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Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov suspects an extraterrestrial origin for bacteria found on the exterior of the ISS:
A Russian cosmonaut claims to have caught aliens. Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov says he found bacteria clinging to the external surface of the International Space Station that didn't come from the surface of Earth.
Shkaplerov told the Russian news agency that cosmonauts collected the bacteria by swabbing the outside of the space station during space walks years ago.
"And now it turns out that somehow these swabs reveal bacteria that were absent during the launch of the ISS module," Shkapkerov told TASS. "That is, they have come from outer space and settled along the external surface. They are being studied so far and it seems that they pose no danger."
A recent study suggests that interplanetary dust can transport microbes to or from Earth:
Astronomers have long believed that asteroid (or comet) impacts were the only natural way to transport life between planets. However, a new study published November 6 in Astrobiology suggests otherwise.
The study, authored by Professor Arjun Berera from the University of Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy, suggests that life on Earth may have begun when fast-moving streams of space dust carried microscopic organisms to our planet. Berera found that these streams of interplanetary dust are not only capable of transporting particles to Earth, but also from it.
Space Dust Collisions as a Planetary Escape Mechanism (DOI: 10.1089/ast.2017.1662) (DX) (arXiv link above)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 29 2017, @05:25PM (1 child)
Once you've got the habitat, then all you need is raw materials. Dead rocks will offer that just as well as a living world. Not nearly as exciting, but if you're going to wander between stars without already having a good idea as to whether there's anything interesting there, then even with FTL you're going to spend a long time living in a cramped tin can, when you could have been living in a much more spacious and luxurious tin can back home (at least assuming mass constraints still apply to FTL)
Also, you might not want to pin too many hopes on the galactic core for life - where the stars swarm like bees, so do the frequency of world-baking, atmosphere-stripping supernovas.
(Score: 1) by Crash on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:48PM