In March, a group of University of Houston students - take undue credit on a payload with a prime mission to scope out what's in auroras - they will fly a high-altitude experiment from Alaska to see what microbes are in the high atmosphere, between 18 km and 50 km (11 miles and 31 miles) from the ground. A tool, which looks almost alike small laundry picnic basket, pops open to collect what's in the atmosphere. Then, as the balloon descends, it shuts off for researchers to analyze.
High Altitude Microorganisms Might Have Been Fungi
Jamie Lehnen, a fourth-year student on the team, says this system could be less open to pollution than pumps and other complicated apparatuses that require servicing on Earth. But it's the first time her group should use it, so isn't sure how well it will be functional during the flight. If it does, however, she's attracted to learn about how microbes will react under the strains of living at high altitudes.
"A lot of times, these microbes when they go up there, they shut down. They are not reproducing, as they are not metabolically active," she said. "I'm interested in how their stress response is like those [microbes] found on Earth's surface."
Some of the earliest high-altitude microorganism research did not involve air travel at all - Charles Darwin picked up African dust on his ship while on a voyage over the Atlantic Ocean, while Louis Pasteur made measurements on top of alpine glaciers and Both have found microorganisms with different characteristics.
That said, microorganism research in high altitude has been known since the 1930s or even earlier at least. One of the earliest flights involved Charles Lindbergh, a pilot best known for solo piloting the Atlantic in 1927. Accompanied by his wife, Lindbergh periodically passed the monoplane joysticks over to her to take samples from the atmosphere around them. The research team found spores of fungi and pollen grains, among other samplings.
Conducting Test Will Enlighten Us About Microorganism Characteristics And Behavior
"We want to know and explore what kind of microorganisms are making that leap across the ocean, co-transported with aerosol species," Smith said. "Alaska will allow us an opening and breakthrough to test the atmospheric bridge theory, which simply speaking, are continents squeezing to each other."
Smith is a bit skeptical that microorganisms are growing or dividing at such high altitudes because it's so cold and dry in the sky. But he says that microorganisms may be "persisting", or evolving and not being killed. "Nobody has been able to measure how long microorganisms can stay in the sky. There are works that still needs to be done."
"Virtually all earthly and marine surfaces have microorganisms associated with them that can get dispatched from the surfaces by the wind or other physical instabilities," wrote Aarhus University assistant professor Tina Santl-Temkiv, who has studied microorganisms in hailstones.
"Venus and Earth were similar for three billion years and perhaps as recently as up to about half a billion years of evolution," said Dr. Lynn Rothschild, a NASA astrobiologist, and the synthetic biologist that's in Smith's research team. She said this includes liquid oceans, similar atmosphere, and probably the same sorts of minerals and organic components as well.
But Venus would be a difficult panorama if the life returns to the surface. The sun got more glowing as the solar system aged, dissolving the water from Venus' oceans. The water vapor, now in the atmosphere, paid to give Venus a hellish glasshouse effect on its surface.
