Terraforming Mars

[dcmike]

Here's a thought that nobody, including myself, has seemed to ponder yet.

Factor One:
Viruses can lie dormant for millions of years in the right medium like ice. Beyond that - viruses, many millions of years old, have been revived after being trapped in salt crystals!

Factor Two:
The second part involves "viral naiveté" - which should really drive a spike through Thunderbird's normally cool demeanor with us "yellow hairs". It was the concept deployed in the first major biological warfare campaign. The Meso American and North American Indians were almost totally wiped out by the tiniest army in the world - viruses. If you have any doubt about the "Christian" invader's intent, read up on the Massachussets Bay colony and the distribution of blankets to the native populace.

How could a small band of Spanish kill of 90% of the indigenous populace? Europeans lived in close proximity to herd animals and contracted less virulent strains of smallpox (cowpox) and were immune carriers of small pox - an army of "Typhoid Marys". The Indians were not immune - they had never experienced any of it - their bodies were virally naive.


Combine those two points for the obvious.

1. It is believed by some cosmologists that life might have developed first on Mars.
2. There are no currently detected life forms there
3. Terraforming Mars could revive any undetected, encysted (cyst = A small capsulelike sac that encloses certain organisms in their dormant or larval stage) viral life forms

We could have an even worse case of viral naiveté than the Indians. They were, at least, on their own planet (despite what the Europeans believed).

There could be a native virus of such a mortality rate (100%) that it could eat us alive in hours. Between ebola and the flesh eating bacteria that killed Jim Henson - we have something close to that here and now. Think of how much more robust a life form if it survived the total harshness of the present day Martian climate.

How totally divine we would likely taste after such a long fast!

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by dcmike

Here's a thought that nobody, including myself, has seemed to ponder yet.

Factor One:
Viruses can lie dormant for millions of years in the right medium like ice. Beyond that - viruses, many millions of years old, have been revived after being trapped in salt crystals!

Factor Two:
The second part involves "viral naiveté" - which should really drive a spike through Thunderbird's normally cool demeanor. It was the concept deployed in the first major biological warfare campaign. The Meso American and North American Indians were almost totally wiped out by the tiniest army in the world - viruses. If you have any doubt about the "Christian" invader's intent, read up on the Massachussets Bay colony and the distribution of blankets to the native populace.

How could a small band of Spanish kill of 90% of the indigenous populace? Europeans lived in close proximity to herd animals and contracted less virulent strains of smallpox (cowpox) and were immune carriers of small pox - an army of "Typhoid Marys". The Indians were not immune - they had never experienced any of it - their bodies were virally naive.


Combine those two points for the obvious.

1. It is believed by some cosmologists that life might have developed first on Mars.
2. There are no currently detected life forms there
3. Terraforming Mars could revive any undetected, encysted (cyst = A small capsulelike sac that encloses certain organisms in their dormant or larval stage) viral life forms

We could have an even worse case of viral naiveté than the Indians. They were, at least, on their own planet (despite what the Europeans believed).

There could be a native virus of such mortality (100%) that it could eat us alive in hours. Between ebola and the flesh eating bacteria that killed Jim Henson - we have something close to that here and now. Think of how much more robust a life form if it survived the total harshness of the present day Martian climate.

How totally divine we would likely taste after such a long fast!

While what you say about the Native Americans is sadly true, we would be more likely to catch petunia wilt than catch a virus from a planet we have no evolutionary history with.

[dcmike]

RE: While what you say about the Native Americans is sadly true, we would be more likely to catch petunia wilt....

(petunia wilt a soil borne malady of plant life forms)than catch a virus from a planet we have no evolutionary history with.

Yes - I would agree that we are less likely to contract a disease that affects plants only! Duh..........

So - what you are saying is "before we eat a chicken wing - we need to record the donor's (a certain species of chicken) double heilix pattern". Do you do that with a pizza slice?

[dcmike]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

Never argue with an idiot, people watching may not be able to tell the difference

This depends largely on the popular opinion of who is the idiot!

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

While what you say about the Native Americans is sadly true, we would be more likely to catch petunia wilt than catch a virus from a planet we have no evolutionary history with.

The worst case scenario is a virus or bacteria from mars, that infects all plants for the same reason you gave.... they have no defenses against it because they never coevolved with it. The photosynthetic process coming to complete halt, all life would crash, no escape....boom dead planet....

[Moontanman]

You guys are so smart I don't know why lowly me bothers to argue with you but I'll try in my own idiotic way. We share more than three billion years of co-evolution with every life form on earth. We use the same chemicals, the same DNA, the same processes, every life form on this planet is related to every other life form.

Life on Mars would be totally different, no reason at all to believe we would have anything but carbon and water in common, maybe not even that if some scientists are correct about the possibility of Hydrogen peroxide being likely to be a liquid on mars. So Why would you expect to catch anything on mars but a bad allergy to the dust? Do you really think that life has to use identical chemicals everywhere? We have constructed DNA with different nucleic acids from the four in use here. Get the idea? Petunias are practically our brothers compared to life that has evolved with complete Independence for several billion years

[Thunderbird]

Same Chemicals, same chemical reactions no matter where you go. Eating is eating, chemical energy is chemical energy. Hydrocarbons, proteins, sugars. A smorgasbord for any alien microbe.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

Same Chemicals, same chemical reactions no matter where you go. Eating is eating, chemical energy is chemical energy. Hydrocarbons, proteins, sugars. A smorgasbord for any alien microbe.

Not from the stand point of viruses and probably not from the stand point of bacteria either. You have to have similar chemicals to digest each other just a few small changes and we or they would be about as nutritious as Styrofoam.

[Little Bang]

Moon, there is a slight possibility that life on Earth was delivered here via an asteroid impact from Mars.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Little Bang

Moon, there is a slight possibility that life on Earth was delivered here via an asteroid impact from Mars.

Yeah that was going to be my next point, (I plan my arguments in advance) we receive rocks from mars on a regular basis, if microbes from Mars were going to wipe us out they have been missing a lot of chances! Lets face it microbes from Mars are not high on the list of things to wipe us out. If indeed there are microbes on Mars they are unlikely to be pre-evolved to infect any earth life. Infection by viruses depends on lots of specific things inside a specific cell and the virus has to be able to exploit these things, very few viruses infect across species lines even less across family lines, even fewer across phyla, almost none across domains. I'm betting none across evolutionary trees on different planets. Bacteria have similar limitations, the reason microbes can infect the way small pox did when it wiped out the Native Americans (Mine and T-Birds people) wasn't due to the natives being different, it was because of the similarities. You will notice humans had to kill all the buffalo by hand, not by disease.