Pith Number

pith:7OVCI2ET

pith:2026:7OVCI2ET4IN5XUPUBKXNAR4ESJ

not attested not anchored not stored refs resolved

Could life have been transferred from Mars to Earth? Laboratory and computational simulations of Martian ejecta

Bradley D. Carter, Gregory M. Davis, Jonathan Horner, Stephen C Marsden

Laboratory tests and orbital models indicate bacterial endospores could survive a journey from Mars to Earth in as little as one year.

arxiv:2605.15595 v1 · 2026-05-15 · astro-ph.EP

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{7OVCI2ET4IN5XUPUBKXNAR4ESJ}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

Taken together, this study suggests this interplanetary transfer of biologically viable material from Mars to Earth is plausible under favourable conditions.

C2weakest assumption

The laboratory UVC irradiation under various rotation regimes accurately represents the actual radiation and environmental exposure experienced by endospores on Martian ejecta during interplanetary transit.

C3one line summary

Lab exposure of endospores to simulated space UV and n-body simulations of Martian ejecta show transfer to Earth is possible in a few years.

References

2 extracted · 2 resolved · 0 Pith anchors

[1] Douglas, T.A. and M.T. Mellon, Sublimation of terrestrial permafrost and the implications for ice-loss processes on Mars. Nature communications, 2019. 10(1): p. 1716. 10. Jakosky, B.M., Water, climate 2019

[2] Kvam, E., B. Davis, and K. Benner, Comparative Assessment of Pulsed and Continuous LED UV-A Lighting for Disinfection of Contaminated Surfaces. Life, 2022. 12(11): p. 1747. 40. Horneck, G., UV Radiati 2022

Formal links

2 machine-checked theorem links

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-20T00:01:07.188492Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

fbaa246893e21bdbd1f40aaed047849249c698c6e790a95dbdbc0a7d02b0b812

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.15595 · arxiv_version: 2605.15595v1 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.15595 · pith_short_12: 7OVCI2ET4IN5 · pith_short_16: 7OVCI2ET4IN5XUPU · pith_short_8: 7OVCI2ET

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/7OVCI2ET4IN5XUPUBKXNAR4ESJ \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: fbaa246893e21bdbd1f40aaed047849249c698c6e790a95dbdbc0a7d02b0b812

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "aa93b904f52ff386cf03414ea7c75f513e6b0ea013297098751b9a569833ed14",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "astro-ph.EP",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-15T04:05:34Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "c8d42b53a4a24d527e0b5e72fbba5da9c680b8d1053e868be75c8fc9e35940aa"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.15595",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 1
  }
}