Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan


We have microbes here that metabolize methane, silica, hydrocarbons. Life is opportunistic and will make due with whatever materials it needs to thrive.

I would caution people to really, really think outside the box when looking for life on other bodies (and in general). People get buried in boxes...its isn't a good place to be.

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blue bird - "You could take E. coli and rapidly cool it to 10° K and leave it for 10 billion years and then put it back in glucose, and I suspect you would have 99 percent survival — Leslie Orgel" //// Leslie Orgel, [quoted in] Here Be Dragons, by David Koerner and Simon LeVay, Oxford University Press, 2000. p 32-33



Think about extermophiles on our Earth - which thrives in extreme conditions like in permafrost and Artic ice or boiling water or deep inside earth in rocks or capable of tolerating high levels of dissolved heavy metals or some resistant to ultraviolet radiation or nuclear radiation.

Astrobiology is very interested in studying such organisms.

Than we have Streptococcus mitis ( that live normally in our nose and throat) which survive 31 month in space.
Surveyor 3- case of extreme survivability of bacteria and bacterial spores:

External Source

When NASA scientists examined the camera they found that the polyurethane foam insulation covering its circuit boards contained 50 to 100 viable specimens of Streptococcus mitis, a harmless bacterium commonly found in the human nose, mouth, and throat. Since the camera had been returned under strict sterile conditions, it is evident that the microbes must have been on the probe since it departed the Earth and had survived 31 months in the absence of air or water while being subjected to huge monthly temperature variations and bombardment by hard ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Conrad later commented: "I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole ... Moon was that little bacteria who came back and living and nobody ever said [expletive] about it."



There is also found bacteria on MIR Station.
source



Or 30 mil years old germ - 'sleeping':

External Source

here were much older spores waiting to be revived. On May 19, 1995, The New York Times carried a front-page story about them (4). Biologists Raul Cano and Monica Borucki had extracted bacterial spores from bees preserved in amber in Costa Rica. Amber is tree-sap that hardens and persists as a fossil. This amber had entrapped some bees and then hardened between 25 and 40 million years ago. Bacteria living in the bees' digestive tracts had recognized a problem and turned themselves into spores. When placed in a suitable culture, the spores came right back to life. As a control, the two biologists also attempted to culture from the same amber a number of samples that contained no bee parts. These cultures were negative, adding credibility to the experiment. This finding was originally reported in the journal Science (5) to general acceptance.


"... could life on this planet be descended from alien spores? ...Panspermia, the view that the seed of life is diffused throughout the universe, has been favored by a minority of thinkers since the Greek Anaxagoras in the 5th century BC. He, Arrhenius and Fred Hoyle may yet have the laugh on us doubters."

External Source

There are bacteria that metabolize iron, nitrogen, sulphur, and other inorganic materials. There are bacteria today that can live without sunlight. Archaebacteria that can withstand extreme heat have been found thriving in oil reservoirs a mile underground (9). Some species of cyanobacteria are highly resistant to ultraviolet radiation. The only thing absolutely essential for bacteria to live, grow, and multiply is liquid water. We are confident that the early Earth had plenty of water. Scientists believe that concentration of water in the earliest atmosphere for which they have data, over four billion years ago, was far higher than it is today.

Bacteria have the ability to colonize an unfriendly planet like the Hadean Earth. Not just had the ability but have the ability. These are not make believe stories. All of the bacteria we have considered, with all of their unusual abilities to survive extreme environments, are alive today!


a lot of links to panspermia subject

Prebiotic chemicals are detected in interstellar clouds - comets - meteorites.

Electric discharge tends to produce spherical layering and a distinct equator and pole, because the electromagnetic force "squeezes" perpendicular to the current that creates it. These characteristics are also found in the "natural" spherules.

He obtained a quantity of hematite and blasted it with an electric arc. The results are seen in the right half of the image above. The embedded spheres created by the arc appear to replicate many of the features of the blueberries on Mars. No other laboratory process has achieved a similar result. It should encourage further experiments using higher energies.

Originally posted by undo
blueberries

there are blueberries all over this planet. in some places, there's nothing but blueberries. just fields and fields of blueberries. it doesn't make sense. can someone refresh my memory, what the blueberries are and what the natural process is that leads to them, and why there would be such huge areas with nothing but these blueberries covering literally everything?

Originally posted by blue bird
Water Resovoir!?

all of the samples contained multiple species living within microns of each other. Conclusions from this and other work at the outcrop point to the fact that these “Blueberries” were probably not formed by microbial products, but once on surface, microbiology interacted with geochemistry.