A recent ESA (European Space Agency) experiment involving exposing lichens (a symbiotic organism, you've seen them on rocks and trees, consisting of part fungi, part alga) to the vacuum of space and direct solar UV radiation for up to 15 days revealed that the lichen emerged unscathed and grew normally when returned to favorable conditions, and suffered no apparent DNA damage:

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8297

You'll have to click to ignore a password request several times before it'll let you view the article, but no registration is in fact necessary.

As lichens are already capable of growing (and currently serve as the anchor species in many inhospitable niches, supplying food to and increasing solar heat absorption in them) under Antarctic coastal ice and in the Himalayas at over 22,000 feet elevation, they appear to be shaping up to be a pretty good species for initiating colonization of places like, say, Mars, where water and carbon dioxide are already present.

Should we be considering the ethics of introducing alien life to other planets? Oxygen-generating photosynthesis and production of usable organic carbon sources could radically and irreversably change the face of that planet, but I have to admit that I find this *really* exciting and had visions of 'Alpha Centauri' as I read it...

Regards,
Nydia

Haha, I just noticed that someone gave me a title!

<3 to you guys, too... :)

Warm regards,
Nydia

Lichens and tardigrades for all!

Ethics? bah. It's not like we're hosing our OWN planet.

Seems only natural, though, to move onward and upward. If the giant bugs living underground rise up and defeat us, at least we can rewind back to the shower scene.

That is exciting. Also seeing as how its mostly uninhabited I dont have a problem with it.

seeing as how its mostly uninhabited I dont have a problem with it.

(Bold highlight is mine)

Chan, Chan, Chan.....

Are you saying that if only a few life forms are present, it is ok to have our way? I agree that if we know there is no life on the planet, then it should be open to us to attempt to introduce those elements that would be conducive to our colonizing. But, if there are any life forms present I would have an ethical issue with introducing foreign organisms.

(This would be an interesting topic to toss out to some of the fanatical pro-life folks to argue.....is not all life sacred?)

It does raise a sort of interesting ethics question, I suppose, but I'm all for stirring shit up on Mars in the name of science. ;) I think the only real things we need worry about are (a) the chances that Mars might be the only "habitable" environment available before we destroy the Earth (ie, we don't find any other suitable planets before we fuck our's up), and (b) that our impact on Mars could have an effect on the rest of the solar system. As far as the latter is concerned, intuition leads me to suspect this is unlikely, but who knows? I don't know that I've ever heard someone scientifically consider the option before.

Well I put mostly because we are not totally sure what is there. Also if there were no living things other than bacteria or the like , no I am not going to shed a tear for them. So aslong as those are the cases I would have no problem with it. If we find out there is a complex eco system there, then yes I would have to re think things.

Shit man,,,, I terraform my yard every week in the Summer with my John Deere lawn mower.... I'm all for growing grass on Mars!

Shit man,,,, I terraform my yard every week in the Summer with my John Deere lawn mower.... I'm all for growing grass on Mars!

*nods

Finally, some life forms that people from all ends of the political spectrum can feel good about annihilating!

Interesting quandry we find ourselves in. Do we seed the planet against our possible need hundreds of years from now, or do we worry there might be a single cell critter with greater need?

I suggest the former, after all searches are exausted in hopes of finding higher life forms. Tho once the Genie is out there's no shoving her back in Pandora's box hmmmmm.

Fandros

I'd like to probe the planet for life -- or signs of once existent life -- before turning the place green. Not so much because I'm concerned with the ethics of it all, rather I'd like to know for the sake of knowing before our presence clouds the issue, and microorganisms can have an adverse effect on unadapted species. Gotta be careful of that sort of thing.

Is science capable of transforming Mars into an inhabitable planet? I'd say so.

Will we see it in our lifetime? I'd say not. Even if they had a plan and the resources to do it now, it would still take decades for each stage of development. Humans aren't going to be able to live on a planet full of moss. Even if they can super-accelerate the growth of said moss, theres still several stages they'd need to go through to get to the stage where even the most robust animals could survive there. After the moss has good enough growth, they would need to introduce another organism that would eat the moss and produce something for the next organism to eat and so on... We're talking the biggest biosphere ever. And on where we only get one attempt (from scratch anyway).

