“Life might actually survive being ejected from one planet and moving to another,” study co-author Kaliat Ramesh, a mechanical engineer at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said in a statement<\/a>. “This is a really big deal that changes the way you think about the question of how life begins and how life began on Earth<\/a>.”<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \n Researchers recently exposed the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans to the pressures experienced during an asteroid strike. The microbe survived, suggesting that impacts could spread life from planet to planet. (Image credit: Lisa Orye\/Johns Hopkins University)<\/p>\n The new findings lend support to a long-debated theory known as lithopanspermia<\/a>, which proposes that life can spread between planets<\/a> by hitching a ride on fragments of rock<\/a> blasted into space by massive impacts. The idea remains unproven, however, and clear evidence of past or present life on Mars<\/a> remains elusive (though scientists have made some intriguing finds lately<\/a>).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the study, Ramesh and his colleagues tested the endurance of Deinococcus radiodurans<\/a>, an exceptionally resilient bacterium found, among other places, in Chile’s high-altitude deserts. With a thick outer shell and a remarkable ability to repair its own DNA, D. radiodurans is famously tolerant of intense radiation, freezing temperatures, extreme dryness and other harsh conditions similar to those found in space. It has been nicknamed “Conan the bacterium,” after all.<\/p>\n To simulate the forces involved in an asteroid<\/a> impact, the researchers sandwiched samples of D. radiodurans between two steel plates. Using a gas-powered gun, they fired a projectile at roughly 300 mph (480 kph), subjecting the microbes to pressures between 1 and 3 gigapascals. For comparison, the pressure at the deepest part of Earth’s oceans \u2014 the crescent-shaped Mariana Trench<\/a> in the western Pacific Ocean near Guam \u2014 is about 0.1 gigapascal, meaning even the lowest pressure in the experiment was roughly 10 times greater.<\/p>\n Nearly all of the microbes survived impacts generating 1.4 gigapascals of pressure, while about 60% remained alive at 2.4 gigapascals. At lower pressures, the cells showed no signs of damage, though researchers observed ruptured membranes and some internal cellular damage at higher pressures, the study reports.<\/p>\n![\"panel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/wr4guNot6gEJupHpiSumdL.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n