I wrote in January 2005 about a report on microorganisms in the upper
atmosphere:
Of the six species of microorganisms isolated from the mesosphere,
five
contained pigments and were more resistant to UV radiation compared
with
their pigment-free mutants. The black pigment isolated from the
conidia of
Aspergillus niger considerably increased the UV resistance of the
unpigmented mutant conidia of Penicillium notatum, the spore
Circinella
muscae and the vegetative cells of Micrococcus albus. From the data
it is
possible to conclude that in the upper layers of the Earth's
atmosphere the
predominant proportion of pigmented microorganisms is the
consequence of
natural selection by UV radiation.
Yes, well thanks. Your report is much different from mine. I am
drawing from
FEMS Letters of 18 December 2002 by Dr. Wainwright and others. They
isolated 3
species in the upper atmosphere similar to Bacillus simplex,
Staphylococcus
pasteuri, and a fungus Engyodontium album.
I was looking through the Chlorophyll molecule to see if Nitrogen was a
key component. As it turns out chlorophyll is a chelate of Magnesium in
center surrounded by 4 nitrogen bonded to a large organic porphyrin.
Now I wonder if the above microorganisms have chlorophyll and whether
they put that chlorophyll into operation whilst they reside in the upper
atmosphere?? Perhaps the Micrococcus albus contains chlorophyll and puts
it into operation whilst in the upper atmosphere.
I am beginning to think that Nitrogen is key to saving Earth from Global
Warming and key in the material that becomes the Earth AirConditioner.
I suspect that it is a matter of balancing the amount of Ozone layer and
the man-made fossil fuel burning of greenhouse gases. So if we replete
the upper atmosphere with double or triple the amount of ozone presently
up there then we turn Global Warming around.
I am a bit scared of using a microorganism as the material for Air
Conditioner because organisms have a penchant of getting out of control
and a organism that runs rampant in the upper atmosphere can endanger
life on the surface. But there is another argument that may come true,
in that a microorganism appears on the scene that makes the upper
atmosphere its home, naturally, and not be human cause or human
intervention. And that we face such a battle with this microorganism in
the future. It cools Earth but it cools it too much.
I would say such a event of the natural occurrence of a microbe that
lives in the upper atmosphere and cools Earth is more than 50 to 50
chance. Because as Earth becomes warmer the extent of living
environments increases and that means even the upper atmosphere.
So if any one of those microbes listed above contains chlorophyll and
can stay in the upper atmosphere for some period of time suggests that a
Microbe as Earth's AirConditioner is a sure bet to succeed, whether by
human invention or by serendipity the natural order of events to come.
I guess the scary part is when microbes stay up there and multiply up
there. As yet they just wander there and fall back to Earth. But if they
reside up there and multiply is the time to start to worry.
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
.
