How Long Can Life Wait?

thisisauserid

Based on the article, there is solid proof that microbes can remain viable for up to 100,000 years.

karbak

For a brief moment there, seeing just the headline, I thought this was going to be about Pinboard.

shevy-java

I hate the website. Why? Because when I scroll down, I get blocked, that is, I can not easily copy/paste via a selection anymore; the selection simply does not work, and is connected to the slow-fade out and pop-in of an irrelevant widget I can not want to be bothered to even look at. Any author who uses such a website strategy gets insta-perma-banned by me. It is not worth my time "reading" anything that is made useless by really horrible UI choices, be it infinite scrolling or fafe-out-scrolling-click-to-continue. No, I do not want to click on anything to continue. I don't even want to see accept-cookies. Whenever such a question comes up I'd auto-say no, no pester-widget. Thankfully for the latter there are extensions available, but I have not found a strategy against the slow-fade-in-pester-strategy. Why can I not easily select the text I wish to copy/paste here, from that horrible website? I have no clue, but I can not invest time to investigate this. Hopefully more and more people realise that any strategy to pester people means you devalue YOUR OWN CONTENT as-is. The same applies to medium.com too - it is one reason I do not read anything from there anymore. People need to stop putting up barriers if they want people to read anything.

schiffern

One thing about panspermia math: why assume current travel conditions between the stars? Today the Sun is very far from other stars, but early in star formation (within nebula) the stars are 1. much closer together 2. have a higher rate of material ejection (mass exchange) 3. likely have more benign radiation environments unless near a star, due to GCR shielding by nebula gas 4. likely have higher equilibrium temperature in interstellar/interplanetary space Combined, these factors yield orders of magnitude improvement in panspermia efficiency vs the Sun.

themanmaran

> But if 2-9-3 really had been isolated from its relative for a quarter billion years, enough random mutations in the rDNA should have accumulated for there to be a difference of at least 50 base pairs Occams razor definitely points to this just being a sterilization problem. But it would be funny if the bacteria was just way more stable than people expect.

gb2d_hn

I thought this was going to be about my poor work-life balance from the title!?

einrealist

For you, life cannot wait. Please go out and make contacts. Be welcoming to people. Fall in love. I wonder how my life would have turned out differently. I am a nerd. I am an introvert. I am single. Mostly, I am enjoying it. Sometimes - and increasingly more often - I am questioning it. I have baggage. Was visiting my (younger) sister's grave today. She had baggage with a sad outcome. I am thinking more about my existence. I wish this world would be a more kind place. And I am praising anyone who is contributing to that. Try to be a contributor.

jpablo

I would have liked to find life in mars/the moon. At this point I think we should be tying to spread life everywhere.

almost_usual

Life doesn’t wait.

deadbabe

I really hate these articles that come out with these deep philosophical questions and then you open it up and it’s something stupid about microbes in a meteor or whatever. I was expecting a much more relatable read. To answer the question, you should really not “wait” for anything in life anymore past 30. At some point between 35-45 you will likely cross the halfway point of your life and will begin the journey of being on your way out. Life has a cadence, and it’s not fun to be past that point still “waiting” for things you thought you’d have. Obviously this advice will hit differently for people past a certain age, I’m mostly talking to people in their 20s. They can be saved, but others it may be too late. You must actualize the person you want to be as early as you can, so you can maximize your time in life being that person. That’s when you will have “arrived” to your life, and can focus on just living instead of constantly chasing who you want to be. If you don’t, you might never get there, and then in the end if you think too much you’ll realize your life will have been a waste. That is a private hell. At some point, if you wait too long, there may no longer be enough time or resources to actually live the life destined for you, and then it’s all over. Your chance at life expires: dreams unfinished, like cutting off in the middle of sente

classified

The exhortation carpe diem (seize the day) is very old. So it should be well known that life will not wait.

avazhi

Tangent, but why does Ceglowski keep using Tanpopo as a synonym for Japanese? Am I missing a subtlety here or what?

asphodele

An article like this that makes no mention of Tardigrades? "They are among the most resilient animals known, with individual species able to survive severe conditions – such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation – that would quickly kill most other forms of life. They have survived exposure to outer space." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

excalibur

This article buries what should be the lede. We can say with some confidence that there IS life on Mars, because we put it there.

My_Name

Personally, the older I get the less time I can just 'sit around' without feeling the onset of the inevitable.

andrewflnr

> Temperature is a bigger factory Since the author is here: stray 'y' there, probably. Fun read, though, especially mere hours after finishing Project Hail Mary .