back to article DNA survives fiery heat of re-entry on test rocket

Sounding rockets are sub-orbital spacecraft used to test rocket technologies and to run other experiments. Launches of such craft are quite common and most escape attention: the TEXUS-49 mission launched from Sweden on March 29th, 2011, and now doesn't even produce a clean hit on Google. But the mission is now of rather …

  1. Florida1920
    Paris Hilton

    Radiant beauty?

    "Whether micro-organisms or DNA could survive the many other exigencies they would face on an interstellar journey remains unknown."

    This experiment is a good start, but couldn't take into account years, centuries or millennia of exposure to high-energy cosmic radiation.

    Then again, perhaps it only caused ET DNA to mutate, which explains why Paris is better looking than Lady Gaga, whom I believe is truly from another world.

    1. AbelSoul
      Trollface

      Re: Radiant beauty?

      And all we hear is Radiant Gaga.

  2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Not surprising

    In my previous life I played a lot with DNA. It extremely sturdy for an organic compound of natural origin and nearly impossible to get rid of.

    All lab people working on RNA regularly lament on the subject of DNA contamination. If it happens there is no way of removing it short of spraying the contaminated area with a DNA-se enzyme solution. This has been picked up by various industries looking for reliable markers (aka Smart Water, etc) too.

    1. Grikath

      Re: Not surprising

      Yup. Plus they're plasmids... A structure that's meant to be able to go outside a (bacterial) cell, and y'know survive...

      And there's nothing in there about the "survival rate" of said plasmids. With the techniques used even a 1*10^-9 retaining the original information would be amplified enough to show a positive result.

      All it says, like Voland remarked, is that DNA is really tough stuff. The only reason it quickly disappears in nature is because there's a lot of microorganisms around that happily break it apart for ...parts.

      1. Lee D Silver badge

        Re: Not surprising

        It does seems quite obvious that DNA must be hardy stuff.

        My girlfriend is still coveting her "I play with DNA" mug, in her profession. She assures me that DNA also has some phenomenally wonderful "error correction" within it so that even if it does get a little damaged, it would hardly matter. Obviously occasionally this backfires in the same way as any error correcting algorithm and, given the wrong combination of errors, could churn out junk and mutations, but overall it's pretty self-managing and in the billions of DNA copies made every day, pretty much all of them work just fine.

        And, in the end, although we think of DNA as a organic thing, it's really just a chain of four basic chemicals. Thus our perception of DNA as some fragile, living entity is far from the truth. We use DNA to build computers, biological machines, etc. It's sturdy stuff. And the commenting about SmartWater and contamination - being the IT guy living with the geneticist woman, this has also come up. The chemicals and procedures used to ensure contamination isn't carried over can be quite horrendous precisely because of this. And it makes me wonder quite how hard it would be to get away with murder if the forensics team do turn up.

        And we know that in bones and bodies buried for hundreds of years, it survives on a biologically-active plane. In the relative sterility of space's vacuum, I can't see how at least the basic building blocks wouldn't be able to travel between systems quite easily. Not undamaged, most likely, but that would hardly matter as the "seed" for further life. A few million years soon sorts that out.

        DNA is hardy stuff indeed.

    2. John Jennings
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Not surprising

      I think that the theory doesn't require a lot of DNA to actually make it to earth.... Just a little would be enough to 'infect' the planet eventually.

      It does not matter if 99.999% of DNA is burned or damaged beyond the ability to replicate... It takes that .001% to land on the appropriate medium (the sea?) to replicate. If you have 1 billion years, and a frequency of hits on the earth high enough, then you have many opportunities to infect - and once is pretty much enough....

      Paris, because she is a star-child :)

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: Not surprising

        "I think that the theory doesn't require a lot of DNA to actually make it to earth.... Just a little would be enough to 'infect' the planet eventually."

        Let us all know how that DNA managed to shit out an operational cell to operate within or even manage to get into an operational cell that lacked DNA to do so in.

        Transpermia requires, by nature, intact cells arriving, well, intact.

        *That* is what needs to be tested. Or a DNA virus, or an RNA virus that can shit out an operational cell (or something other than magic).

        So, the *proper* experiment would be to introduce an object heavily laden with extermophiles and entering the atmosphere of the Earth and landing with said extremophiles alive and well.

