[Gorzaloon]

Why would the virus be exposed to the "hostile environment of space" if it arrived in a small chunk of rock? This happens every day ~ the arrival of the rocks, if not the viruses.

Yes, but look at all the effort it takes to recover the microbes, and people still dispute they are actually what they seem. Further, they are not alive. Such a rock is pretty effectively sterilized by re-entry heat.

No, I genuinely think this person struggled and struggled, slowly reading _The Andromeda Strain_, moving his lips as he read, and had an epiphany of some sort, in a cannabis bar.

And all the while I had to think of promising and worthwhile programs I have seen die because of lack of funding...yet someone pays this person's salary to come up with things like this?

[muawiyah]

Not everything the Earth runs into is traveling 25,000 MPH (relatively speaking) Some of it's going the other way and the collision is remarkably gentle.

Then, again, we are talking about viruses and not bacteria. The Mars rocks with the bacteria are subject to dispute ~ more about the species than anything else. Viruses are far smaller.