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Common yeast can survive Martian conditions

Common yeast can survive Martian conditions

13 comments

·October 14, 2025
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metalman

I think by "survive" they mean that yeast spores can briefly be put in a "mars jar" and then be revived, not that they can become metobolicaly active, or even last for an extended time on mars

dib258

Yeah, we can make beers on mars!

oh_my_goodness

So send the yeast.

pbhjpbhj

My first thought on reading the title of the OP was 'I wonder if we've already ruined Mars with unhelpful yeast?'.

Surely there's nothing for it to eat there yet though.

IsTom

When jupiterians come to explore mars they'll face a horror movie scenario with long dormant alien pathogen eating through their carbohydrate shells.

ghkbrew

I think they prefer "Jovians".

alexpotato

Given that the "percentage of stars with planets" part of the Drake equation has recently been determined to be close to 100%, Panspermia is starting to feel more and more likely.

malfist

Something to blow your mind with. The early days in the universe there were millions of years were the average temperature in the universe supported liquid water.

gweinberg

Okay, but this is the average temperature of a big cloud of hydrogen with oxygen yet to be invented right?

kaashif

I don't think millions of years is long enough for anything interesting to happen life-wise, is it?

ben_w

On the one hand, (primitive) life appeared on Earth almost as soon as conditions allowed it.

On the other, the early universe — this particular "warm bath" era — had approximately zero oxygen with which to make water. Right temperature, just (IIRC, but I'm not certain) zero stars yet, so nothing to make things heavier than what came out of Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

vizzier

hard to know with so few data points

notepad0x90

all of those theories depend on one assumption, that life and our existence are products of a purely random collision of events.

IMHO, "We don't know" is the only answer to the question of how many planets have life on them or the probability of some forms of live existing somewhere. 0 is as valid as 10^128 until more than one other life supporting planet or moon is found to establish some baseline for speculation. otherwise, we're talking sci-fi here, in which case I think stargate's version seems decent.