The Mysterious, Deep-Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet | Hacker News Reader

The Mysterious, Deep-Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet

nytimes.com

62 pointsbenbreen11 comments

Wikipedia has a photo of the Thiothrix fibers in an underwater cave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggiatoa#/media/File:Beggiato...

So would this be a way to terraform Mars? It would take a few million or billion years, but it would be cheap. There might be ways to speed up the process, for example by introducing multiple bacteria so you don't have to wait for them to evolve into the necessary forms. Start the process near the poles where there is some water. Would require the ability to dig deep holes on Mars. Analyzing samples from the holes might help target the best locations. A side benefit is that this might be a way to discover existing bacterial life on Mars. If life once did exist on Mars, underground seems a likely place for it to have retreated to.

For all we know these critters got their start on Mars, then hitched a ride to Earth on a meteor.

> It would take a few million or billion years, but it would be cheap.

Then of what practicality would it be? Humans will not exist in a few million/billion years, at least not in their current form.

Terraformed mars ready for our future corvid derived successors?

Hopefully we’ll get Humans 2.0 on Mars in a few billion years that re-evolved natively from microbes. And hopefully they’re wiser than us.

The sun will eventually expand I think in like a billion years or so. Is there any food on Mars?

Mars will experience same level of solar flux in around 5 Billion years. That’s about the same age as life on earth. So there is a chance.

You'd need a source of chemical energy. Here it's hydrogen sulfide. Mars has very little volcanism, so it's unlikely these microbes would find the energy they need.

There's a pretty hard limit in a few billion years when the sun starts expanding.

That said, we will probably have much better options just a few centuries out that would leapfrog things anyway.

Mars is just 0.1 of Earth by mass. Venus is 0.8E. It's much easier to cool down Venus with a shield than to make Mars heavy and hot.

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