The survival of microorganisms to astronomical impacts

The present research is revolutionary and spectacular and the headline that the researchers themselves have put is very spectacular, it is from John Hopkins University, and the statement was published on March 3, and what it does is analyze the survival of microorganisms by subjecting them to massive impacts, to asteroid impacts that remove rock fragments from a planet and launch them into space and then return those rocks launched into space, thus making a re-entry into another atmosphere.

For example, the asteroid or meteorite that recently crashed is Germany, it could have been a rock that was ejected millions of years ago from Mars, I don't know, they have to analyze it, but also on Earth we have found meteorites that come from Mars, whose origin is Mars, so this rock could perfectly have been a, I am using it as an example, it could be a rock that was ejected by an asteroid impact millions of years ago on Mars, it spent millions of years wandering through space and ended up entering the Earth's atmosphere.

If that rock carried bacteria, is what the researchers wondered, they could have first survived the impact of that asteroid on Mars and then they could have survived the entry into the Earth's atmosphere, that is what they were analyzing and I present to you the video of the impacts to which they subjected the bacteria samples.

For the samples they used the Deinococcus Radiodurans bacteria, better known to friends as Conan, the bacteria, Conan is because it is extremely resistant to radiation, cold, dryness, the vacuum of space and it endures, it is one of the toughest bacteria we have on Earth and it is a good model for possible forms of Martian life, according to the researchers, it is terrestrial, it is not Martian, but on Mars it could survive as long as it reached somewhere with a little liquid water.

The point is that they simulated all these processes, first, the impact of an asteroid on Mars and the bacteria resisted much more than expected, in fact, the researchers tried to kill it by increasing the pressure, they made four levels, they saw that it was still holding, reaching the last level, which would be a terrible blow from a giant asteroid and 24 minutes and 20 seconds continued. increasing the pressure and they couldn't take it anymore because the equipment broke before killing the bacteria, so they couldn't kill it.

Lead investigator Lily Zhao said that we literally expected her to die on the first pressure, "We kept shooting faster and faster. We tried to kill her, but it was really difficult to kill her." In the end they broke the equipment and couldn't kill it, there were still some live bacteria.

This research shows that it is possible for microbial life to survive a large impact, be ejected inside a rock into space and travel through space enduring the cold, the radiation, the vacuum until reaching our planet, and this strengthens the idea that life could have traveled between planets in the solar system, for example, from Mars to Earth billions of years ago, when Mars had water and more habitable conditions.

Why not from Earth to Mars? Life could perfectly well have arisen on Earth and colonized Mars, there is only one detail and that is that Mars has a much lower gravity than Earth's, so stones thrown from Mars into space are much easier for the opposite to happen, which is for rocks thrown into space to come out of the Earth. fewer cases than what could have happened on Mars.

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