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Really enjoyed this piece. It makes a lot of scientific rigor readable, and presents a few different, useful viewpoints on how this advances science (Or how we

Really enjoyed this piece. It makes a lot of scientific rigor readable, and presents a few different, useful viewpoints on how this advances science (Or how we should be careful to over-reach). I especially like the frog story - the bacteria treatment solving the invasive fungus issue only for greater forces to keep their fate the same the next year. A recent obsession has been understanding how much the Earth may be giving us that we don’t really comprehend fully. One clear item is a reservoir for bio-diversity - all the viruses, bacteria, fungi that we’ve evolved alongside. Our DNA is littered with battle scars or alliances. The reason for this interest is in the context of colonizing other planets - we’ll likely abandon a huge part of our biological history. This will be good in some ways, such as certain diseases (or pests) no longer being a threat, but also could leave our martian children less adaptable or equipped with fewer tools than their ancestors.

dharma1 6y ago
This is why I think quotes like "making humans a multi-planetary species" sound like the speaker hasn't fully realised how dependent/part of the whole biosphere we are, and not functional as an isolated species.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  It's always implied that along with humans, you take a chunk of the biosphere with you to other places. Long term - in the timespan of decades, particularly allowing for people being born away from Earth - it's an open question of how much of the biosphere we truly need. Probably more than it's immediately apparent, but obviously less than all of it.
- fallingfrog 6y ago
  It’s possible that all the habitable planets nearby have life, but it’s incompatible life to our own. After all we have specific enzymes for digesting specific molecules in terrestrial organisms. If we were to eat a plant on another planet it might be like eating dirt. This might even be part of the answer to the Fermi paradox.
kace91 6y ago
I remember that being a plot point in Asimov stories: people from earth are eventually treated as inferior because they are potential carriers of sicknesses that don't exist anymore in colonised planets, and for which the habitants no longer have natural defences. That, combined with the new planets' ability to form new societal structures (unlike Earth that has to work with the legacy existing ones), end up leaving earth as a backwards, shunned place.
- Daniel_sk 6y ago
  While partly true, it's also true in the opposite way. New viruses and microbes would evolve in the new environment to fill the void (since they would have no competition) and they would become probably also much more deadly for original Earth people.

dharma1 6y ago

This is why I think quotes like "making humans a multi-planetary species" sound like the speaker hasn't fully realised how dependent/part of the whole biosphere we are, and not functional as an isolated species.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
It's always implied that along with humans, you take a chunk of the biosphere with you to other places. Long term - in the timespan of decades, particularly allowing for people being born away from Earth - it's an open question of how much of the biosphere we truly need. Probably more than it's immediately apparent, but obviously less than all of it.
fallingfrog 6y ago
It’s possible that all the habitable planets nearby have life, but it’s incompatible life to our own. After all we have specific enzymes for digesting specific molecules in terrestrial organisms. If we were to eat a plant on another planet it might be like eating dirt. This might even be part of the answer to the Fermi paradox.

kace91 6y ago

I remember that being a plot point in Asimov stories: people from earth are eventually treated as inferior because they are potential carriers of sicknesses that don't exist anymore in colonised planets, and for which the habitants no longer have natural defences. That, combined with the new planets' ability to form new societal structures (unlike Earth that has to work with the legacy existing ones), end up leaving earth as a backwards, shunned place.

Daniel_sk 6y ago
While partly true, it's also true in the opposite way. New viruses and microbes would evolve in the new environment to fill the void (since they would have no competition) and they would become probably also much more deadly for original Earth people.