Life Living Unprotected In Space

Finding out if life could survive in space without any protection always seemed a ridiculous pursuit, everyone knew life couldn’t survive in space. Could this assumption be in error? We now know it is. Some forms of life can survive. Extremophiles can survive. One form of extremophile is a Thermophile and can be found right here on earth and one of the places it exists is in the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. What does this prove? For one thing it can mean there are other forms of life in space we know nothing about which might be able to survive the harsh environment of space and there might even be more complicated life forms which can. It also means life could have been spread throughout the universe by traveling through space on asteroids, meteors, comets and such or perhaps by just floating along until it hit some planet, mixed with clouds and come down in the rain or ever just fall down on its own.

Scientists recently made an incredible discovery which has all sorts of implications for human life and that discovery is, DNA can survive in space. A rocket was going to be launched into space for research purposes, but before that happened scientists decided to put DNA on its exterior to see what would happen. The rocket went into space briefly and then returned. The Brazilian rocket was launching cells into space and the scientists thought why not put DNA on the outside. The DNA was put on the nose of the rocket and into some of the screw slots. The rocket was launched in Sweden and when it returned, the payload was recovered. Temperatures were believed to have reached at least 1000 degrees Celsius on the rocket’s exterior. The exterior of the rocket was washed with a sterile solution and then checked for the DNA. It was still present and was inserted into cultured human cells and it programed the cells to glow green.

The scientists deduced we have to sterilize our rockets better, but there was more to the results of this experiment than coming to just that conclusion. I believe it also proved DNA can be spread throughout the universe. It could be on anything which comes to earth. If UFOs are real they might even have alien DNA on them when they get here. Maybe we are a product of different forms of DNA which came to earth from various places? We keep talking about planets which have to be in a certain zone from their sun to sustain life, but the truth is we have no idea what might be necessary to sustain life at all. Just because our life has certain requirements as does most life on earth, it doesn’t mean alien life might have the same requirements. It might turn out that extremely hot planets or very cold ones could also contain life. We believe a certain type of atmosphere is necessary for life, but just maybe a planet or moon without an atmosphere or with a very poisonous one would be good enough for some life forms.

There are even some people who believe some planets could be alive. This does stretch the imagination quite a bit, but we really can’t discount anything yet, we just don’t know enough. Ask yourself this question, why is it nature always seems to be able to correct an imbalance on earth? Global warming itself may be a way of nature getting rid of us to save the earth. While this might sound completely insane to many of us, we can never be sure of what is really happening. When the dinosaurs were wiped out it created space for us to live, was that part of some plan we didn’t know about? Someday we may find out the earth is like a giant computer and is running some sort of program we don’t understand.

When we talk about living organisms existing in space let us not forget what we found on the outside of the International Space Station a little while ago. To the astonishment of all the Russian scientists they discovered traces of tiny sea creatures on the outside windows and walls. These tiny creatures were sea plankton. It has to make one wonder how they existed in space and also how they got there. The Russians claim that since plankton is found on the surface of the ocean it couldn’t have come from their launch sites. There is something happening though which does affect the International Space Station and that is rising air currents. They have recently been found and the theory is the plankton were carried to the station by them. Let me ask you this question, if rising air currents can transport plankton to the space station, isn’t it possible they might be transported into space and brought to other worlds? If this is the case isn’t it possible the same must be happening on other worlds and we are the recipients of their microorganisms?

This leads one to another question. If we are getting their microscopic life and other planets are getting ours, than isn’t it possible most microscopic life is the same throughout the solar system and perhaps the galaxy and even in other galaxies? There certainly seems to be a lot more types of life which can live in space than we first believed. This may be proved when we finally get to Jupiter’s moon Europa. If we drill through the ice we just might find fish and those fish might be the same as fish on earth or fish that previously existed on earth. This might lead us to change the way we think about life on other planets.

Much of life is a heck of a lot tougher than we first suspected. Even humans might have the capability to get used to an environment once believed impossible. Look at the ocean for example. We can’t breathe underwater, but we can breathe a liquid which was created in the lab for us to breathe, which eliminates the need for oxygen tanks. We breathe liquid in the womb and we can breathe a liquid which is oxygen rich.Β  One of the advantages of this is deeper diving and the elimination of decompression sickness. We have thus adopted to our underwater environment more fully. We did for ourselves what evolution didn’t do and if one truly believes in evolution than they know it states we ultimately came from the sea. We are using technology to enable our race to better survive in places we had a hard time doing before.

There may be a future for all life, though if so it could be billions of years away, where someday life will be able to survive anywhere, wouldn’t that be interesting.