They're Made of People!

We send a lot of stuff into space. A lot. Not everything that goes up and stays out there, necessarily had a primary mission. Upper rocket stages of spacecrafts for instance -- they're just there to make sure the crafts we send up, get to where they're going, and have a chance at completing their missions. Upper rocket stages -- well, they just sort of get left to their own devices when they've been spent. As Space.com points out in a recent article, an interesting possibility arises from that scrap metal. The spacecrafts that get sent out are usually sterilized to ensure they're clean -- not so with the upper rocket stages. They're teeming with bacteria from the engineers who built them. The amazing thing about bacteria is their ability to survive. Bacteria has been known to hibernate for millions of years -- waiting for the right conditions to arise so they continue doing what bacteria do -- multiple, and evolve. Right now, upper rocket stages are hurtling out of our solar system to destinations unknown. Space is quite large. Time is very long. With some wild imagination, the possibilities can be really freaky.