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Microbes Found Preadapted for Life in Space


Microbes born on Earth are already pre-adapted for journeying through space, living in space, and not just surviving but flourishing in radioactive environments where they are continually exposed to radiation by ions similar to what might be encountered in a nebular cloud.

In 1958, physicists discovered clouds of bacteria, ranging from two million bacteria per cm3 and over 1 billion per quart, thriving in pools of radioactive waste directly exposed to ionizing radiation and radiation levels millions of times greater than could have ever before been experienced on this plane.

The world's first artificial nuclear reactor was not even built until 1942. Prior to the 1945, poisonous pools of radioactive waste did not even exist on Earth. And yet, over a dozen different species of microbe have inherited the genes which enable them to survive conditions which for the previous 4.5 billion years could have only been experienced in space. (These radiation-loving microbes include Deinococcus radiodurans, D. proteolyticus, D. radiopugnans, D. radiophilus, D. grandis, D. indicus, D. frigens, D. saxicola, D. marmola, D. geothermalis, D. murrayi).

Microbes from Earth are preadapted to surviving conditions which they have not encountered on this planet. Therefore, they must have inherited the genes which made survival in space possible; and this means these genes were acquired from microbes which had lived in space. It is this adaptation which made them the perfect vehicle for spreading the genetic seeds of life throughout the cosmos.

Proto-life and then microbial life has been forged in nebular clouds. Given the turbulent nature of these nebular clouds, however,  it might seem that life would be instantly destroyed unless provided some protection against the life-neutralizing hazards that would be encountered in a free-floating environment constantly exposed to conditions deadly to life. This protection would in fact be provided by the same stellar mechanisms which dispersed those elements necessary for the establishment of life. Not just the seeds of life, but the material for the creation of new stars and planets are dispersed by these powerful supernovas.

In a unique experiment on a galactic scale, millions of bacterial spores have been purposely exposed to space, to see how solar radiation affects them and the results supported the idea that not only could life have arrived on Earth on meteorites, but that considerable material has flowed between planets.

Closer to home, scientists have analyzed aerial dust samples collected by Charles Darwin and confirmed that microbes can travel across continents without the need for planes or trains - rather bacteria and fungi hitch-hike by attaching to dust particles. Their results clearly show that diverse microbes, including ascomycetes, and eubacteria can live for centuries and survive intercontinental travel.

In a paper published in Environmental Microbiology, Dr. Anna Gorbushina (Carl-von-Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany), Professor William Broughton (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and their colleagues analyzed dust samples collected by Charles Darwin and others almost 200 years ago.

Recent space-centric studies have shown that some rock-inhabiting organisms, known as "endoliths," might be able to survive a trip through space and a plunge through a planet's atmosphere to the surface. However, nobody knew whether these organisms could survive the initial trip into space.

Recently, an international team of researchers, led by Gerda Horneck of the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Cologne, Germany, selected a number of hardy microbes from Earth and tested their ability to hitchhike aboard rocks similar to Martian meteorites.

The organisms used in the study included bacterial endospores, endolithic cyanobacteria and lichens. This selection provided a wider range of organisms than in other studies performed to date, including not just simple bacteria but also more complex eukaryotic organisms.

The researchers looked at previous studies of Martian meteorites that provided information about the kinds of forces needed to eject rocks from a large planet. Using this data, the researchers developed a series of tests designed to simulate these pressures on the selected organisms.


"Our results enlarge the number of potential organisms that might be able to reseed a planetary surface after early very large impact events, and suggest that such a re-seeding scenario on a planetary surface is possible with diverse organisms," the researchers report.

In earlier experiments, Horneck  and her colleagues used the Russian Foton satellite to expose 50 million unprotected spores of the bacterium Bacillus Subtilis outside the satellite. UV radiation from the Sun killed nearly all of the spores, and did so even when the spores were confined under quartz.

To test if meteorites might protect bacteria on their journey through space, Horneck and her colleagues mixed samples of 50 million spores with particles of clay, red sandstone, Martian meteorite, or simulated Martian soil and made small lumps a centimeter in diameter. Between 10,000 and 100,000 spores of the original 50 million survived and when mixed with red sandstone, nearly all survived, suggesting that even meteorites a centimeter in diameter can carry life from one planet to another, if they completed the journey within a few years. In a rock a meter across, bacteria could probably survive for millions of years.

In a separate experiment, another team ran computer models of giant impacts like Chicxulub. In the simulations, millions of large boulders were ejected from the earth. About 30 boulders from each Earth impact even reached Titan, and they entered Titan’s atmosphere slower than most meteors hit Earth’s atmosphere. Big rocks from Earth have no doubt reached Enceladus, as well.

“That kind of entry should be no problem,” agreed Allan Treiman of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, quoted in New Scientist. Bacteria were found in wreckage of the shuttle Columbia when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. And Earthly lichen survived when exposed to the harsh environment of space.

The Daily Galaxy via  and journalofcosmology/com



Maybe thats cos they actually came from space originally

So there is life out there.

Interesting article, but I have to take issue with one of your underlying assumptions:


Not so. While we humans may not have figured out how to make fission work until just recently, ol' Ma Nature was running nuclear fission piles 2 billion years ago beneath the surface of Africa. Check this out:

Chances are there would have been ground water seeping through these natural nuclear piles. And since we pretty much always find life on Earth wherever we find water, even deep in the crust, it's safe to assume there was life living right near these natural nuclear reactors, being exposed to all sorts of wonderful radiation. Sounds like the perfect conditions for earthly microbes to develop radiation resistance.

But what about the impact findings? Why would microbes need to be able to survive a meteor impact?

Could be just a coincidence. A microbe doesn't need to be launched into space or crash into a planet in order to benefit from impact or pressure resistance. There are lots of things right here on earth that can crush and smash without leaving the gravity well. For instance, microbes living far beneath the earth's surface likely endure crushing pressure, if not constantly than at least occasionally. And hey - that's where (2 billion years ago) they would have encountered and adapted to radiation!

Sorry to say there may be a perfectly reasonable terrestrial explanation for for all this. No, this doesn't prove that life on earth didn't originate somewhere else and arrive here after traveling through space. But neither does a lack of evidence for terrestrial evolution of radiation resistance (or a lack of imagination in postulating the same) prove that life here began out there.

Even with the greatest stretch of the imagination possible,is hard to believe theres no life in space,all be it microbes.

The author isn't stating that life definately came from elsewhere. Such a statement would be guesswork and not scientific fact. Just the same as stating that life originated here.

It's interesting and highlights the possibility that life MAY have come from elsewhere, but it also highlights that life IS capable of migrating as such.

It would therefore be a reasonable assumption that microbial life exists elsewhere, purely based on it's adaptability and capacity to migrate.

With this information in mind, it highlights that any claim that life originated here is purely speculation, and equally improbable, based on personal belief rather than statistics or scientific fact.


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