{"id":233899,"date":"2026-03-23T14:10:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/life-forms-can-planet-hop-on-asteroid-debris-and-survive"},"modified":"2026-03-23T14:10:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:10:31","slug":"life-forms-can-planet-hop-on-asteroid-debris-and-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/life-forms-can-planet-hop-on-asteroid-debris-and-survive","title":{"rendered":"Life forms can planet hop on asteroid debris\u2014and survive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/life-forms-can-planet-hop-on-asteroid-debris-and-survive.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets\u2014including Earth\u2014and survive, a new Johns Hopkins University study finds. The work demonstrates that a certain hardy bacterium easily withstands extreme pressure comparable to an ejection from Mars after an asteroid hit, as well as the inhospitable conditions it would face during the ensuing interplanetary journey.<\/p>\n<p>The study, published today in PNAS Nexus, suggests that microorganisms can survive remarkably more extreme conditions than expected, and raises questions about origins of life. The work also has significant implications for planetary protection and space missions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLife might actually survive being ejected from one planet and moving to another,\u201d said senior author K.T. Ramesh. \u201cThis is a really big deal that changes the way you think about the question of how life begins and how life began on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets\u2014including Earth\u2014and survive, a new Johns Hopkins University study finds. The work demonstrates that a certain hardy bacterium easily withstands extreme pressure comparable to an ejection from Mars after an asteroid hit, as well as the inhospitable conditions it would face [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}