Comments on: Bacteria Survive in Cold, Dry, Mars-like Conditions By Living Off Iron

By: Eli

Eli — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:52:33 +0000

Why could we not send a large load of this bacteria to Mars, include so of the ingredients needed for it to survive and adapt and then let it begin to spread across the planet? The oxygen that it would produce would begin to change the entire environment of Mars over time. I believe that tera-forming Mars will be critical to the expansion and survival of the Human Race in the future.

I would be more than happy to see some of my tax dollars used to try something like this…..

By: Geack

Geack — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:40:14 +0000

@1. Why would we assume there’s a limited supply of olivine or some iron-rich equivalent? There’s a vast amount of iron in the earth’s crust, likely in Mars’ as well. Bacteria don’t eat much, especially in extreme conditions.

@4. Are you seriously suggesting that people who spend their professional lives in a search for even the hint of a possibility of a tiny amount of life on Mars are for some reason ignoring plain video evidence of bugs crawling around? I’m not sure what you think you see in that video, but your whole idea makes no sense.

By: Ron Bennett

Ron Bennett — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:54:09 +0000

This site sounds very close to the Phoenix Landers site on Mars where there were some questionable findings that suggested that large micro-organisms were moving around in the soil. At the Phoenix Lander site, the NASA science team claimed “there are all the necessary ingredients to sustain life as we know it here on earth.” Remember this is also where they conclusively determined that mars had water ice.

Water can easily form directly under top layer of soil or an ice sheet all you need is a heat source, in this case solar radiation in the summer time is the heat source. That should be a no brainer but after repeating myself for over 12 years now no one at NASA seem to think this is true. I easily proved it in a lab with an outdated vacuum chamber, any 8th grader can do this in a lab…

Anything that can contain gas or water vapor in an enclosed area will build up pressure, increase of pressure and heat allows water ice to sublimate into a liquid instead of a vapor like what will happen below the surface of the Mars Phoenix Lander.

See here for youtube video of time lapse images taken from the Phoenix Landers Microscopic Imager of what appears to be rod shaped and scorpion shaped micro-organism moving around gasping for life, like fish out of water, after dug up and exposed to the much harsher extremes of the Martian atmosphere.

http://www.youtube.com/user/shineinnovations?feature=mhee#p/a/f/0/zhfSjJeQf58

By: Checkmate1

Checkmate1 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:58:32 +0000

Well, one cannot assume zero predation, but are there ongoing processes on Mars which continue to produce iron rich deposits? Maybe not Olivine, but something analogous and usable as a metabolic fuel?

By: Doron

Doron — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:43:35 +0000

True in principle, but we could imagine harsh, extreme conditions limiting absolute volume of bacteria population or slowing speed of reproduction and metabolism

By: Bobby LaVesh

Bobby LaVesh — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:13:32 +0000

The next study should be to see how cold an environment we can get those bacteria to live in.

See if we can “speed up” evolution in the lab to produce a variant of the bacteria that COULD live on mars.

The only problem with Olivine as a food source- with no predator or means of removing the bacteria- if a theoretical living martian bacteria “ate” olivine- how would we explain olivine on mars?

Something would have to produce more Olivine to fuel the bacteria.