Mastodawn

This Microscopic Fungus Survived NASA’s Sterilization Protocols—and Is Potentially Hardy Enough to Contaminate Mars
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-microscopic-fungus-survived-nasas-sterilization-protocols-and-is-hardy-enough-to-potentially-contaminate-mars-180988728/
13 May 2026

#science #space #mycology #biology #extremophiles

This Microscopic Fungus Survived NASA's Sterilization Protocols—and Is Potentially Hardy Enough to Contaminate Mars

The microbe was gathered from the agency's clean rooms, where experts build spacecraft in carefully controlled environments. The findings reveal gaps in the agency's procedures to prevent durable hitchhikers

Smithsonian Magazine

TKSST • seethis.tv 🌈🪐✨4d ago

💁🏻‍♀️ ICYMI: ❄️🧊 #Antarctica looks empty from above, but researchers find signs of #history and life hidden deep beneath the #ice.

Cleo Abram talks with scientists about subglacial #lakes and ice cores that act as a frozen timeline of our #atmosphere. The remote environments could help us understand how life might survive on icy moons like #Jupiter's #Europa.

👉 Learn more: https://seethis.tv/post/what-is-under-antarctica-vostok-video

#air #animals #astrobiology #biology #climate #climatechange #discoveries #earth #extremophiles #geography #geology #geothermal #glaciers #lasers #limnology #microbes #moons #mountains #mystery #science #snow #space #underground #virus #volcanoes #water #womeninstem #tksst #video

TKSST • seethis.tv 🌈🪐✨5d ago

❄️🧊 #Antarctica looks empty from above, but researchers find signs of #history and life hidden deep beneath the #ice.

👉 Learn more: https://seethis.tv/post/what-is-under-antarctica-vostok-video

Wild Sown 6d ago

Memories from Februaries spent in the #Atacama desert. Team members would take nights off to recover from the heat and do laundry in town, pick up supplies at the hardware store.

Often we had to get those foil-faced windshield covers to protect computers that would overheat in the sun.

Driving through that otherworldly #landscape was exhilarating.

#extremophilia #chile #nasa #marsrover #seti #antofagasta #fieldscience #extremophiles #desert #mondaymemories

TKSST • seethis.tv 🌈🪐✨Mar 31

🌍🌋 Three tectonic plates are pulling apart in northeastern #Ethiopia to create the #Danakil Depression. This geological rift contains #magma pools and acidic #springs where the average temperature exceeds 46ºC.

Scientists visit the site to study #polyextremophiles which are #bacteria that survive in environments with no oxygen and high acidity.

👉 https://www.discoverwildlife.com/environment/danakil-depression

#geology #earthscience #biology #extremophiles #nature #science #environment #research #volcanoes #africa

It’s the size of the Serengeti, hotter than Hades with deadly acid-filed lakes – and is called the Gateway to Hell. This is the closest to another planet you can get | Discover Wildlife

A blistering, otherworldly expanse in northeastern Ethiopia, the Danakil Depression is one of the hottest and most inhospitable places on Earth.

Discover Wildlife

GDCh Division of Biochemistry Mar 18

The third day of #Biochemistry2026 is off to a great start with an inspiring lecture by Schraga Schwartz. He talked about "RNA at the Edge: Extreme Biology as a Lens on RNA Modification Principles".

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092867425010827
#Biochemistry #Chemistry #ChemBio #RNA #extremophiles #Archaea
CC: @gdch

TKSST • seethis.tv 🌈🪐✨Mar 10

💎🌡️ The Cueva de los Cristales is home to giant beams of selenite that grew over hundreds of thousands of years in extreme heat. Scientists recently found dormant #microbes trapped inside the #crystals that may provide clues about how life survives in the harshest environments on #Earth.

👉 https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/crystal-cave

#cave #mexico #geology #microbiology #extremophiles #science #nature #exploration #minerals #discovery #earthscience #biology

It's a staggering 300 metres underground, features amazing 11-metre-tall crystals – and has a deadly 90% humidity level | Discover Wildlife

Discover Wildlife

TKSST • seethis.tv 🌈🪐✨Mar 5

🦠🪐 New #research from Johns Hopkins University suggests that the boundary between #planets might be a lot leakier than we thought.

By sandwiching the hardy bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans between steel plates and shooting them at nearly 500 km/h (~300 mph), scientists demonstrated they can survive 30,000 times atmospheric pressure.

👉 https://www.sciencealert.com/extreme-microbes-can-survive-the-journey-between-planets-experiments-show

#science #space #biology #astronomy #mars #panspermia #extremophiles

Extreme Microbes Can Survive The Journey Between Planets, Experiments Show

The idea that life can spread from world to world dates as far back as ancient Greece and the philosopher Anaxagoras.

ScienceAlert

Show thread

Spaceflight 🚀Mar 1

#Extremophiles that can digest #radiation ☢️ and toxicities are already used to clean up everything from oil spills to the fallout of radioactive sites.

This means we could #engineer microbes that are resistant to freezing ❄️ temperatures and high levels of radiation.

Given that #microbes 🦠 helped make Earth habitable, we could use synthetic #biology to engineer microbes to speed up a similar process for #Mars 🔴 https://theconversation.com/how-to-engineer-microbes-to-enable-us-to-live-on-mars-253456

#CrisprCas9 #SyntheticBiology #Terraforming #Mars