| ▲ | jajko 10 months ago |
| I don't think anymore absolutely 100% sterilization of all life on Earth is possible, we always end up talking about 99.999999% or similar. With exception of maybe super/hypernova of our Sun which ain't possible, or black hole passing directly through/very close to Earth, tearing apart every single atom making up this planet including all of us on quark level. |
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| ▲ | s1artibartfast 10 months ago | parent [-] |
| Colision with a planet or moon would do it, anything that turns the surface to lava really. |
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| ▲ | sebzim4500 10 months ago | parent | next [-] | | Even then there's a chance a few tardigrades hibernate on some material that shoots up and then comes back a few years later once the earth has cooled a bit. | | |
| ▲ | LeifCarrotson 10 months ago | parent | next [-] | | I propose we do this intentionally - put a few tardigrades and some other extremophiles in a rad-shielded container inside a fully-passive reentry vehicle and throw it up into a graveyard orbit for a couple million years. Cheap insurance for life on earth! | |
| ▲ | pfdietz 10 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think they could be cooked by thermal radiation as the ejecta expands. | | |
| ▲ | sebzim4500 10 months ago | parent | next [-] | | Probably most would be, but there are a lot of microorganisms and only a few need to get lucky. | |
| ▲ | blooalien 10 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | Tardigrades were placed in the "extremophile" class with good reason. If anything could survive a truly catastrophic impact event, I'd say the smart money goes on the lowly "water bear" to win. :) | | |
| ▲ | Keysh 10 months ago | parent [-] | | Tardigrades are not "extremophiles", which refers to organisms that live (grow, reproduce) in "extreme" environments ("phile" = "like, love"). Tardigrades can temporarily survive some rather extreme conditions, but they generally require fairly ordinary environments to actually live. (As suggested by common names like "water bear" and "moss piglet".) |
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| ▲ | dekhn 10 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | Deep-earth chemoautotrophs might survive that. But ultimately, if the deep subsurface exceeds 150C, it would be hard to survive. | | |
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