[HN Gopher] Common yeast can survive Martian conditions
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Common yeast can survive Martian conditions
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2025-10-14 22:57 UTC (8 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (phys.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
        
       | oh_my_goodness wrote:
       | So send the yeast.
        
         | pbhjpbhj wrote:
         | My first thought on reading the title of the OP was 'I wonder
         | if we've already ruined Mars with unhelpful yeast?'.
         | 
         | Surely there's nothing for it to eat there yet though.
        
           | IsTom wrote:
           | When jupiterians come to explore mars they'll face a horror
           | movie scenario with long dormant alien pathogen eating
           | through their carbohydrate shells.
        
       | dib258 wrote:
       | Yeah, we can make beers on mars!
        
       | alexpotato wrote:
       | Given that the "percentage of stars with planets" part of the
       | Drake equation has recently been determined to be close to 100%,
       | Panspermia is starting to feel more and more likely.
        
         | malfist wrote:
         | Something to blow your mind with. The early days in the
         | universe there were millions of years were the average
         | temperature in the universe supported liquid water.
        
           | kaashif wrote:
           | I don't think millions of years is long enough for anything
           | interesting to happen life-wise, is it?
        
             | vizzier wrote:
             | hard to know with so few data points
        
             | ben_w wrote:
             | On the one hand, (primitive) life appeared on Earth almost
             | as soon as conditions allowed it.
             | 
             | On the other, the early universe -- this particular "warm
             | bath" era -- had approximately zero oxygen with which to
             | make water. Right temperature, just (IIRC, but I'm not
             | certain) zero stars yet, so nothing to make things heavier
             | than what came out of Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
        
         | notepad0x90 wrote:
         | all of those theories depend on one assumption, that life and
         | our existence are products of a purely random collision of
         | events.
         | 
         | IMHO, "We don't know" is the only answer to the question of how
         | many planets have life on them or the probability of some forms
         | of live existing somewhere. 0 is as valid as 10^128 until more
         | than one other life supporting planet or moon is found to
         | establish some baseline for speculation. otherwise, we're
         | talking sci-fi here, in which case I think stargate's version
         | seems decent.
        
       | metalman wrote:
       | I think by "survive" they mean that yeast spores can briefly be
       | put in a "mars jar" and then be revived, not that they can become
       | metobolicaly active, or even last for an extended time on mars
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-10-22 23:00 UTC)