Bacteria riding on an incoming meteorite may be able to survive the violent shockwave created when it crash-lands on a planet. Their cell walls have been seen to rapidly harden and relax after a sudden shock compression, enabling them to bounce back even after an extreme collision.
“When you are exposing life to such extreme conditions, it is a surprise when they survive quite well,” says Rachael Hazael at University College London
Microbes can withstand extreme environments on Earth, including the crushing pressure of the deep ocean or deep beneath the ground. This suggests that life forms could thrive on distant worlds in similar high-pressure environments.
But few people have studied what happens to microbes under dynamic “shock compression”, which is a very short-lived high-pressure environment.
To find out, Hazael and colleagues subjected a hardy, metal-eating microbe called Shewanella oneidensis to varying levels of sudden, extraordinarily high pressures. After each blast in increasingly high-pressure experiments, the team cultured the microbial survivors and found they fared better in a sudden high-pressure environment than in a long-lasting high-pressure condition.
To read more, click here.