Microbes on mars would have adapted to a very different environment. Most viruses affect only a very small subset of the animal kingdom, so it would be strange for a martian virus to suddenly be more dangerous than the worst mammal viruses ever encountered.
Yeah basically that was my reasoning. I’m super sceptical about this risk. The virus may destroy one ecosystem in an extreme environment or be a very effective pathogen in specific circumstances but would be unlikely to be a pervasive threat.
This theoretical microbe would have invested so many stat points in adaptations like extreme UV radiation resistance, resistance to toxins in Mars soil like perchlorates and H2O2, and totally unseen levels of desiccation, salinity, and ionic strength resistance that would be useless on Earth. And it would have to power all of these useless abilities on a food source that it is likely not suited to metabolising, and definitely not under the conditions it is used to. I just can’t imagine how it would be a huge threat around the World. But in a worst case scenario, it could kill a lot of people or damage an ecosystem we rely on heavily with massive global implications, so 7⁄10.
That might be true but have you not seen the movie “war of the worlds” ? Or read that book by the guy who wrote “the martian” about the light eating organisms?
In all seriousness that makes s lot of sense to me, but I thought there still might be a non -zero chance of a different kind of pathogen (perhaps that doesn’t fit our earthly paradigms) that could just wipe us out.
Millions of “fission bugs” that enter you then explode, or a rapidly reproducing carbon eating parasite or a..
I know this example doesn’t match because they still do have roughly the same environment, but introduced species can take over another more rapidly grab in their own where they are in equilibrium. What if we didn’t have that one critical defense mechanism that every creature on Jupiter’s moon uses routinely to keep it at bay?
Yeah, invasive species did come in mind to me as well, but usually the environments of the invader and the invaded are not that different. If you introduced elephants to antarctica they wouldn’t fare very well, for example.
Microbes on mars would have adapted to a very different environment. Most viruses affect only a very small subset of the animal kingdom, so it would be strange for a martian virus to suddenly be more dangerous than the worst mammal viruses ever encountered.
Yeah basically that was my reasoning. I’m super sceptical about this risk. The virus may destroy one ecosystem in an extreme environment or be a very effective pathogen in specific circumstances but would be unlikely to be a pervasive threat.
This theoretical microbe would have invested so many stat points in adaptations like extreme UV radiation resistance, resistance to toxins in Mars soil like perchlorates and H2O2, and totally unseen levels of desiccation, salinity, and ionic strength resistance that would be useless on Earth. And it would have to power all of these useless abilities on a food source that it is likely not suited to metabolising, and definitely not under the conditions it is used to. I just can’t imagine how it would be a huge threat around the World. But in a worst case scenario, it could kill a lot of people or damage an ecosystem we rely on heavily with massive global implications, so 7⁄10.
That might be true but have you not seen the movie “war of the worlds” ? Or read that book by the guy who wrote “the martian” about the light eating organisms?
In all seriousness that makes s lot of sense to me, but I thought there still might be a non -zero chance of a different kind of pathogen (perhaps that doesn’t fit our earthly paradigms) that could just wipe us out.
Millions of “fission bugs” that enter you then explode, or a rapidly reproducing carbon eating parasite or a..
I know this example doesn’t match because they still do have roughly the same environment, but introduced species can take over another more rapidly grab in their own where they are in equilibrium. What if we didn’t have that one critical defense mechanism that every creature on Jupiter’s moon uses routinely to keep it at bay?
IDK probably just being ridiculous here.
Yeah, invasive species did come in mind to me as well, but usually the environments of the invader and the invaded are not that different. If you introduced elephants to antarctica they wouldn’t fare very well, for example.