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The other part of the open question is how easily life is able to spread across worlds. This is why it's so vital to go look at Mars without contaminating the s
by idlewords 3y ago
The other part of the open question is how easily life is able to spread across worlds. This is why it's so vital to go look at Mars without contaminating the search. If life spreads easily (whether within the solar system or more widely), then we'll likely find traces of life there that look a lot like our own. If life arises easily, but doesn't spread easily, we may find traces of very un-earthlike biochemistry. And if life is rare, we'd expect to find nothing.
Any of the three results would have huge implications. And then rinse and repeat on Enceladus, Ganymede, Europa, and so on. And find a way to look at exoplanet atmospheres and chase stuff that comes in from outside the solar system. Even negative results will add enormously to our understanding.
- addicted 3y agoAt this point isn’t Mars already contaminated?
- idlewords 3y agoNo, almost certainly not. There are individual living microbes and spores on the various landers, but unlike the microbiome that would travel with a human mission, they're not viable and have no mechanism to get to somewhere where they'd be viable.
- RajT88 3y agoI mean, you say that, but also this story was a thing that happened: https://www.cnet.com/science/sea-plankton-found-on-the-outer-surface-of-the-iss/ https://www.cnet.com/science/sea-plankton-found-on-the-outer...
- vel0city 3y agoThe leading theory is air currents from the planet slowly contaminated the station over the decades, not contamination before launch. It's also then still pretty protected by radiation still being so close to Eath. Our probes go through pretty tight clean room packaging, shed almost all their outside layers before leaving Earth orbit while still being very toasty, and then get blasted by intense radiation for months and are finally separated by some pretty massive distances on the planet.