Terraforming Mars

[dcmike]

Moontanman - you aparently have not heard of Vertical Transmission (from comets) of viruses and are missing my entire point. That is the whole premise of the native American analogy. Viruses do not need to co-evolve to infect - they mutate. It is the very fact that we DID NOT co-evolve that creates the danger. Co-evolving is what creates immunity. That is exactly why the Meso American Indians were almost totally anhilated by the time the Spaniards got back for their second trip. Check out the (thriving before the missionaries came) lost civilization of the Amazon.

Google the flu epidemic of 1918. It hit everywhere at the same time - even remote Eskimo villages that had no contact with the outside world - even each other. Viruses can live in the frozen water of comets, fall to Earth in the water content evaporated by the Sun's heat, infect birds in our higher strata and finally make their way to us . Many cosomologists believe WE are aliens - arriving in a similar fashion.

You have already lost the argument. Cut your losses, go home and lick your wounds!

[dcmike]

"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"

"Life on Earth is based on the five most common elements in the universe"

...................Neil DeGrasse Tyson

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by dcmike

Moontanman - you aparently have not heard of Vertical Transmission (from comets) of viruses and are missing my entire point. That is the whole premise of the native American analogy. Viruses do not need to co-evolve to infect - they mutate. It is the very fact that we DID NOT co-evolve that creates the danger. Co-evolving is what creates immunity. That is exactly why the Meso American Indians were almost totally anhilated by the time the Spaniards got back for their second trip. Check out the (thriving before the missionaries came) lost civilization of the Amazon.

Google the flu epidemic of 1918. It hit everywhere at the same time - even remote Eskimo villages that had no contact with the outside world - even each other. Viruses can live in the frozen water of comets, fall to Earth in the water content evaporated by the Sun's heat, infect birds in our higher strata and finally make their way to us . Many cosomologists believe WE are aliens - arriving in a similar fashion.

You have already lost the argument. Cut your losses, go home and lick your wounds!

So far I haven't heard an argument from you, all I read is grandiose claims. can you back up any of what you claiming with any real science at all? A few links to real scientists backing up what you say? Until then I stand by what I said, viruses do not suddenly appear from no where anymore than mice come from rotted grain. Comets do not spread viruses, and no one gets the flu with out being exposed to the virus in some way! If you are going to argue sillyness then be prepared to back it up with science not just somebody said this or that.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by dcmike

"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"

"Life on Earth is based on the five most common elements in the universe"

...................Neil DeGrasse Tyson

You don't know enough about the idea I stated to even understand it much less argue against it. You cannot even digest the organics many things like bacteria digest here on the earth much less digest animals from another planet. The day you drink crude oil and get fat and sassy you will have a point. Just because something is organic doesn't mean it's food to every one or even anyone. An animal could be made of the same chemicals we are but arranged totally different from us and still work the exact same way and be totally inedible to all earthly life forms. Have you ever heard of left and right handed molecules? Just that one simple change would make an alien totally unable to infect us with it's microbes or be infected by earthy microbes. Styrofoam is made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen but I don't see it decaying like it was all that great a food source.

[modest]

Bacteria had not yet evolved to decompose dead plants in carboniferous times. As a bacterial food source plants were new to the ecosystem. This would lend weight to Moontanman's argument with respect to bacteria. For the case of viruses I believe he's made his argument very well.

If this debate is to persist, I wonder if one of the debaters could create a thread.

-modest

[Moontanman]

I'll create one, see this thread "Would bio-chemistry differences prevent alien life forms from utilizing Terran life forms as food?" under biology.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by dcmike

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

Interplanetary infections have certainly been a popular subject in science fiction, appearing at least as H. G. Wells’ 1898 “The War of the Worlds” and, post-discovery-of-DNA, in Michael Crichton’s first self-credited novel, 1969’s “The Andromeda Strain”. It was taken very seriously by manned spaceflight mission planners, even in the case of the seeming sure-to-be-germ-free lunar surface, per NASA’s LUNAR QUARANTINE PROGRAM.

Nonetheless, it’s a good thought to ponder.

Given that exploration and research has yet to convincingly conclude that there’s any sort of life on Mars, or any other extraterrestrial body, the issue of interplanetary infection is in the domain of speculation and risk analysis, not normal biology and medicine. Even so, these disciplines produce some pretty satisfying, if highly conditional, conclusions.

From a bio-medical perspective, we know that it’s very unusual for a pathogen to be able to infect an organism it didn’t co-evolve with. Viruses, for example, are finely tuned to recognize specific cell surface proteins, and hide from host immune systems by presenting specific proteins on their capsid surfaces. So we can be pretty confident, from a biological perspective, that Mars pathogens, if any exist, won’t “work” with Earth organisms, and vice versa. Any surprises vs. this assumption are likely to involve very weird, atypical pathogens, such as specific prions, which are suspected to cause several strange and severe diseases in multiple species, or possibly something very archaic, against which terrestrial immune systems were long-ago effective, but no longer.

