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RE: Surviving the Extremes: The Peak of Existence, Part 2
With billions of bacteria potentially skirting the edges of our planet, it only takes some solar wind or bits of meteor to smash into them, pushing them beyond the escape velocity of earth and into deep space
Can these creatures survive in deep space if the chance of something taking them from earth does happen to occur?
Up for debate! Tardigrades and other bacteria have evidently been shown to survive the vacuum of space, exposed to all the radiation and so on, and bacteria have numerous mechanisms to hibernate for extended periods without oxygen or water... it's real enough that a huge priority for NASA is not to 'contaminate' planets and moons they explore. It's very possible!
Coincidentally I just read about tardigrades and its ability to turn itself to glass to survive. wanted to make a post about it as I find it extremely fascinating. Contamination is possible, also they run a risk of bringing down parasites/organisms (I would like to think that this is a possibility) from there to here.
Yep! If life can be knocked out of orbit here, why not there? Creepy to think about...
That's a rabbit hole we've found ourselves already into :)
It is actually a fascinating subject. How this tiny creatures survive Making conscious use of some features is awesome.
Well 'conscious' is an interesting thing. I forgot how they officially word but an imitated trait or skill can potentially be passed down epigenetically, such as the fear of a fox, without being encoded in DNA. It's possible the ballooning spides for example, may have just imitated each other and the successful ones left a genetic tag, rather than telling each other consciously.
It's something I need to read up on more, but pretty cool either way!
@eurogee, I do agree with you on that one.