YOGYAKARTA – Recently, the community, especially in Yogyakarta, was surprised by the discovery of crop circle in the Gunung Suru rice field, Jogotirto area, Sleman. It is believed to be the first crop circle in Indonesia, although this phenomenon has occurred several times in the UK since mid-1970.
According to the lecturer who is also researcher from Laboratory of Genetics Faculty of Biology, Dr. Budi Setiadi Daryono, M.Agr.Sc., the emergence of crop circle, which by the cerealogist the terms are then developed into agrilif, often associated with the issue of the existence of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) or extraterrestrials. In the branch of biology, it is named exobiology. “Exobiology was born in the early ’60s and is a branch of science that studies about the existence of living beings and life on other planets outside the Earth as well as study on the initial ecosystem of a pre-biotic life stage in the chemistry evolution that occurs on planets outside the earth," said Budi Daryono, Wednesday (26/1).
At first, the range of exobiology research focuses more on issues of human life (astronauts and cosmonauts) in the spacecraft, such as problems of detection and control of water and air pollution arising during flight, nutritional quantity and quality of food for astronauts or cosmonauts.
However, in the next decade these problems were solved gradually by combining mechanical chemo-regeneration and bio-regenerative systems. Bio-regenerative systems include photosynthetic system of algae, bacteria chemo-synthetic, and multi species micro-ecosystems. "Through a complex system of mechanical chemo-regenerative nowadays, we have been able to rejuvenate the gases and water as well as dispose waste and other toxic gases," said Budi.
Imagination about exobiology can become reality if they meet the rules of biology. In biology, something can be categorized as living things if they meet certain requirements, among others, able to carry out metabolism, can grow and develop, reproduce, have irritability, have evolved, and form organization as well as being supported by other factors that are vital to life, such as the availability of water, oxygen, sunlight, and chemical elements, including minerals, and the atmosphere that will support the creation of life.
"Due to the strong suspicion that living beings (bacteria) play a role in the preparation of mineral reactions, one planet outside the Earth that is seen as having a form of life is Mars," he explained.
However, the current physical condition of the planet is very extreme for life activities, considering the very thin atmosphere almost 1/200 of Earth’s atmosphere and mostly contains carbon dioxide. In addition, the absence of the ozone layer causing the harmful UV rays to reach the surface, low surface temperature (-173 to 17 0C) and low air pressure causes the unavailability of water in its liquid form.
Budi said that today through the development of Terra-forming, mechanical Chemo-regenerative technology and Bio-regenerative systems, perhaps a new ecosystem to sustain life and welfare of mankind in space can be developed in the decades to come.
It should also be noted, with the increasing intensity of space exploration, we should be careful of the possibility of cross-contamination that can occur due to repetitive spacecraft mission. A microorganism such as bacteria or viruses that originated from another planet could come into the Earth through the mediation of the spacecraft, and then live, breed and furthermore can cause imbalances to the Earth’s ecosystem. On the contrary, microorganisms from the Earth might destroy the simpler life systems on other planets. Therefore, steps and efforts to prevent the emergence of cross-contamination between the two biospheres should be the subject of our consideration.
"One of the efforts to prevent cross-contamination can be done by sterilizing the spacecraft, astronauts and cosmonauts, as well as other equipment. This has to be conducted both before and after the trip into space, to avoid the instability of the biosphere in the universe," said Budi.