Overview
- A Johns Hopkins–led team reported in PNAS Nexus that Deinococcus radiodurans endured shock pressures designed to replicate debris launch from a planetary impact.
- Researchers sandwiched the desert bacterium between steel plates and fired a gas‑gun projectile at roughly 300 mph, generating peak pressures between 1 and 3 GPa.
- Survival was about 95% at 1.4–1.6 GPa and roughly 60% at 2.4 GPa, with an attempted 2.9 GPa shot yielding low but inconclusive survival as test hardware failed first.
- Genetic readouts showed a strong stress response at higher pressures, with DNA‑repair pathways activated and growth pathways suppressed in surviving cells.
- Authors say the results make interplanetary transfer of life physically plausible yet unproven, and they highlight implications for contamination controls on targets including Mars’s moon Phobos.