        Rapid recovery would be essential and proper genetic marking would also be key.

        A plasmid could survive a lot and never manage to do anything, as it lacks the cell it was to be sexually transmitted to.

        Might as well wanked off onto the capsule surface and say I'd result from any sperm arriving intact(ish) to Earth. Just based upon DNA, ignoring the dead cells that contained it.

  3. james 68

    Tardigrades

    We know due to various experiments that a complex lifeform like tardigrades can survive prolonged exposure to space and all that that entails like vacuum, cosmic rays, solar radiation, extreme heat and cold (and my personal opinion is that they could probably survive re-entry also - they are hardy little buggers). I am more than a little surprised that nobody has tested them for re-entry survivability.

    Some interesting light reading - http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2014/03/19/5-reasons-why-the-tardigrade-is-natures-toughest-animal/

    Also a little surprised that the LOHAN boffinry hasn't teamed up with a university or school to test near-space experiments in a similar vein.

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Tardigrades

      They are indeed hardly little beasts, however, subject them to hard gamma radiation, then intense solar radiation (not only UV, but all of the various other species of radiation), then consider interstellar radiation that we're "exempt" from, courtesy of the solar magnetic field.

      Erm, I suggest it's not worthy of consideration, but highly worthy of experimentation, to include sending a sample beyond heliopause and back.

  4. tony2heads
    Coat

    I will survive

    can we call the next experiment Gloria Gaynor

    Coat : it's a heat shield

    1. DropBear
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: I will survive

      Oh great. Now I'm stuck with this image of an Apollo-type capsule in a fiery re-entry, with a few tiny buggers fluttering like mad, clinging to it for dear life while Gaynor is blasting at 150dB in the background...

      1. psychonaut

        Re: I will survive

        but we know that in space, no one can hear you scream. even if its gloria.

        1. Omgwtfbbqtime
          Megaphone

          Re: I will survive

          unless it's a Marine Corps battle scream! - R Lee Ermey at his finest.

  5. Tom 7

    Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

    passing through earths atmosphere and not explode in a fireball on impact. Now calculate the maximum speed an object like that could be accelerated to when a planet explodes without the dna being ruined. Now calculate how long that would take to travel from the nearest star if pointed straight at us to land 4 Billion years ago. Now calculate the chance of it randomly travel across space to hit the earth. Now add in cosmic ray and restart you calculations because you didn’t put an exception in for fucking small numbers.

    Then, ignoring the 10 Billion light year wide elephant in the room of 'how did DNA get started somewhere else at least 4 Billion years ago' you might just realise that any panspermia would, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale have travelled the universe only to be eaten by a small dog.

    The idea that life came here by meteorite theory gets a boost but only by something less than IEEE754 32bit smallest number.

    1. TitterYeNot

      Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

      "The idea that life came here by meteorite theory gets a boost but only by something less than IEEE754 32bit smallest number."

      You say that as if the idea is absolutely, totally and in all other ways inconceivable...

      1. Tom 7

        Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

        Have you heard of Occams razor? Panspermia is not impossible, but if you do the maths involved and then compare it with the possibility that it started here on earth then you end up with a majority shareholding in several of the major intergalactic depilation product manufacturers.

        It would come up with several working bits in the IEEE754 64 bit number scheme though but its still barking in the wrong forest.

        We had everything needed for life on earth before it started. Recent experiments have had a few hundred amino acids join up to form rna chains spontaneously at sub zero temperatures. Before life appeared on earth the moon was closer and we had more frequent massive tides - imagine huge piles of slush and bedrock and silt being ground around in bay several times a day - that's one mother of a chemistry set!

        1. Grikath

          Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

          Now I would quite like to see amino acids form up RNA of any kind....

          As for the actual chance.. Wrong kind of numbercrunching...

          We know for a fact that this solar system is built out of the remains of quite a fair number of supernovae of a previous generation: it's where all the other-than-hydrogen stuff comes from, after all... So the chance of [anything] "surviving" being blown up and ending up in this part of our milky way is exactly 1....

          The question whether or not viable fragments of DNA, or even whole organisms landed here is moot. If it was a whole organism, we know that it cannot have been more complex than the most basic chemotrophes, because that is the stuff our earliest fossil record indicates existed at the Dawn of Life. Nothing more complicated than that could have possibly landed here.

