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To: dangergirl who wrote (61952)	1/13/2000 8:31:00 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 152472

Off topic (more things to worry about) - Martian bacteria ! January 13, 2000 Bacteria Thought to Have Survived Trip From Mars to Earth By REUTERS ATLANTA -- Astronomers reported Wednesday they had found a tough but peaceful pair of bacteria that might have been able to survive the arduous trip from Mars, back when the Red Planet could have supported life. "They are simply happy creatures," scientist Curt Mileikowsky said of the two bacteria strains that were tested for road-hardiness in a Swedish lab. "They don't cause any disease, they are very peaceful." But were they the first visitors from Mars? The bacteria -- Bacillus subtilis (wild) and Deinococcus radiodurans R1 -- are resistant to high speeds, extreme heat and radiation. These properties would be necessary to survive a voyage by meteoroid from Mars to Earth, Mileikowsky, of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and others reported at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta. For the last half-century, most scientists believed life on Earth originated from simple inorganic molecules that might have been zapped by lightning or nurtured in oceans. Now research in Sweden, Canada and Finland suggests another possibility: Tiny living things -- such as these two hardy bacteria -- may have traveled between Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury when the planetary system was young. This is given some credence by the discovery in 1997 of a meteorite in Antarctica that some believe contains traces of fossilized life from Mars. When Mars Was Warm and Wet In the earliest days, 4.5 billion years or so ago, Mars might well have been warm and wet enough to foster life. Scientists still do not know what turned it into the cold, barren place it is now. The mode of travel would have been meteoroids, big chunks of rock blasted out of the Martian surface by a colliding comet, the astronomers said. If microscopic life was present on Mars at the point of contact, whatever survived the blast's concussion and heat and managed to escape Mars' gravitational pull could have been on its way to Earth or some other planet, according to the scientists. And if it also was able to resist bombardment by radiation in space, it might have landed safely on Earth. In the first 500 million years after the planets formed, Mileikowsky said, 50 billion potentially life-carrying rocks landed on Earth from Mars. In the last four billion years or so, only five billion such bodies have come to Earth. The traffic in the other direction was not as heavy: 10 billion possible life-carrying objects are believed to have flown from Earth to Mars in the first 500 million years, with only one billion going in the last four billion years. The problem is to determine whether any of these bodies did in fact carry life, and then to find out where life began if it did not originate on Earth. The astronomers believe it probably began in our solar system, with a very slim chance that it started elsewhere. Astronomer Sun Kwok of the University of Calgary in Canada theorized that organic molecules may be ejected by old stars, and some of what is tossed out could land on Earth. "Life would have had an easier time developing on Earth" if this was the case, Kwok said at a briefing. Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company