upper stages?
- CaptMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21Voyager 1 will pass within 1.7 light years of a star in... 40,000 years. And it's still 1.7 light years away, if and when it crashes into anything will be much much later. It's unlikely that humans will still be around by the time it crashes into anything (something might be around... but I don't think our descendants will be very human-like by then). It would almost certainly be a star that it crashes into, because a it's incredibly unlikely that smaller body with far less gravity would be able to pull it into orbit, much less cause it to crash into it. People seem to think of planets as being "big" but don't realize that 99.86% of the mass of our star system is in the sun. Most of space is just that, space with nothing in it. Hitting a planet with your probe would be like hitting another golf ball in the air with your golf ball by random chance... multiplied by a billion or so. If we are still around by then, we probably will have mastered some way of getting around the universe faster and we could probably even go collect it before a piece of extremely ancient history burns up.
- f4nt0m4s, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22We should start sending real bacteria, like George Bush and Rossie O'Donnell, light years away. Or we can just send them to the sun. Either way...
10 dollars says we win more intergalactic wars by deploying O'Donnell on an alien planet instead of bacteria. - basket548, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Kind of a reverse Andromeda Strain?
- lysdexia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17"4) There are far fewer planets suitable for life than there are stars or planets unsuitable for life."
That's quite an assumption given that our technology to date, metaphorically speaking, allows us to see approximately to the end of the garden path from the front door. Or less.
For all we know the universe is positively teeming with planets sustaining life in ways we cannot begin to understand. - threemonkeydust, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Fail.
- Mu99ins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Chances are exceedingly slim those bacteria will ever succeed in colonizing anywhere.
Space is a big place, and generally hostile to life. Those bacteria won't the be only
bacteria zooming around haphazardly in space, and if by some miracle, they did colonize
somewhere in the distant future, life on planet Earth will have probably been exterminated
by natural causes. In which case, those bacteria should be cheered on. Good luck little buddies. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14I for one, welcome our new space bacteria overlords when they return.
- coolwalking, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19@ linkedlist
300 years? You do know the film "Evolution" was not an accurate depiction of the speed of evolution, right? - jonathantneal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11So, what I heard you saying is that if the radiation mutates the bacteria and then somehow it resists the extremities of inner and outer space weather, then we've basically doomed anyone who comes in its way. :)
- wiirdo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Uranus is full of E. coli anyways.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1010 dollars that's it? don't tease Rosie like that.. she can get a lot from the dollar menu with a $10 bill.
- MacParrot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Good news everybody!
That joke is so tired and fortunately the planet's name will one day be changed to avoid all that. The new name will be Urectum (Futurama rules!) - swiftekho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7But then again everything is so spread out in space, what are the odds that this used rocket lands somewhere where it can do harm?
Not to mention, anything it does hit (if it does) outside of our solar system will be out of our life time - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"3) The travel time to the nearest star is in the billions-of-years range."
uh, this point for one is wrong -- it's 40'000 years away from passing relatively close to its first star - directedition, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Should we start getting the theory that life on earth was planted by a crashing rocket stage from an alien world? Anyway, good to know the seeds of Earth will survive in space, eventually hitting something, hopefully, in about a trillion years.
- EBFoxbat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9They didn't die on the way up. They mutated. They evolved. They're pissed and on their way back home. Andromeda Strain II in theaters July 2007.
- codmate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Tardigrades will one day RULE THE UNIVERSE!
- notcarsondaly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Ugh, Battlestar Galaxative...
This is more like the poor man's Genesis Project. - diggsIt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Somebody, borrowed their only ladder.
- davesbrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4In a few millions years, long after our species has killed itself off and we're dust, on a distant planet on the outer region of our solar system, a human like species will be debating where the origins of life came from.
- justice7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"B. Life is common on Earth-like planets throughout the universe, arising on at least 1 out of every 1000 Earth-Like planets"
We know this as fact? LOL - drewish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"A. Earth-like planets are common in the universe, happening on at least 1 out of every 1000 stars."
