New Form of Life Discovered on Space Probe!

When probes are sent into space they are carefully sterilized in "clean rooms" to avoid contaminating other planets. Scientists have discovered a new form of bacteria in two different clean rooms, one at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and one at the European Space Agency's launch site in South America.

The weird thing is that this bug has only been found in clean rooms: it was the only thing left alive after the chambers were swabbed with alcohol and hydrogen peroxide and heated to temperatures high enough to kill any living thing. The bacteria is called Tersicoccus Phoenicis, from tersi, the Latin word for clean and Phoenix, the name of the first space probe the bug was found on. It's so different from other organisms that it's a new genus, not just a new species.

The PROTECT experiment conducted on the International Space Station found that other bacterial spores mounted on the outside of the station for a year and half survived exposure to vacuum, temperature extremes and UV and cosmic radiation. Previous claims of streptococcus mitis found by the Apollo 12 astronauts on the Surveyor 3 probe after three years on the moon are in doubt because the camera the bacteria were found on was stored in a nonsterile bag.

This news comes at the same time as the results of a 25-year-long experiment involving bacterial evolution. After 50,000 generations, Dr. Richard Lenski of Michigan State University found that the E. coli never stopped evolving. His hypothesis was that they would hit some peak level of fitness and never advance. But that hasn't happened: over the years they have increased their reproductive efficiency. The original population doubled in population in an hour. After 50,000 generations they double in 40 minutes. The scientists calculate that in a million years they would reduce that time to 20 minutes (because of the limited environment they're unlikely to evolve in any spectacular fashion).

This means that it is quite possible that we will one day find life on Mars, because -- despite our best efforts -- it arrived on one of our probes. But it also means that bacteria could survive the rigors of space, and be transmitted to other worlds without human intervention. Material thrown into space by large meteor strikes could land on other planets, and the bacteria could potentially survive, and just keep on evolving to prosper in their new environment.

This also means that life could have originally come to earth from another planet, or even another solar system. This theory, known as panspermia, has been the basis of many science fiction stories, from The Body Snatchers, to The Andromeda Strain, to Star Trek: The Next Generation to Prometheus.

We don't know exactly how life got started. But once it gets going, it is incredibly stubborn, always evolving and always surviving no matter what the universe throws at it.