4 ms·
Yes it is if you put it on an extraterrestrial place. This is why space agencies do a thorough decontamination before sending satellites to other planets.
by Iolaum 6y ago
Yes it is if you put it on an extraterrestrial place. This is why space agencies do a thorough decontamination before sending satellites to other planets.
- WalterBright 6y agoThat will assure the extinction of Earthly life.
- ben_w 6y agoIt’s the only way to tell if any life we find out there was native or just something we brought with us on the probe.
- TomMarius 6y agoThat's not exactly true as life unrelated to ours would be at least a little different, but it would help us if there is common origin - then that life would be very much alike ours and we would need to do a serious investigation about possible contamination.
- WalterBright 6y agoEven if it's a common origin, millennia of random mutations will make it so very, very different from the descendants of terrestrial extremophiles.
- TomMarius 6y agoYeah, but some details are literally unchangeable, that's a part of how we know there was only single abiogenesis on Earth.
- WalterBright 6y ago> It’s the only way to tell It's inconceivable that extraterrestrial life would be indistinguishable from terrestrial. It's also clear we've seen exactly zero signs of any sort of off-Earth life in the solar system. Nothing.
- ben_w 6y ago> It's inconceivable that extraterrestrial life would be indistinguishable from terrestrial. NASA conceives of it, along with all 128 national governments who have signed (and in 104 cases ratified) the Outer Space Treaty. It may be that Earth is the only place in Sol with life (I’m a software engineer not an exobiologist, so I don’t even have a ballpark estimate for either multiple abiogenesis events or panspermia between any two bodies), but the only way to have a good shot at knowing is to be over-cautious until the actual scientists have done their work. And right now, those scientists are saying “sterilise the probes going to these places: ...”.
- WalterBright 6y agoI'd like to hear the rationale of these scientists that extraterrestrial life could be indistinguishable from terrestrial. For example, how many instances are there of two species evolving independently becoming indistinguishable? Zero. > those scientists are saying Scientists aren't immune to politics and irrational thinking.