Could Mars Bring Deadly Bugs to Earth?

[Ivan Seeking]

... But some space scientists are suggesting that a new menace might soon join the pantheon of pandemics threatening your bodily wellbeing: bugs from space.

The exotic warning appeared last week in Science, where researchers reported on discoveries made by Nasa's Mars Exploration Rovers. In the last year, these small, motorised geology labs have beamed back convincing evidence that water once formed pools and puddles on the red planet.

...The problem is this: sometime in the next decade, Nasa hopes to use robots to dig up samples of Mars, and bring them back to Earth. ...[continued]

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,9865,1369270,00.html

I was especially struck by this

...Well, it should comfort you to know that Nasa has already thought of this. In the 1970s, when men were going to the moon, Nasa worried about lunar infection, ...

I remember listening to one of the astronauts who went to the moon...I think Armstrong...who years later commented on this. After his lunar trip and while still in biological isolation, one day he looked down and saw that ants were crossing the isolation barrier through a small crack in the concrete. He was laughing about this but also emphasizing the need for extreme caution wrt potential threats like this. Mistakes happen. If moonbugs could have killed everyone on earth, they might have. A sobering thought, I thought.

 

[Smurf]

Life from other planets? The scientific possibilities for this are so enormous I think it's worth the risk.

 

[franznietzsche]

Life from other planets? The scientific possibilities for this are so enormous I think it's worth the risk.

Until the martian cousin of smallpox that wiped out intelligent life on that planet arrives here!

That said, the idea of exterrestrial life thrills me. Just imagine how different life would be having evolved in such a different environment. They worry about bacteria, but the truth is there could be hazardous life formswe can't even imagine.

So exciting.

And don't forget SpaceShipOne! Commercial spaceflight is possible!