4 ms·
Let's hope we don't encounter life on Mars, one pandemic per lifetime will suffice, thank you.
by inter_netuser 6y ago
Let's hope we don't encounter life on Mars, one pandemic per lifetime will suffice, thank you.
- doggodaddo78 6y agoYou're conflating life as hosts and parasites. Most parasites require co-evolution with hosts. In the case of pandemic viruses, none existing anywhere else in the universe have the slightest chance of infecting us because there is absolutely nothing evolved exactly like us anywhere else.
- castratikron 6y agoOr a Martian microbe might just eat through any Earthly thing unable to fight back. Gray goo
- inter_netuser 6y agoAstronauts are routinely quarantined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_quarantine_facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_quarantine_facility
- ouid 6y agoYou realize that the apollo missions were done like 50 years ago, right?
- inter_netuser 6y agoYou are absolutely correct that we have not returned to the Moon in 50 years. They were quarantined in case they bring back some unknown pathogens we don't know what do with.
- tshaddox 6y agoThere are plenty of things that didn’t evolve to harm us but which can nonetheless harm us. Meteors are an obvious macroscopic example, while toxic chemicals are an obvious microscopic example.
- neuronic 6y agoI understand that the boundaries are blurry but this particular comment was talking about life harming other life.
- tshaddox 6y agoRight, and my point is simply that if inorganic chemistry is more than capable of harming life, it’s a bit strange to assume that organic chemistry and life would somehow have less capability to do so.