Super Buuuuuuuuugs Innnnnnnnnn Spaaaaaaaaaace!

Ok, all kidding aside, modern astronauts have a very real and very dangerous problem that up to this point has been ignored.  

On September 18, 2006, ground breaking research was performed aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. 

Previously dormant bacteria were allowed  to grow, change and multiply, in special nutrient baths,

allowing them to grow, change and multiply.   

As the experiment progressed, it soon demonstrated that bacteria, in the gravity-free environment of space turn into superbugs by gathering together, gaining strength and becoming much more effective at causing disease.  This in compounded by the tenancy of humans to develop weaker immune systems  on orbit than they would have planet-side.   

Taking bacteria on missions is certainly nothing new.  Both Russia and the U.S. have done so for decades.  From the Wired UK article:

• From ballooning experiments in 1935, to the Sputnik satellites and Gemini spacecraft of the 50s and 60s, and on to the Mir, Apollo and Skylab programs of the 80s and 90s, both Russia and the US have flown bacteria into space. Aboard these craft, bacteria were found to grow more quickly, become more resistant to antibiotics, and swap genes between one another more readily. 

However these new experiments are the first to provide information on how virulent these infectious agents can become.  This problem must be addressed if we ever hope to have extended missions says NASA administrators.  

For more information check out the Wired article 

Wired via Boing Boing

 

Oldest Fossils Discovered

From an article in Science Daily - a team from the University of Western Australia and Oxford University has discovered Earth's oldest fossils. From the article:

• The microscopic fossils show convincing evidence for cells and bacteria living in an oxygen-free world over 3.4 billion years ago.

According to the science team:

• we (now) have good solid evidence (that) life (existed) over 3.4 billion years ago. It confirms there were bacteria at this time, living without oxygen.
  

The early environment was far from idyllic. Volcanic activity dominating the early Earth. The sky was cloudy and grey, keeping the heat inolcanic activity dominating the early Earth. The sky was cloudy and grey, keeping the heat in.

read complete article here

Scientists Melt Million-year-old Ice In Search Of Ancient Microbes

From Sciencedaily.com

Researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of California at Riverside have thawed ice estimated to be at least a million years old from above Lake Vostok, an ancient lake that lies hidden more than two miles beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica. The scientists will now examine the eons-old water for microorganisms, and try to figure out how they survived the ages in total darkness, in freezing cold and without food and energy from the sun. segments of ice were cut from an 11,866-foot ice core, 656 feet above the surface of Lake Vostok. This ice was once water in lake Vostok itself and froze to the bottom of the existing Antarctic ice sheet. No samples have been taken directly from lake Vostok as of yet due to fears of contaminating the area. Since the lake has not had direct contact with the surface world for at least 15 million years, this would be a contamination of one of the most pristine environments on Earth.

Night of the Living (micro) Dead

Multi-million year old mini-Corpsicles are coming alive again! Researchers believe they have isolated eight million year old bacteria from core samples taken within Antarctic glacial ice--and have revived them!

Frederik Pohl was the first to use the term corpsicle in his 1969 novel The Age of the Pussyfoot. The term--considered rather offensive by cryogenics supporters--combines 'corpse' with 'popsicle' a popular flavored ice treat, to describe human beings cryonically frozen in hopes that future human beings will be able to thaw them and bring them back to life. "Corpsicle" has since been used by other writers, including Robert Heinlein, Greg Bear, L. M. Bujold, Larry Niven and others.

The organisms that researcher Kay Bidle of Rutgers University revived are single-celled, (hence 'mini-corpsicles') In vitro, they reproduce slowly (about 1/10th the speed of younger microbes) due apparently to aeons of ionizing radiation whacking their genes. Our planet's melting icecaps are releasing enormous quantities of these and other species of ancient microbes back into circulation. But don't worry, they say, these are marine microbes, and not virulent toward land animals. Read New Scientist article

Wait a minute....most life on earth ARE marine organisms, and, were a certain thawed strain to prove lethal to certain marine algae (those producing most of the oxygen that we LAND animals breathe) we might be gasping not with wonder but with desperation.

Ron

Bacteria Use Radioactive Uranium To Convert Water Molecules To Useable Energy

Researchers from Indiana University Bloomington and eight collaborating institutions report a self-sustaining community of bacteria that live in rocks 2.8 kilometers below Earth's surface and rely on radioactive uranium to convert water molecules to useable
energy.