(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.
What Bel said. You're confusing two different lines of research. If we want to determine whether or not life had evolved on Mars, we'd want to take precautions that we don't contaminate the field with terrestrial life. If, on the other hand, we want to determine whether or not terrestrial organisms can survive on Mars, then we'd bring some along.
You design your experiments based on what you're trying to find out.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