          There's many things we already know that make panspermia extremely unlikely, most of which point to the simple fact that Life, at least over here, must have been a DIY job. But calculating the likelyhood starting from the Big Bang? Not the way to do it.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

            "The question whether or not viable fragments of DNA, or even whole organisms landed here is moot. If it was a whole organism, we know that it cannot have been more complex than the most basic chemotrophes, because that is the stuff our earliest fossil record indicates existed at the Dawn of Life. Nothing more complicated than that could have possibly landed here."

            Actually, you are incorrect. Since the most likely Source Of Modern Life On Earth is "soft" panspermia (comets seeded volatiles and amino acids which gave rise to life) technically it's entirely possible that relatively complex alien life did land on Earth and native-grown Earth life simply killed it all off. We'll probably never know.

            For that matter, maybe alien blue-green algea landed on Earth last night via some space rock, and the local fauna had a tasty snack. Again, we'll never know.

        2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

          "We had everything needed for life on earth before it started."

          No, we didn't. When Theia whacked into Earth it blew off out atmosphere and liquified the entire fucking planet. Heavy elements sunk to the core and it took millions of years for the crust to reform. Volcanism ejected stupid amounts of CO2 and methane, but not nearly enough H2O and virtually no N2.

          The nitrogen that makes up most of our atmosphere came from the late heavy bombardment, as did a lot of our water. And it is most likely that the chemicals which gave rise to the first life on Earth were seeded here during the late heavy bombardment. This is known as "soft" panspermia, and it is the best fit for the evidence we have today.

          Earth didn't simply "have all the chemicals required" for life and then life arose. That's radically unlikely, due to the formational history of our planet. Instead, it's far more likely that those chemicals were deposited on Earth as fully formed amino acids during the late heavy bombardment, along with the majority of our volatiles.

          But the Earth, as a planet, existed for quite some time before the late heavy bombardment. Indeed, it had already gone through one fairly major event (the Big Whack) before we ever got that far. We were a dead world until some comets brought us life.

          Who cares that it wasn't life in the form of alien cells? It was precious, precious volatiles and the amino acids that made us.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

          It has always been a mystery to me why people are wont to insist that life simply must have originated somewhere other than Earth. Just as you point out, Occam's Razor says otherwise. Here is where life began and, in all probability, it will end in this solar system--assuming physicists fail to come up with any more breakthroughs on the traveling front.

    2. Sgt_Oddball

      Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

      No more improbable than life on earth being one gigantic computer program...

    3. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

      Life doesn't have to get here on meteorites. Just the chemical building blocks. Methinks if DNA can make it intact, so can various amino acids. And I'm thinking that, really, if we have C, N, O, Fe, Mg, P, Ca and H2O along with a few amino acids and temperatures in the right ranges, we'll get abiogenesis. At least, if you give it a few hundred million years.

      A whole alien cell doesn't need to get here intact. But if some interesting enough chemicals happen along, it can really speed up that whole "abiogenesis of metabolism" thing.

    4. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere

      "Calculate the size of meteorites that can survive passing through earths atmosphere "

      OK, around dust particle size. The "sand" washed off of your roof tomorrow (assuming it doesn't rain tonight) dust.

      *That* is largely meteor dust that arrived and wasn't able to be incinerated due to size and resistance to velocity decreasing it to be able to survive.

      "Then, ignoring the 10 Billion light year wide elephant in the room of 'how did DNA get started somewhere else at least 4 Billion years ago' you might just realise that any panspermia would, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale have travelled the universe only to be eaten by a small dog."

      Meanwhile, you failed to consider the harm inflicted on a single light year travel outside of our heliopause (or any other star that isn't inside of our current solar system).

      Which would result in a deader than George I existence, screw theory, physics reigns supreme. As does interstellar radiation, which is abominable.

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Hammer to crack a nut.

      "To see what happens to the DNA when it gets hot, rather than all that rocket nonsense, couldn't they just heat that stuff up in an oven?"

      Doesn't tell you anything about ablation, vibration, sonic disturbances, coping with the impact, etc.

