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from the is-dark-matter-like-dark-energon dept.
The Conversation has a story about five key findings from 15 years of the International Space Station:
1. The fragility of the human body — there is considerable loss of strength and bone mass without intervention. Mitigating this is key to making it possible to have manned trips to mars.
2. Interplanetary contamination — spores of Bacillus subtilis were exposed to space upon the ISS (but shielded from solar UV radiation). "The space vacuum and temperature extremes alone were not enough to kill them off."
3. Growing crystals for medicine — "Crystals in a microgravity environment may be grown to much larger sizes than on Earth, enabling easier analysis of their micro-structure. Protein crystals grown on the ISS are being used in the development of new drugs for diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cancer."
4. Cosmic rays and dark matter — early results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) support the theory that a halo of dark matter surrounds the Milky Way.
5. Efficient combustion — flames burn more efficiently in space with much less soot produced. Understanding this may lead to more efficient combustion in vehicles.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 01 2016, @07:26AM
why is anyone worried about contaminating the universe with earth bacteria?
because if you want to answer the question "Are we alone in the Universe?", it's kind of imperative to not have anything from your planet touching the samples you wish to analyze
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 01 2016, @10:46AM
Not sure if you missed the point - man doesn't WANT to be alone. He wants to bring the girls along! That was the whole point of the missing rib and the talking snake and all the rest of that Garden of Eden story. If we've got women to play with, we don't really give a damn about anything else.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday January 01 2016, @10:57AM
If you want to know if life started anywhere else then yeah, that's important. But I will consider us as alone in the universe until some E.T. species is capable of saying "get your zarking bacteria out of here, this is our planet".
One job constant is that good employers have low turnover, so opportunities to join good employers are relatively rare.