Interesting... i was under the impression stars were superheated balls of burning gas and such... Dont know that those can sustain life. - willmod, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Nearest star is not billion of years travel away. With ion-thrusters, Nasa's deep space one would get there in thousands! Still useless though
- wageslaven, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5No one cares about your private life.
- HotMovies, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4A moment of silence for the alien crew that investigates the ancient relic zipping through their solar system.
- PFinn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4what if this is how we evolved here on earth.....a dying civilization somewhere far far away billions of years ago sent bacteria out into space in the hopes that it would find a home
- radio1mike, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Great post!
- alky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4No kidding. The argument goes something like:
IF the bacteria survive the million-year-long trip and
IF they ever hit something and
IF it happens to be habitable to the bacteria (not a star or a comet or an asteroid or ...) and
IF the bacteria survive re-entry at interstellar speeds and
THEN ... you know what, this is so unlikely there's no reason to talk about it at all - ryodoan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4No, that is just what you do on a friday night.
- tablatronix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3hah, we should be doing this ***** on purpose. Shoot dna out in all directions.
- answer42, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@transitions
Whoaaa. What if...what if that already happened? Like, what if that was how life started on earth? Wow, man, pass me the bong dude. - rio197, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow, like it's not enough to pollute the earth already
- eliotmat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Maybe life on Earth was the result of something similar.
- thotpoizn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@topbanana: OK, I admit it: I LOL'd.
- Nelka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Would something such as a water bear (Tardigrada) be able to survive such conditions? They are apparently resistant to radiation much more than humans are.
- dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"I think what linked is getting at is in the year 3000 morbar from omni perci 8 will come an invade us for sending him our diseases or canceling ally mcbeal?"
IT'S "JENNY MCNEAL," PUNY EARTH CREATURE! - animalmuther76, on 07/30/2008, -6/+8I think what linked is getting at is in the year 3000 morbar from omni perci 8 will come an invade us for sending him our diseases or canceling ally mcbeal?
- trollick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"The upper stages were not required to be sterilized"
I'd think that thousands of years in space will sterilize them better than we could possibly do it on earth anyway. - wageslaven, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Urectum? Damn near killed'em.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1What, you've never read The Big Space *****?
http://www.phpsolvent.com/wordpress/?page_id=388 - diggsIt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The rocket stages contain bacteria and Peter Frampton LPs (to show the ETs how advanced we are).
- nj10ii, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So in theory the odds of the bacteria surviving and colonizine are about the same as the idea of jacking off in a jar, shooting that into outerspace, hoping it crashes somewhere hospitable, and on entry the jar breaks open and the sperm is disciminated across the planet hoping that one or more spermy lands in a hospitable vagina and life begins again?
Lets try it, stranger things have happened right?
Would we be considered a virus of sort? Look at what this virus has done to this planet so far, the planet does have some natural defenses, Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornarados, floods, ect... to eridacate some of the virus but its not nearly enough., Think about it, WE are the ultimate virus. - PharmaPhool, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If you can make the following assumptions, there could be millions of these things floating around out there...
A. Earth-like planets are common in the universe, happening on at least 1 out of every 1000 stars.
B. Life is common on Earth-like planets throughout the universe, arising on at least 1 out of every 1000 Earth-Like planets
C. Intelligent life arises normally after half a billion years or so of multi-cellular life. Multicellular life is common at least 1 out of every 1000 Earth-Like planets that have life.
D. Intelligent life tries to become space-faring on 1 out of every 1000 civilizations.
E. 1 out of every 1000 civilizations that actually do become space-faring don't sterilize their rockets.
Apply those odds to the Milky Way alone and you have thousands and thousands of "infested" rocket stages floating around. Extend it to the galaxies and you have billions.
just sayin. Any space-junk lands in your backyard, squirt it with Lysol before picking it up. - wqwert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The scientologists were right!
-
Show 51 - 86 of 86 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is