Common yeast can survive Martian conditions

(phys.org)

49 points | by geox 8 days ago ago

24 comments

  • WalterBright 2 hours ago

    We should be dropping bags of extremophile organisms into the Martian atmosphere to get a start on terraforming it.

  • BurningFrog 44 minutes ago

    All the study says is that their lab yeast survived shock waves and perchlorate levels similar to those on Mars.

    That's all.

  • metalman 3 hours ago

    I think by "survive" they mean that yeast spores can briefly be put in a "mars jar" and then be revived, not that they can become metobolicaly active, or even last for an extended time on mars

  • dib258 4 hours ago

    Yeah, we can make beers on mars!

    • merek 12 minutes ago

      And the Martian beers can drunk in Mars' bars

    • iancmceachern 25 minutes ago

      I came here to write this.

      We could call it "The beer at the end of the universe"

  • mhb 2 hours ago

    And yet the stuff in my freezer went bad.

  • oh_my_goodness 8 days ago

    So send the yeast.

    • gus_massa an hour ago

      More seriously, they send only sterilized landers to Mars, to avoid killing all life there (if there is any), and to avoid the problem of finding in a few years the contamination we sended there. More info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection

    • pbhjpbhj 4 hours ago

      My first thought on reading the title of the OP was 'I wonder if we've already ruined Mars with unhelpful yeast?'.

      Surely there's nothing for it to eat there yet though.

      • IsTom 3 hours ago

        When jupiterians come to explore mars they'll face a horror movie scenario with long dormant alien pathogen eating through their carbohydrate shells.

        • ghkbrew 2 hours ago

          I think they prefer "Jovians".

          • Tade0 2 hours ago

            That's just our word for them, just like Protestants is a Catholic umbrella term for most other denominations.

  • alexpotato 4 hours ago

    Given that the "percentage of stars with planets" part of the Drake equation has recently been determined to be close to 100%, Panspermia is starting to feel more and more likely.

    • malfist 3 hours ago

      Something to blow your mind with. The early days in the universe there were millions of years were the average temperature in the universe supported liquid water.

      • gweinberg 2 hours ago

        Okay, but this is the average temperature of a big cloud of hydrogen with oxygen yet to be invented right?

      • kaashif 3 hours ago

        I don't think millions of years is long enough for anything interesting to happen life-wise, is it?

        • ben_w 3 hours ago

          On the one hand, (primitive) life appeared on Earth almost as soon as conditions allowed it.

          On the other, the early universe — this particular "warm bath" era — had approximately zero oxygen with which to make water. Right temperature, just (IIRC, but I'm not certain) zero stars yet, so nothing to make things heavier than what came out of Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

        • vizzier 3 hours ago

          hard to know with so few data points

          • firefax an hour ago

            >hard to know with so few data points

            i've yelled at the interns several times but none have been able to set up a haldane soup focus group yet

    • notepad0x90 3 hours ago

      all of those theories depend on one assumption, that life and our existence are products of a purely random collision of events.

      IMHO, "We don't know" is the only answer to the question of how many planets have life on them or the probability of some forms of live existing somewhere. 0 is as valid as 10^128 until more than one other life supporting planet or moon is found to establish some baseline for speculation. otherwise, we're talking sci-fi here, in which case I think stargate's version seems decent.