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Re: starship-design: Bugs again



Kelly,

>>Another explanation would be that as I suggested: Contamination won't
>>happen unless you are contaminating with large numbers of bacteria.
>>And what about those typical totally grey-skin with large black eyed aliens
>>that every selfrespecting abductee tells about. Couldn't that grey skin not
>>just be a "space"suit? If these aliens breathe oxigen, then they would
>>hardly need anything more than a water-tight suit to survive in Earth's
>>atmosphere. (So no cumbersome backpacks nor metal parts to avoid the
>>spacesuit from becoming a balloon.
>
>Surprized you heard about the 'grays'.  That style of alien sighting is only
>common in the U.S. (other areas of the world have different cultural
>preferences) europeansd generally report Nordic looking ET's.   ;)

The NL imports a multitude of US movies, series and info-programmes.

>Anyway quock check shows the aliens are B.S.  As to the idea the
contamination
>won't happen without quatities of microbes, thats not really true.  Microbes
>reproduce.  So if one hits a fertile zone, you quickly get quantities.

If there were no other bacteria, you would be right.
I think it is quite save to say that there isn't any fertile spot on Earth
were there aren't bacteria already. These bacteria likely have
overtaken/driven away all weaker kinds of bacteria and thus are the fittest
and most numerous for that particular spot.
The likelyhood of survival of a few bacteria that are not (yet) adapted to
that spot is therefore small. Assuming the spot is suitable for the new
bacteria, they'd need to be much stronger to get the overhand while being
attacked by a majority that has the advantage of being adapted best to the
particular spot.

>>====================================================================

>>Our body can become very agressive, it will change environmental parameters
>>of which the best known is temperature. This will reduce the growth rate of
>>the alien cells while our body has a wealth of options to partially
>>compensate for this thermal inconveniance.
>
>That only works on bacteria that are sensative to temps.  Some can survive
>(even thrive) in swings of hundreds of degrees.  Also our body only runs a
>feaver if it senses a infection it knows to react against.

Survival is something very different from thriving. I doubt that there are
bacteria that can thrive in a large range of temperatures. Anyhow, any
divergence from the optimum temperature for the hositle bacteria will give
the human body an advantage.
Our body can sense a very large scale of alien (not necessarily
extraterrestrial) substances. As far as I know it is not so that our body
has to learn what is alien, it merely checks if it isn't familiar to the
body itself. As soon as a substance is strange, the body will try to attack
it right away. I suppose the body has standard procedures for substances
that it doesn't have encountered before.

>>Furthermore leukocytes (attack cells) will attack and won't make feeding
>>for the bacteria or small organisms any easier.
>>In fact our body can destroy part of itself in a fight: High fever can
>>cause serious damage to organs, the high temperature is generated by the
>>body itself in response to the intruder.
>
>Again, only if its something te body knows to attack.  Many things will kill
>us without triggering any defensive measure.

No, some creatures just can quickly enough find spots where our body's
immune system is very ineffective or hardly notices it. Other substances
like poisons are just attacking too fast for our body the react against (if
they are in large enough quantities). In general relative small quantities
won't make much of a chance.

Timothy