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No I don't think it did. I'm not sure you're understanding the scale of things here. I don't believe it came close at all, if "close" means that a ground team c
by digging 3y ago
No I don't think it did. I'm not sure you're understanding the scale of things here. I don't believe it came close at all, if "close" means that a ground team could have sterilized the planet afterward. Even if 99% of life were destroyed, that doesn't mean there's one little tide pool with some barnacles surviving, that means there's extremely hardy single-celled organisms living in the deepest nooks and crannies all over the planet.
We can't even "just clean up what survives" in the cleanest rooms on Earth, using techniques specifically intended to do that. Life is incredibly tenacious, I really don't think you're going to wipe it off a planet's surface without destroying the surface (and atmosphere, probably) of the planet in the process. And if that's acceptable - again, why wouldn't you just pick a barren planet.