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This argument can be flipped, though. If life were found on Mars, that might lead to a ban on manned Mars missions, because there's absolutely no chance that
by PopePompus 7y ago
This argument can be flipped, though. If life were found on Mars, that might lead to a ban on manned Mars missions, because there's absolutely no chance that a manned mission will not contaminate Mars with microbes from Earth. So to protect a Martian ecosystem, we might have to use only robots to explore Mars.
- vbezhenar 7y agoWhy would anyone care about Martian ecosystem?
- MichaelMoser123 7y agoor rather to protect us from what is coming back; I remember that the Apollo astronauts were kept in quarantine due to that fear. I think it's sort of funny that the effort to make us a multi planetary species might as well doom us if we catch something unusual while on Mars.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rightbyte 7y agoWould extra terrestrial bacteria have any chance versus generation after generation of earth specific bacteria in life forms on earth? I mean, wouldn't it be like a baseball team showing up for cricket or maybe slalom?
- superhuzza 7y agoMaybe it would be like an adult soccer team showing up to a 4th grade basketball game. Does anybody know either way?
- wongarsu 7y agoWhatever bacteria might live on Mars had millennia of evolutionary pressure to adapt to an environment with no lifeforms larger than an inch. It seems very unlikely that they will interact with human physiology in a meaningful way. That doesn't mean they can't be harmful though. Bacteria that quickly eats through concrete for example would be just as bad to bring back.
- lazyjones 7y ago> It seems very unlikely that they will interact with human physiology in a meaningful way. Human physiology depends very much on various bacteria. Supposedly, there are 10 times as many bacterial cells than human cells in our bodies. Perhaps you should reconsider your attitude if you take into account that bacteria from Mars might wreak havoc on these bacteria?
- aflag 7y agoIt's quite unlikely that alien bacteria would be able to target humans.
- em-bee 7y agothe reverse side of this argument is that the human immune system may not be able to protect against alien bacteria.
- aflag 7y agoI don't know that much about biology, but my understanding is that if the bacteria does not target our bodies, then it will be just some inert material that will eventually be eliminated by one mechanism or another.
- em-bee 7y agothe bacteria will be looking for food. either it finds it or it doesn't. if it finds it it will grow and reproduce. that in itself is not the end yet, as there are already many bacteria in our body that live in a symbiotic relationship. only if it reproduces to much and overwhelms our body somehow it becomes a problem. but also, if it doesn't find food we are not safe yet. the bacteria itself could be toxic in some way and it could reproduce elsewhere and enter our body through food or other ways. it doesn't need to target our bodies. it just needs to cause an averse reaction of some form. compare to chemicals for example. they don't target anything. they are inert. yet some chemicals are poisonous.
- jerf 7y agoOn a civilizational time scale, I just don't see the whole human race deciding that "ohh nooooo, the pwecious pwecious native microbes might be disturbed if we go there" holding up for very long. This is far, far from the opinion of the entire human race right now, despite how common it may seem on HN. At most it'll be a funny footnote that the school kids learn about in their orbiting space station schools where they'll laugh at what the funny old groundpounders thought, before the Earth became uninhabitable after the asteroid pounding given to it in the Great Space Indepedence War of 2343. In evolutionary terms, it does not seem to be pro-survival attitude.