Upper Atmospheric Mutations

So, I was just watching a show called Universe on The history channel. One of the things they mentioned was that when astronauts are on space, if they bring a cold or other virus on board, they run the risk of mutation. This is because of the constant radiation that runs through the astronauts. This causes mutations in the bacteria or viruses brought on board, and often serious problems.


I started to think about the theory of most flu's starting in the upper atmosphere and transfered to humans by birds. I found this link which postulates that Solar winds blow bacteria from Venus to Earth. It cites both solar activity which is correlated to epidemics, as well as conjunctions of Earth with Venus.

But what if, the same "bugs" are just being mutated. Perhaps influenza lives in the upper atmosphere, and is merely mutated by this solar activity, which then is carried down into earth and the humans there.

Wikipedia states the following

The term influenza has its origins in 15th-century Italy, where the cause of the disease was ascribed to unfavourable astrological influences.

Which could mean that a correlation was seen between when flu occured and celestial activity.


It goes on to state that

Unusually for a virus, the influenza A genome is not a single piece of nucleic acid; instead, it contains eight pieces of segmented negative-sense RNA

Which could also point to how life on Earth originated to begin with.

[edit on 17-2-2008 by Quazga]