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> Conley has a response to this argument. Even if a microbe on Mars shares the same deep origins as us, a few thousand years down a separate evolutionary pathwa
by LukeB_UK 10y ago
> Conley has a response to this argument. Even if a microbe on Mars shares the same deep origins as us, a few thousand years down a separate evolutionary pathway would still make them pretty alien indeed. But ultimately, the best case for caution, and for planetary protection, may be simply to point to all the ways in which our knowledge of Mars has changed just in the past few years. Curiosity ended up almost on top of possible liquid water because we didn’t know what we didn’t know. In a way, Conley’s deepest arguments boil down to a quote from Haldane: “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
- danieltillett 10y agoAll caution and no action gets us nowhere.
- davidiach 10y agoBut if 100kg of Earth material makes it's way to Mars every year, it means Mars has already been contaminated this year as well as in 2015, 2014 and so forth. Personally I'm for being cautious as well but there are always trade-offs and we must understand that.
- brianshaler 10y agoThat's still the same argument. It's possible Martian life has already been decimated by microbes from earth, but does that possibility justify carelessly introducing new extremophiles? There is a short window, less than a century and perhaps only a couple decades, before we start sending humans in which we can study what may have lived on Mars, originating from there or not, prior to colonization. Conley is not trying to prevent Mars exploration or colonization. When we contaminate Mars, we should only do so as a deliberate choice, aware of the consequences, as there is no going back.
- danieltillett 10y agoAll the life on Mars is now going to be deep underground. It really isn’t possible to contaminate this even if we were to deliberately crop dust the whole planet in bacterial spores from Earth. It is not something we need to worry about. I would be much more cautious about some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn that may have internal oceans. These could be contaminated if we are not cautious, but like Mars they have probably been contaminated by Earth microbes billions of years ago.
- jkot 10y agoIt takes easily a few million years to travel from Earth to Mars.
- danieltillett 10y agoThat might be the average, but some will do it in a few years. The ejecta from a large asteroid struck will be large and thrown out with enough energy for some rocks to make the journey in a short time.
- fit2rule 10y agoThe interesting thing is, this represents a snapshot of Earth lifeforms over a period of a million years. If there is a mass spectra of such ejecta out there, who knows what it may yield ..