DARPA Wants to Create Synthetic Organisms to Terraform and Change the Atmosphere of Mars

Hacked ^ | 6/25/15 | Giulio Prisco

[LibWhacker]

DARPA Wants to Create Synthetic Organisms to Terraform and Change the Atmosphere of Mars

Biotech, Space, Synthetic Biology

June 25, 2015

by Giulio Prisco

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) believes that it's on the way to creating synthetic organisms capable of terraforming Mars into a planet that looks more like Earth, Motherboard reports.

Speaking at a recent biotech conference hosted by DARPA, Alicia Jackson, deputy director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) said:

For the first time, we have the technological toolkit to transform not just hostile places here on Earth, but to go into space not just to visit, but to stay.

Jackson, who joined DARPA in 2010, is a researcher specialized in the integration of engineering with biology to assemble cells and inorganic materials and create self-healing, evolvable materials. The BTO is a DARPA division that aims to merge biology, engineering, and computer science to harness the power of natural systems for national security. The BTO aims to develop new products and systems that go beyond what is possible with conventional chemistry and manufacturing technologies. BTO's Living Foundries program does research on how to leverage the unparalleled synthetic and functional capabilities of biology to create a revolutionary, biologically-based manufacturing platform.

Engineering Extremophile Organisms to Change the Atmosphere of Mars

Terraforming Mars means hacking the red planet to make it suitable for the establishment of a terrestrial ecosystem and human life, and is a necessary prerequisite for the plans to colonize Mars that have been proposed by visionary thinkers like Robert Zubrin and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. The terraforming process would need to warm-up and thicken the atmosphere of Mars, which can be accomplished with bacteria, algae and photosynthesizing plants specialized to thrive in the Mars environment.

Tweaking existing life forms to engineer new ones is the goal of advanced biotech and synthetic biology, but so far only two organisms - e. coli and yeast - have been used in synthetic biology research.

Jackson is more ambitious. "There are anywhere from 30 million to 30 billion organisms on this Earth. We use two right now for engineering biology," she said.

I want to use any organism that has properties I want - I want to quickly map it and quickly engineer it. If you look at genome annotation software today, it’s not built to quickly find engineerable systems. It’s built to look for an esoteric and interesting thing I can publish an academic paper on.

Jackson and her team have been working on a software tool called GTA GView, or the "Google maps of genomes," which will allow geneticists to quickly search for the type of genetic material they need for an engineering project. As a result, they will be able to engineer organisms for much more specific purposes.

Future versions of the tool could could search for specific genes in organisms and know which ones to splice together for a specific purpose within a day. That would allow researchers to create extremophiles that could survive conditions in the extreme environment of Mars, and the photosynthesis from those organisms could make the planet habitable for humans.

It may seem odd that DARPA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military, does research aimed at the terraforming and colonization of Mars, but of course the same cutting edge research in synthetic biology could lead to increased process versatility and resiliency in a combat environment with extreme conditions.

[rikkir]

Why dont the Mexicans want to infiltrate Spain?

‘Cause eets hard to get a 65 Chevy cross da ocean gringo.
Don chew know nuttin man?

[catnipman]

they can terraform it all they want, but Mars is a dead planet with no heat in it’s core and no magnetosphere.

[PLMerite]

Isn't anyone going to ask the Synthetics what they think?

[LibWhacker]

They are already taking that into consideration: https://www.google.com/search?q=could+mars+be+given+an+artificial+magnetosphere%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

[MaxMax]

Get Your Own Dirt

One day a group of scientists got together and decided
that man had come a long way and no longer needed God.
So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that
they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God
and said,

“God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We’re to
the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous
things, so why don’t you just go on and mind your own business?”

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After
the scientist was done talking, God said, “Very well, how
about this? Let’s say we have a man-making contest.
”To which the scientist replied, “Okay, we can handle that!”

“But,” God added, “we’re going to do this just like I did
back in the old days with Adam.” The scientist said, “Sure,
no problem” and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God looked at him and said, “No, no, no. You go get your own dirt.”

[Oberon]

I think the article is malarkey. Mars has an atmosphere with only 1% of the barometric pressure of that of the earth. This isn't because there were never gases generated on Mars... it's because there's not a lot of gravity on Mars to hold a significant atmosphere in place. Whatever changes microbes manage to render to the Martian atmosphere, there will still never be enough air there to breathe.

Not to mention it's cold as a twitch's wit there.

[Organic Panic]

Send transgenders. They can colonize the entire planet and make it just the way they think it should be. Just like themselves. If you believe it enough, it just might come true.

[LibWhacker]

it's because there's not a lot of gravity on Mars to hold a significant atmosphere in place

The core cooled and its magnetosphere petered out. Without a strong magnetic field to protect it, the solar wind stripped away its atmosphere. It's more than mass; Titan is even less massive than Mars, and it has quite a hefty atmosphere.

[jimfree]

Genesis Project? Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

[silverleaf]

Genesis!

[JimRed]

Why dont the Mexicans want to infiltrate Spain?

It's too long a walk.

[MeshugeMikey]

the ARTICLE HAS ALL THE EARMARKS.... of being Trans..Atmospheric....

[MeshugeMikey]

Yes and That freak From Vermont..Bernice Saunders...and Sharpton...a SOROS....and maybe even Brian WIlliams

[MeshugeMikey]

Perhaps even our first Space-Case-American President, That Carter Guy......,and Barack Obama too?

[MeshugeMikey]

Synthetic Organisms ????

Dont we already have a family of them living in the Whitehouse??

[Teacher317]

Grand Ideas like this ALWAYS end well for everyone involved... except when it is actually tried...

[UCANSEE2]

The Story entitled “The Shoe on the other foot”.

It is the one about all the ‘blacks’ going to Mars.

[SandRat]

Shades of StarTrek.

[HamiltonJay]

This is idiotic, mars has no, or at least not a strong enough, electromagnetic field, so any “atmosphere” would simply get stripped away by the solar wind, just as its original atmosphere was.

If you are talking seeding the soil with bacteria so you can create an artificial enclosure that might be able to be sustainable if scaled big enough, but au natural, you can engineer a mars atmosphere without first protecting the planet from the solar wind.

[discostu]

Same kind of people that went to The New World, and Explored The West. There are people with a spirit of adventure.