[meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life

[batkol]

can't help but think that when it comes to "life", we should appropriate 
Pascal's third wager, and always bet on it.  in whatever form, wherever we 
look, life, like faith,   manages.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <MexicoDoug at aol.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 2:23 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Meteorites as hosts for seeds of life


> Mark Fr. wrote:
>>To borrow from Jim Carrey, "Alrighty then!"...a  cautionary
>>tale about letting your hopes make a fool of your  reason.
>
> "Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ***."
> ...Jim Carrey
>
> Definitely no further comments (I already promised), let me  add another
> interesting topic for discussion:
>
> _Halosimplex carlsbadense_ " variation 250 million years old" dated to 
> the
> age of the "Great Dying", the worst documented extention in the Fossil 
> record
> "P/T Boundary".  Surviving the breakup of Pangea and riding the  plates of
> continental drift over 10,000 kilometers?  Chicxulub?, a minor  event at 
> the K/T
> Boundary when they were already 185 million years old...
>
> This is an interesting organism.  Google it for what is out there.  It is 
> not
> a living fossil.  It was revived.  Viable spores were  extracted 5-10 
> years
> ago from inside the similar sorts of halite crystals  found in certain
> meteorites we all know and love.  The probability of  contamination was 
> claimed to be
> less than 1 in a billion using the latest and  greatest protocols 
> developed by
> NASA.  Now, only 5% of the samples,  collected in the Permian salt 
> deposits
> in the drill samples from the New  Mexico caverns 600 meters below 
> actually
> contained viable spores in their  suspended, basically dead state.
>
> Although the news isn't hot off the press, they, in fact, were viable  and
> live once again today, according to their discoverer, long after going
> "extinct".  The genomes of these extremophiles and characteristics and 
> requirements
> are being/have been studied, and they turn out to be somewhat  different,
> though related to certain modern _Bacillus_, if my short term memory 
> serves.
>
> 250 million years is a long time, and we've seen since then exquisite
> "bottled water" meteorites being marketed shamelessly.  Probability of 
> transfer of
> these organisms from a world like Mars that dies during a quarter of  a
> billion years afterwards?  Would a small fraction  survive near  absolute 
> zero
> temperatures if frozen gently?  Is there anything magic about  250 million 
> years,
> or could it well have been 500 million?  I don't know,  they probably 
> don't
> have souls or other higher order complexities to worry  about and are 
> basically
> remarkable resilient bubbles formed into spores, but  maybe Sterling or 
> Mark
> knows the answer.
>
> Where life may be found and how it survives is one of the most difficult
> questions space scientists are wrestling to the limits. We can be pretty
> confident, though, that wherever water once was, and drys, halite crystals 
> are  hard
> to avoid.  A vacuum is only -14.7 pounds/in^2.  Could a bacterium  survive 
> in
> a 'halite crystal' from Mars to Earth?  Yes.  Exploding  bodies and so 
> forth
> may happen in the movies, but much greater pressures are  routinely 
> experienced
> by ocean divers right here on Earth.  All that is  required for recovery 
> is a
> gentle equilibration so they don't get the  bends.  The pressure under 
> just
> 10 meters of water is an additional 14.7  psi, the same differential 
> between
> the earth and space.  Sure vacuum has  its challenges, but a normal person
> sucking a lollypop can probably get at least  half way there (7 pounds per 
> square
> inch).
>
> Disclaimer:  I do not "want" to believe in Panspermia.  It is  just a 
> theory,
> like all the rest of the scientific ideas on origins and  proliferation of
> life.
>
> Best wishes, Doug
>
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