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I know, it may sound absolutely irresponsible, but have the scientists considered practical benefits of sending in some bacterial life from Earth to let it try
by zoomablemind 5y ago
I know, it may sound absolutely irresponsible, but have the scientists considered practical benefits of sending in some bacterial life from Earth to let it try to colonize the remote destinations ahead of sending in humans for the same purpose?
Supposedly, micro-life has better chance to adapt to new environments, as long as the basic resource is available.
In case of Mars, humans lack the basic resources - water and oxygen. But could there be some bacterial life on Earth which could make use of the abundant carbon dioxide and could adapt to the harsh conditions?
Or such an approach would 'spoil' those worlds for the humans and take the conditions out of control?
- waheoo 5y agoMore irresponsible than letting the human race exhaust and suffocate itself on this planet? At some point we need to realise colonizing another planet is going to be necessary, and it is going to cause lots of damage.
- fnord77 5y agowe'll have exhausted this planet a thousand years before we'd have the technology to make Mars habitable. It just isn't going to happen for numerous reasons. The biggest are the lower gravity and the very weak magnetosphere.
- fny 5y agoWe haven't even successfully made the deserts on Earth habitable yet without trucking in resources from more hospitable places.
- ben_w 5y agoMars’ magnetosphere is something we could fix with known tech if we cared to. Expensive, but we could. Lack of water, low atmosphere, they’re a bit further out of our range. Fixing the lower level of sunlight is way out of our current league.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fnord77 5y agoshading Venus from too much sunlight would be easier than fixing Mars' low level of sunlight.
- chmod600 5y agoWe've only had much technology for a few hundred years. There's an argument that we should give it another few hundred to prepare a bit better. If we rush it, we might destroy valuable information or even forclose some opportunities. But ultimately you're right. We will blunder our way onto Mars at some point.
- chpatrick 5y agoWe would never find out if life developed outside of earth.
- fny 5y agoAnd Jack and Jill won't contaminate space when they're sent to start Earth 2?
- ben_w 5y agoBy the time we’re ready to even try that, we should have already answered the question, at least as far as whichever target you’re trying to colonise is concerned. (And if you meant space itself, rather than the objects within, could reasonably be described as ‘contaminated’, then panspermia is both very likely how life got started on Earth and a reason to expect it everywhere else too).
- njarboe 5y agoMars and Earth send surface rocks to each other via meteor impacts that would almost certainly contain live bacteria spores. Life could have started out on Earth or Mars or both, but finding life on Mars won't answer your question on its own. There are even theories that life on Earth was seeding from life from other solar systems, but that is much more unlikely and an in solar system transfer. Check out scholar.google.com and search for "exchange of bacteria between mars and earth" or other similar phrases.
- idiotsecant 5y agoI feel like the assertation that meteor impact ejecta would 'almost certainly' contain live bacteria spores and the implication that those spores would survive vacuum , radiation, heat cycling, and dessication for the very long trip from earth to mars is going to need a big old citation required here. That seems like a stretch.
- njarboe 5y agoHere is a very nice and through paper on the subject: "Natural Transfer of Viable Microbes in Space" https://doi.org/10.1006/icar.1999.6317 https://doi.org/10.1006/icar.1999.6317 In the abstract: "The conclusion is that if microbes existed or exist on Mars, viable transfer to Earth is not only possible but also highly probable, due to microbes’ impressive resistance to the dangers of space transfer and to the dense traffic of billions of martian meteorites which have fallen on Earth since the dawn of our planetary system. Earth-to-Mars transfer is also possible but at a much lower frequency."
- oddmiral 5y agoLife will optimize itself to fit harsh conditions at Mars, then return back to Earth, and outcompete original life forms.
- ben_w 5y agoUnlikely to be a concern. We have extremophile bacteria evolve here on Earth, they’re adapted to their specific niches rather than being all-around better.
- LatteLazy 5y agoOptimising for extreme conditions means being sub optimal for nice conditions so aside from taking over some volcanos we have little to fear.
- idiotsecant 5y agoMartian extremophiles are takin are jerbs!