5 ms·
I guess there's very little chance of accidentally transferring earth-style life to Europa's oceans with this flyby kind of plan.. that's a plus!
by danwills 2y ago
I guess there's very little chance of accidentally transferring earth-style life to Europa's oceans with this flyby kind of plan.. that's a plus!
- criddell 2y agoEven if we did accidentally seed life on Europa, it would be a pretty interesting result. I wonder if any organic matter from Earth has ever fallen on any other planets or moons?
- BitwiseFool 2y agoI'd be surprised if this hadn't happened at some point. Rocks from Mars found their way over to Antarctica. However something to consider is that whatever biological material that ends up landing elsewhere probably wouldn't be able to survive and reproduce. I say that because even the hardiest microbial organisms on Earth still depend on the activity of other species in the ecosystem. For instance, only certain species of bacteria produce Vitamin B and I can't think of any species that is completely self-reliant. It's one thing to keep a cell from dying in a harsh environment, but it would have to bootstrap itself into metabolizing and reproducing in a barren environment with no prior life to consume building blocks from. That being said, I'm not enough of a biologist to know if there are any extremophile bacteria which are completely self sufficient. If there are, we can rule out my layman's assertion/thought experiment.