(July 13, 2020 at 9:16 pm)Brian37 Wrote: There is a longstanding thought in space exploration that you sanitize all equipment when sending it to other celestial bodies to insure that your findings won't give you a false positive that what you find might give you the false impression that the life you think you have discovered originated from another body.
Here is my question, WHY is this important? I would think that if would be more important to prove our life can exist on other bodies. That would prove life is possible elsewhere.
For example, it would NOT surprise me if we sent tardigrades to the poles of Mars or Pluto and could prove our life could survive on other bodies.
Several problems with this:
- While it might demonstrate that life that evolved on Earth could adapt to a few extraterrestrial environments it would not demonstrate that life had arisen there. This is of limited value, especially since we can reproduce many of those environmental variables right here on Earth.
- The discovery of extraterrestrial life that had arisen and evolved entirely separately from our terrestrial lineage would be of incalculable scientific value. What you're suggesting would make burning the Amazon look like an act of charity.
- Populating extraterrestrial bodies with terrestrial species and letting them evolve in a hostile environment with few constraints is an excellent way to ensure that sooner or later we bring back something that's very good at chewing on us or some vital part of our ecosystem. Exotic species are not your friend as any Australian can tell you.
