'Sleeping beauty' bug could one day allow scientists to 'cook' Mars
Scientists have brought back to life a that has been lurking two miles beneath Greenland's ice sheet for at least 120,000 years, according to the Daily Mail.
It doesn't flirt outrageously with footballers or wow judges with heartbreaking renditions of the song 'Memory', so why does a tabloid give a toss about a bacterium that can survive horrendously hostile conditions and breathes out greenhouse gases?
One reason is because some scientists like at the University of Idaho would like to make Mars a new home for humans by pelting it with greenhouse gas-belching, climate-warming bacteria. (Currently, the average temperature on Mars stands at a bone-chilling -63C.)
Of course, making Mars fit for human life will take more than just a liberal sprinkling of bugs. Radical scientists like James Lovelock suggest that we will also need to build factories on Mars that are dedicated to pumping out vast quantities of climate-warming chlorofluorocarbons.
What's more, it's not just Mars' atmosphere that is a problem: much of the planet is currently coated in seed-destroying pernitric acid, ruling out any grow-your-own allotments. ('Mars is no place for gardening', James Lovelock notes wryly in his book, 'The ages of Gaia'.)
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