What last at the very bound of space ? Other than high - flying fountain aircraft pilot ( and the occasionaldaredevil skydiver ) you would n’t expect to find many living things over 10 kilometre up – yet this is on the nose where one NASA researcher is track down for grounds of life .
Top image via NASA .
Earth ’s stratosphere is not a place you ’d typically think of when considering hospitable environments . in high spirits , dry , and stale , the stratosphere is the layer just above where most weather occurs , widen from about 10 km to 50 kilometre ( 6 to 31 mile ) above Earth ’s airfoil . temperature in the lowest layer norm -56 C ( -68 F ) with jet-propelled plane current winds boast at a firm 100 mph . Atmospheric denseness is less than 10 % that found at sea layer and atomic number 8 is found in the form of ozone , which shields life on the surface from harmful UV radiation syndrome but provide anything above 32 km openly expose .
sound like a nifty place to expect for animation , right ? BiologistDavid Smithof the University of Washington thinks so … he and his team have find “ microbes from every major domain of a function ” traveling within upper - atmospherical winds .
Smith , master police detective with Kennedy Space Center ’s Microorganisms in the Stratosphere ( MIST ) task , is working to take a census of biography ten-spot of thousands of feet above the ground . Using gamey - elevation atmospheric condition balloon and sampling cumulate fromMt . Bachelor Observatoryin central Oregon , Smith aims to obtain out what form of microbes are found high in the atmospheric state , how many there are and where they may have come from .
“ liveliness surviving at high altitude take exception our notion of the biosphere boundary . ”
– David Smith , Biologist , University of Washington in Seattle
Although reports of micro-organism survive as high as 77 km have been around since the thirties , Smith doubts the validity of some of the quondam datum … the microbe could have been make for up by the inquiry vehicles themselves .
“ Almost no controls for sterilization are report in the papers , ” he allege .
But while some researchers have paint a picture that the microbes could have occur from kayoed space , Smith mean they are terrestrial in origin . Most of the microbes discovered so far are bacterial spore – extremely hardy organism that can form a protective eggshell around themselves and thus survive the small temperatures , teetotal conditions and gamy storey of irradiation retrieve in the stratosphere . Dust storms or hurricanes could presumptively deliver the bacteria into the ambiance where they shape spore and are transported across the Earth .
If they land in a suited environs they have the ability to renovate themselves , remain to live and multiply .
Although collecting these high - flying organism is difficult , Smith is confident that this inquiry will show how such canonical life can travel long distances and exist even the harshest environments – not only on Earth but possibly on other cosmos as well , such as the dessicated soil of Mars .
“ We still have no melodic theme where to guide the height boundary of the biosphere , ” said Smith . This enquiry will “ plow how long living can potentially persist in the stratosphere and what sorts of mutations it may inherit while aloft . ”
interpret more on Michael Schirber ’s clause for Astrobiology Magazinehere , and watch David Smith ’s seminar “ The High Life : Airborne Microbes on the Edge of Space ” held May 2012 at the University of Washington below :
Inset image – Top : layers of the standard pressure , via theSmithsonian / NMNH . Bottom : Scanning negatron microscope image of atmospheric bacterial spores pull in from Mt. Bachelor Observatory ( NASA / KSC )
This clause by Jason Majororiginally come out at Universe Today . Jason Major is a pictorial designer living in Providence , RI , who writes about astronomy and space exploration on his blogLights In The Dark , Discovery News and on Universe Today .
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