The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside • Hacker News Board

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#91

Post by perlgeek » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

adtac wrote: post #63

orbital-decay wrote: post #14

There's also another similar long-term experiment being performed on the International Space Station [0]. It's not finished yet but apparently preliminary results [1] suggest that microorganisms can possibly be lifted into the upper atmosphere from the oceans somehow. They found different planktonic species from all over the world on the outer surface of the space station, which is hard to explain by spacecraft conta…

Interesting. I wonder if some extreme events could have kicked up enough microorganisms that some even went to the moon! That would be a false positive for finding life on the moon.

We find rocks from the Moon and from Mars[0] on earth, and have reason to believe that small pieces of rock travel from most inner solar system bodies to most others.

I find it totally believable that some micro organisms could survive the ride on such rocks and possibly thrive on other bodies, if the environment is suitable.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#92

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #54

CydeWeys wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine though. Having a second home for humanity is more important than maximally preserving the ability to detect past life (note that we wouldn't be eliminating that ability, just hindering it somewhat). Also, we think we'd be able to tell pretty easily whether any life detected is from Earth (i.e. we brought it along with us). Life that isn't descended from the same tree of life as us is likely to be radicall…

Mars will never be able to be a "second home" for humanity: it lacks the ability to maintain an atmosphere that can support humans due to its weak magnetic field. The bottom of the ocean would be far more habitable if we faced any type of extinction event.

The lack of a magnetic field ablates away an atmosphere only on cosmic timescales, not human ones. That seems like a problem that could be solved with the benefit of thousands more years of technological development. Never say never. Just a hundred years ago many people argued it was impossible to ever leave the atmosphere of this planet (And it wasn't ... using cannon. The rocket solved that problem).

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#93

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #53

CydeWeys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, is this a threat or is it the unexpected boon of getting a jump-start on terraforming? If you could press a button and "contaminate" Mars with life that would start spreading and generating an oxygen atmosphere, wouldn't you?

> If you could press a button and "contaminate" Mars with life that would start spreading and generating an oxygen atmosphere, wouldn't you? No. Mars has a weak magnetic magnetic field which is incapable of containing an atmosphere that would support us. It also took Earth over 1 billion years for atmospheric oxygen to accumulate in significant amounts.

With active terraforming you could accumulate an atmosphere much more quickly than over the course of a billion years. We're currently adding a measurable amount of carbon dioxide to the Earth's atmosphere every year, which isn't great here, but would help tremendously to terraform Mars.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#94

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #35

CydeWeys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, is this a threat or is it the unexpected boon of getting a jump-start on terraforming? If you could press a button and "contaminate" Mars with life that would start spreading and generating an oxygen atmosphere, wouldn't you?

Probably not. We don’t know how that would affect other planets in our solar system. Besides you would need another button for “water”. Without it no multicell organism is capable of growing.

Mars has plenty of water, it's just frozen. There are plenty of terraforming plans that address this problem.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#95

Post by csours » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #67

csours wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/87978/how-and-wh... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board

That stack exchange answer is very very good. I want to highlight it because it'd be a shame if people missed it.

Indeed. I had heard of the Simple Spelling Board before, but I didn't realize it was an ongoing process.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#96

Post by tim333 » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

bb88 wrote: post #18

orbital-decay wrote: post #14

There's also another similar long-term experiment being performed on the International Space Station [0]. It's not finished yet but apparently preliminary results [1] suggest that microorganisms can possibly be lifted into the upper atmosphere from the oceans somehow. They found different planktonic species from all over the world on the outer surface of the space station, which is hard to explain by spacecraft conta…

An armchair explanation might be that a hurricane or tornado might be able to do this. Water spouts have scooped up fish into the sky only to dump them on land hundreds of miles from shore. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254812/Hundreds-fi...

You don't really need a hurricane. A regular thunder storm will lift stuff pretty high and then I guess they would mix with the jet stream and the like.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#97

Post by tim333 » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #73

baxtr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

That was a genuine question... I am really interested in knowing

Have an Amazon review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R3PX9NZPUHXBI9/...

Sounds pretty good if you like aircraft tech and the like

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#98

Post by sova » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

sova wrote: post #49

The risk of contaminating other planets with life? lol

all you who voted me down, none of you read the article i'm guessing

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#99

Post by fucking_tragedy » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

ourlordcaffeine wrote: post #81

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars will never be able to be a "second home" for humanity: it lacks the ability to maintain an atmosphere that can support humans due to its weak magnetic field. The bottom of the ocean would be far more habitable if we faced any type of extinction event.

Without the magnetic field, a thick atmosphere on Mars will still persist for tens of thousands of years.

It took billions of years for atmospheric oxygen to accumulate on Earth.

Re: The International Space Station is growing mould, inside and outside

#100

Post by fucking_tragedy » Sat, Jun 29, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #92

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars will never be able to be a "second home" for humanity: it lacks the ability to maintain an atmosphere that can support humans due to its weak magnetic field. The bottom of the ocean would be far more habitable if we faced any type of extinction event.

The lack of a magnetic field ablates away an atmosphere only on cosmic timescales, not human ones. That seems like a problem that could be solved with the benefit of thousands more years of technological development. Never say never. Just a hundred years ago many people argued it was impossible to ever leave the atmosphere of this planet (And it wasn't ... using cannon. The rocket solved that problem).

It's a moral hazard to hold out hope for a "home away from home". Terraforming Mars is a moonshot.

If we ever find ourselves in a situation where we cannot survive on a planet where food literally grows out of the ground, with abundant liquid water and atmospheric oxygen at 1 atm, how on Earth would we survive on a planet that is devoid of life, has no liquid water, an atmosphere that's 1% the pressure of Earth's with no atmospheric oxygen, and little to no sources of energy?

Again, the bottom of the ocean is far more habitable than Mars, even if we experienced a similar extinction event similar to the one we experienced 65 million years ago.