      "Also, wouldn't a real meteor be arriving at at least the Earth's escape velocity of 11 km/s?"

      No. Most likely a real space rock would hit the atmosphere, explode and send shards of itself all across hell and gone. Man of those make it down to Earth just fine, and they aren't quite going at 11km/s. They're traveling at terminal velocity just like the rocket. Not being as aerodynamic as the rocket, their terminal velocity would be lower.

      Also: the outside of those objects will be melted by friction, but the insides have been known to house quite cold objects. See: ablation, and it's effects on cooling.

  7. gerryg

    evidence of not being impossible <> evidence of being possible

    Regardless of the durability of DNA - experts seem to have already covered that off - this doesn't even begin to prove that life arrived on asteroids.

    It just leaves open the possibility that some DNA could have arrived by asteroid and that possibly the DNA could have developed into an organism that might have had "survival of the fittest" characteristics and has not have gone extinct.

    We have no evidence that this has happened or that if it did it's the unique reason for life on earth.

    1. phil dude
      Thumb Up

      Re: evidence of not being impossible <> evidence of being possible

      I agree correlate/causation etc...

      We are, however, living in a world where a significant proportion of the population profess belief in "the impossible" no matter how much evidence to the contrary.

      I am happy to know a bit more than yesterday; there is still so much more to be learned.

      P.

  8. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

    Alas...

    ..this theory suffers from the way humans consider new ideas.

    It was a theory pushed by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe in the 1970s, and at that time it was laughed at, and therefore defined as nutty by the scientific establishment. Consequently, it should not be taken seriously by anyone, and limited or no research should be done on it. Certainly not until both the early proponents die, and Wickramasinghe is still alive.

    Once he is dead, it will be ok to research it again, and, if it turns out to be true, there will be no need for any embarrassing apology.

    Quite a lot of scientific advances involve waiting for the original proposer to die so that no one has to say "Dear me, how stupid we were then...". Wegener's Continental Drift Theory comes to mind.

    Just thought I'd mention it...

    1. Craig 2

      Re: Alas...

      Sadly, this gives me 2 simultaneous thoughts:

      1. That can't possibly be true, nobody would be that self-centered.

      2. It probably is true.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Alas...

      I won't count out Sir Fred. Having witnessed all the epicycles bolted onto the Big Bang Theory... grumbling.

  9. Primus Secundus Tertius

    Hot life

    The article mentions temperatures of 130 degrees C. This will be reached, under pressure, in hot springs on Earth that are full of algae and bacteria. So not really anything new.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Film at 11

    It's a great experiment for the publicity value - for the biologists really cheap, just spray some plasmid on the rocket and swab it when it comes back down. I guess if they'd had to put the full economic cost of shooting up a rocket on their grant application, it might not have passed review. What might have been more interesting and controversial would have been to put some bacterial spores on the rocket and see if you can get anything to germinate after return. DNA itself would need to find some obliging organism to take it up, do any "error correction" and then express the genes. A germinating spore has all the machinery of life and they are quite tough. But the experiment would have unfashionable resonances of the germ warfare tests conducted in a rather similar fashion on the NY subway.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Andromeda Strain.

    Looks as though the human race started out as a virus in space.....explains a lot.

    1. JCitizen
      Holmes

      Re: Andromeda Strain.

      Or the old harbinger of doom - great comets in the sky. History is replete with plagues after such events - kinda makes you think a space virus could have floated down the atmosphere off cometary dust, and directly caused such calamities. Dust would not necessarily reach velocities that would burn up on the atmosphere, because it could have been going at almost the same speed of the earth as it entered the dust trail. This lower velocity would mean the dust could float down, without enough gravitational acceleration to burn up in the 1st place, and terminal velocity would quickly be reached. Most of the incidental dust orbiting with earth is going 38,000 mph and would burn up, but I'm assuming the comet would kick things in gear by adding some velocity to match the earths speed at 66,000 mph in orbital velocity. I don't see it as impossible at all.

  12. Mikel

    We will know one day

    If there is DNA contamination found in the probes we send down to Ceres, then we will know for sure. I am expecting they find actual DNA not far below the surface, and further down, soup.

  13. Stevie

    Bah!

    In other news: Mysterious amorphous blob-thing rampages the countryside around rocket landing site.

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