As ThunderBird notes, “Eating is eating, chemical energy is chemical energy”. There are a fairly small number of possible forms of common energy-storing molecules (sugars, celluloses, etc.), so it’s not unreasonable to speculate that there are versatile “vores” (as in “eater”, not practitioners of the sexual fettish of the same name!) that might thrive on planets other than their own. However, biological dogma holds that if such organisms were able to compete successfully in a terrestrial biome, they already would have. Because such a class of organisms is effectively unknown (some extremophiles might arguably qualify, but are confined to such remote biomes as to beg the question “who cares?”), the dogma holds that such “generalists” – whether home-grown or exotic - can’t compete with more specialized, ordinary organisms, so wind up either extinct via competition, or eaten up themselves (unless they can “find” a symbiotic niche – mitochondria may be an example of a primitive vore that followed this route to such a extent that it’s now specialized to specific hosts species, and found only within “foreign” host cells)..

My hunch on the subject is the frequently overlooked (though not by mission planners, who take great – though some have argued less than fully effective - pains to sterilize materials destine for Mars and other extraterrestrial bodies) juxtapose of the issue: rather than Martian life infecting Earth, terrestrial life might infect Mars. Earth’s warm, wet, energetic biomes have been evolving efficient and opportunistic “programs” for rapidly exploiting unoccupied ecological niches, even ones that at first glance seem complete inhospitable to life, even moreso than Mars. Mars may, by terrestrial standards, be a huge, unoccupied ecological niche, ripe for exploitation by terrestrial bugs. So, humans visiting and returning from Mars may contract and carry awful pathogens that originated on Earth!

As noted, this is all very speculative.

From a risk analysis perspective, it’s a high uncertainty (), a controllable, (relatively) low cost of avoidance (), an uncertain and potentially very high cost if incurred () situation, so the range of expected values vary from low negative () to high positive (). What this recommends is to:

• liberally increase in order to lower
• spend a lot on decreasing the uncertainty of

in practical terms, this recommends several things to Mars mission design:

• Even though it’s expensive and difficult, fly labs to Mars, rather than flying return missions
• Don’t do short, return manned missions. If you put people on Mars, leave them there a long time, with medical facilities as good as on Earth. Test a lot. If the people get sick, don’t return them. And, it stands to reason and ethics, don’t send more ‘til you know what’s infecting them. If you can’t be confident in returning people without even a small risk of contagion, don’t return anyone.

[dcmike]

I am not a biophysicist by any means but life appears to be universal if carried around in the water content of comets. It is believed by some experts that life here was seeded in this manner as part of the tons of dust and debris that fall to Earth each year. If so, then we are all evolving together. A virus that affects humans usually starts out at the bottom and works his way to the top - the old fashioned way, by social climbing. Viral evolution is measured in days - not millennia.

If you are speaking purely from a scientific / biological point of view you will find the below to be true:

• A virus is not alive.
• You cannot catch a virus.
• A virus disintegrates very quickly outside the host.
• Source - Viruses - Startling Facts About Viruses And Viral Epidemics

Science, like the Bible, can be quoted paragraph by paragraph to "prove" anything. However, if you believe what really happens before your eyes you will remember "catching" the flu, etc. and other people near you doing the same. In the example of the 1918 flu pandemic maybe they didn't catch it - maybe they invited it, but the results were the same.

Scientists have found viruses and bacteria encased in one material or another for millions of years and reanimated them in one or another culture medium.

I never intended this to get to the point of using scientific ASCII characters to baffle and awe - it was a merely "what if" scenario based on some new theories on vertical transmission of pandemics and the human inability to fend off a virus that it has never encountered before.

The precautions taken by NASA to quarantine materials obtained from the airless, lifeless Moon gives credence to the what if factor. People who claim to know everything remind me of clergy - giving us solid, detailed answers to the most amorphous of subjects, leaving nothing to the imagination. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”

In theoretical physics possibilities are given birth as theorems and then either proven or disproven. Theorems are phase two of possibilities or "what ifs." I never thought I would encounter such genius as has been demonstrated here. But I, the lowly wordsmith, will stick with Albert Einstein and my what ifs - you guys can get out your slide rules and scurry about to "prove" me wrong.

My next subject: "Would a chicken f**k a pigeon if given the chance?" And - "Do pigeons taste like chicken?" (Biblically speaking, if you get my gist)

Craig D - life has proven itself to be too ingenious for reliable measurements and calibrations!

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by dcmike

I am not a biophysicist by any means but life appears to be universal if carried around in the water content of comets. It is believed by some experts that life here was seeded in this manner as part of the tons of dust and debris that fall to Earth each year.

Not true, there is plenty of evidence showing that life and water are essentials to one another. There is no evidence at all that life can form in space were liquid water cannot form these environmental conditions. There is no need for a theory of alien origins of life.

[dcmike]

"It is believed by some experts........"

Again I state "it is believed by some experts....."

I never gave irrefutable evidence - nor did they. It is a theory - neither proven nor disproven. It is merely a possibility.

"There is no evidence at all that life can form in space were liquid water cannot form..."

Nor is there is no evidence that it can't. Nor is it (to my knowledge, at least) a known fact that this frozen water was created as a solid.