Abstract

Below is a painting by Jose Luis Bustamante that I saw years ago in the Museo Fernando García Ponce Macay in Merida, Mexico.  I was traveling through Mexico by motorcycle for about 6 months and his installation is one of the things I remember most vividly.

paisaje de los dioses del agua
landscape of the water gods

What got me thinking about abstract art was that I tidied up my research proposal and wrote and abstract for my paper:

The prospect of life beyond Earth has captured humans imagination for millennia, for centuries we have used ever increasing methods of telescopy to investigate these worlds of possibility,  in the past few decades we have conducted robotic exploration of our nearest neighbors, and we may be only decades from humans conducting these investigations in person.  Human investigation of other worlds with possible life will present a unique challenge in regards to the possibilities of contamination.  Unlike robots, humans require of microbiome with a full suite of microorganisms that can contaminate the environment.  A better understanding of how some of the most common microbes present in the human microbiome withstand the environments on other planets or moons will provide data for developing more substantial and effective decontamination and experimental protocols.  Mars is the most likely location for human exploration of possible extraterrestrial life.  The Earth's stratosphere exhibits similar atmospheric conditions to those present on the surface of Mars.  This experiment takes advantage of this natural laboratory though the use of a high altitude balloon (HAB) to expose four of the most common bacteria, by population size, present in the human microbiome to Mars-like atmospheric conditions to investigate their survivability in that environment.