Talmudic Question #71

As NASA’s hotshot exobiologist, you are asked to design an Earth satellite system in which some organism(s) can live actively (i.e.. no spores) for millennia. How would you go about it? Specify an orbit of your choice.

Comments

[Ami Bachar]

I would take a clean coca cola bottle, fill it half with soil and half with sea water, and make sure it stays liquid for the next 1000 years.
"Everything is everywhere and the environment selects" (BB) + "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" (JL).
If it is well closed and nothing escape from the bottle than there should be enough of everything needed to sustain life for much longer than a millennia.

Elio replies:
The simplicity of your proposal wins out over all the complex schemes that I had dreamt up. Good for you!

[Indrani Roy]

I would choose organisms that are not too specialized in their habits and habitats,and put them in a spacecraft that periodically challenged them with newer nutrients and temperatures,and hope that Darwinism worked even in the restricted space given to the organisms.The orbit would not matter too much as long as it was not too small,did not make the space craft spin too rapidly ,at least for a time before the organisms,began evolving.

[abe eisenstark]

Let Nature design the organism for survival on Mars, using Darwinian mutation/natural selection principle. Cornelius Van Niel [Stanford] taught classes how to select unique species. Also, recent ANNUAL REVIEW OF MICROBIOLOGY has a chapter on selection of survivors in stressed environment.See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20825350

Abe Eisenstrak


[Mark O. Martin]

Well, the problem is finding a stable orbit. I mean, you could set up technology that should allow some form of atmosphere, liquid water, and solar irradiation. So I am guessing that you mean orbit, not technology.

If that is the case, life on Earth evolved pretty much in the orbit that we enjoy. Satellites tend not to have stable orbits around the Earth, for several reasons.

So I would select one of the Lagrangian Points of the Earth Moon system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

L4 or L5 appeal to this astronerd.

But even so, I am not sure how stable your biosatellite would be over thousands of years.