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That's such a simplistic view of life. We would be able to identify an extraterrestrial cell as surely as if it was carrying flashing lights and screaming "I'm
by credit_guy 9y ago
That's such a simplistic view of life.
We would be able to identify an extraterrestrial cell as surely as if it was carrying flashing lights and screaming "I'm an alien". While all life is based on information, and information needs to be somehow encoded in a, let's call it, genetic code, would that code be DNA and RNA based? would in encode proteins, and if so, would the building blocks be the same 20 amino acids that we have an Earth. Would the genes be encoded using the same nucleotites, and would "letter" in the genetic code be encoded by 3 nucleotides? If so, would always the same 3 nucleotides encode the same aminoacid as on Earth? etc, etc.
There are so many places that life could be different, that the chance of mistaking Martian life for terrestrial life is vanishingly small.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoWhat if it turns out that Earth's life and Martian life share the same origin?
- credit_guy 9y agoEven if it turns out to be the case, there would be two forms of life separated by billions of years of evolution. Mistaking them would be much less likely than mistaking a cell from the wing of fruit fly from an onion peel cell: while on the outside they may look similar, the DNA of the fruit fly has about 170 million base pairs, while the DNA of the onion has 16 billion of them.
- ianai 9y agoBut would one kill off the other? They would probably still compete for scarce resources.