Naa, my hope is more leaned toward seeing a BioDome on the moon before I die. Who knows, maybe I'll get to visit it with my grandchildren. And I'm only 23... I consider having a BioDome set up on our local satalite in 30 - 40 years optimistic at best. We all want to see it... but at our current rate of progression, I'll be happy to see a maned flight to Mars before I die.

Good trilogy on just this subject.

Red/Green/Blue Marks by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Read the series and other than where it delved more into the socialsciences of colonizing Mars I found it interesting.

The DNA manipulation required to step from moss level plants to the higher plant forms would take nearly 1k years I think to make it a viable biosphere even for the simple hardy insects.

Fandros

Just FYI, mosses =! lichens. Mosses are true plants (nonvascular); lichens are a fungal/algal combined organism, and much more hardy than mosses are. Mosses lack even a waxy cuticle to prevent water loss or minimize UV damage, and require liquid water for sexual reproduction (they produce swimming sperm); although they will go dormant when dessicated and recover well, they'd make poor Mars colonizers for those two reasons.

As far as the original topic goes (and glad to see people discussing it :) ), major biological transformation of Mars' atmosphere would take centuries at a minimum (and then you have the issue of retaining it, as Mars' gravity is significantly less than Earth's). I wasn't looking far enough ahead as to be thinking about biological succession, although I'm guessing you wanted another word there than 'manipulation', Fandros? We can *perform* genetic manipulation of many organisms to make them more drought/cold tolerant, etc, now (there are strains of wheat on the market now designed to grow in the scant rainfall, shallow topsoil, and short growing seasons of Montana which don't exceed 10" in height and yield > 40 bushels to the acre, and there's already been some discussion about engineering bacterial genes into various plants to help them survive someplace like Mars); but if you mean biological evolution, yes, that takes time.

One of the interesting aspects of Mars' thinner atmosphere, though, is that because there is no ozone to speak of to protect the planet from UV radiation (one of the things that made the ESA lichen experiment particularly interesting was that they exposed them to this), mutation rates of anything living on Mars would be expected to be significantly higher than on earth unless the organisms had some sort of natural protection from UV (a crust, like the lichens, or melanin ;) ). While mutations are most often harmful to an organism, they also provide grist for the evolutionary mill, and this provides us both with an engine and a caveat regarding anything that we might introduce up there - as one of my colleagues said this morning, we might come back and find that our harmless little lichen have become something significantly less benign...

Regards,
Nydia

So we'd need a Mars biosphere , pref on Mars proper, that could be contained while at the same time reflect real mars conditions eh?

Sounds like a reasonable first step to me. Of course in the event that they became malignant we could always throw in an emergency "kill'em dead" control.

Fandros

I for one welcome our new Martian Lichen overlords.

Naa, my hope is more leaned toward seeing a BioDome on the moon before I die. Who knows, maybe I'll get to visit it with my grandchildren. And I'm only 23... I consider having a BioDome set up on our local satalite in 30 - 40 years optimistic at best. We all want to see it... but at our current rate of progression, I'll be happy to see a maned flight to Mars before I die.

One important question, will the Weasel be there?

I for one welcome our new Martian Lichen overlords.
+1 rep for Malse! but it wouldnt let me give it to him :p

On a more serious basis, I'd rather see a functional moon base before we started seriously planning to terraform Mars. Controlled testing in artificially pressurized lunar domes tailored to look like the Martian environment would be infinitely preferable to sending robotic expeditions to Mars and having days to years of lag on getting the results and years more on making further alterations (for instance, when the Super Lichens become sentient and convert our robots to battle-droids!).

Terraforming Mars in general though is almost inevitable. It's the only other major body in the solar system that isn't frozen solid or toxic.

It would make alot of sense to establish a full lunar colony. Would be used to refuel/repair/refurbish missions enroute to Mars.

I gather there is ice in the crust of the Moon that could be used as well as many useful minerals.

Fandros

I'd rather expand the space station's utility than establish a colony on the moon. Not that it wouldn't be neat, but with limited resources to apply to space programs, moon colonies don't make a lot of sense. If missions enroute to Mars need help from the moon, they shouldn't be allowed to leave earth in the first place. I'd rather have the dollars we're willing to spend on space go straight to Mars (though not to neglect other important programs).

Of course, if the Chinese start looking at a permanent lunar base, I wager we'll be racing Sputnik all over again.