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The Andromeda Strain; Plausible?
Topic Started: Oct 28 2008, 08:36 PM (2,084 Views)
Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Have you ever heard of Michael Crichton's novel The Andromeda Strain?

In it, an alien bacteria, named Andromeda, lands on Earth and kills an entire small town. It only functions between pH ranges of 6.5 and 7.5. It has a crystaline structure, no proteins, and no DNA.

The bacteria kills by coagulating blood in the brain and by solidifying the blood. Though, in some cases, the blood does not solidify. But the pressur on the brain causes the victims to be suicidal.


How likely is this bacterial life form to exist? How likely is it to cause these symptoms? And how likely is a bacteria, Andromeda or otherwise, to cause the extinction of the human race?
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Ànraich
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi

Indeed. So long as it is carbon/water based it could probably adapt. Now if it came and was silicon/nitrogen based or methane/ammonia based it probably would die or go dormant forever (which I guess is pretty much death).
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

Tree That Owns Itself
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colddigger
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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viruses tend to be very specialized, so an alien virus cannot attack an Earth cell without changing, and wouldn't that require it to attack a cell to reproduce? therefore an alien virus is relatively harmless since it would either be destroyed before finding a cell similar enough to its normal host or stay dormant for all eternity. If it were to find a host and mutate to be able to infect Earth life than it is similar enough to Earth viruses for life to develop an immunity.

I don't know much about prions except that they are proteins that don't do what they're supposed to do and for cells to produce them much like a virus. the andromeda strain sounds closer to being one of those. although if it lacks proteins and DNA and is crystalline it would imagine that it is using salts and sugars rather than proteins.

surviving in the Ph of blood would mean that it developed on a planet where life originated in the oceans, not really a planet who's life has DNA like us.
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