Posthuman Blues

Microbe experiment suggests we could all be Martians

To their surprise, the scientists found the lichen and bacterial spores survived all but the most cataclysmic impacts up to 45 billion pascals. The cyanobacteria survived shocks of up to 10 billion pascals.

The findings support the theory of "lithopanspermia", which suggests life may be spread from one planet to another aboard lumps of rock that are knocked off the surface.

Writing in the journal Icarus, the scientists state: "These results strongly confirm the possibility of a 'direct transfer' scenario of 'lithopanspermia' for the route from Mars to Earth, or from any Mars-like planet to other habitable planets in the same stellar system."

(Via The Anomalist.)