Should we be planting simple life on other planets and moons?

After doing a little research on the possibility of other planets harbouring life I had an idea. Would it be worth us trying to plant simple life on other planets, perhaps in our solar system or further afield?

Would there be anything to gain? It would be a very expensive science project, and one that may not show results for a few hundred million years but I think I'd still want to do it.

There's something inside me that thinks it's a good idea. I think that sending probes around the galaxy with bacteria or other simple life on them would be amazing. Imagine if it was us that spawned life on a planet light years away. Imagine what could evolve in the different environments.

I suppose the various probes and landers (if you believe) must have had some bacteria in and on them, but imagine sending them in pods designed to let them thrive and multiply.

It's just a thought but I think it raises some good questions.

The webpage that got me thinking was this:

BBC Life in the Solar System?



[edit on 11-6-2009 by kiwifoot]

Originally posted by kiwifoot

Would there be anything to gain?


[edit on 11-6-2009 by kiwifoot]

We can't handle one planet.Why start messing with another planet when we can't handle this one.
On this planet all we think about is what can we gain and whats in it for us.

reply to post by kiwifoot

There's something inside me that thinks it's a good idea. I think that sending probes around the galaxy with bacteria or other simple life on it would be amazing.

That is not a good idea...


We may get our own package with a Return to Sender sticker on it with some of Their Bacteria...and something tells me their bacteria is advanced...


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3ac16bc81622.jpg[/atsimg]

I think we should someday try -- say on Mars for example -- but not until we are absolutely sure there is no life "native" to that planet/moon that we want to "seed".

Mars is a great laboratory for discovering if life has (or ever had) arisen independently on another planet. The idea being that if life exists independently on two planets in the same solar system, then life itself is probably abundan/common throughout the galaxy and universe.

If we contaminate that laboratory with organisms from Earth, we may never be able to tell if life found on mars is native to mars or came from Earth.

Of course life on Earth could have already contaminated Mars by hitching a ride on any number of pieces of rock that have been blasted off of our planet from past meteor impacts -- one of those rocks may have found its way to Mars. Conversely, life from Mars may already be on Earth from a similar meteor/asteroid impact on Mars (we have already found meteors on earth that were once part of Mars).



[edit on 6/11/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Completely agree Soylent........ I think it would be irresponsible of us to take/send any biological material to any planet without first verifying that it doesn't have any life of its own.

How to veryify that without first spending a coupla hundred years on it?

We're not very good at this stuff. When you introduce an non-indiginous species to any area, there's usually some kind of ecological disaster.

Introducing snakes to control rats = huge snake problem
Introducing cane toads to control snails = huge toad problem
Releasing the minks from a fur farm = all the local wildlife under certain size is killed
Unintentionally carrying rats via ship from port to port = black death spreads
Unintentionally releasing pets into wild = endangered ground dwelling species

etc. etc. etc.

So colonizing any other rock could likely lead to a problem, because we are completely unable to properly think things through.

To one extent or the next, we've already been doing this.

The notion that we are 'sterilizing' our robots before we send them to places like the Moon, Mars and Titan is something of a misconception. The act of completely sterilizing is one thing... but then to keep it sterile? That's quite another. These spacecraft and their landers may be exceptionally 'clean', but sterile they are certainly not.

There is a kind of 'space kills' theory that says that between the dense cold, lack of oxygen (or any other gas) and naked solar radiation, most bugs hitching a ride on our spaceships will be dead by the time they reach their destinations. But in the lab, some bacteria have shown they can hybernate in the cold, airless vacuum of space and with a dose of cosmic radiation, they actually grow some in the process.

What happens when they get to... wherever? Who knows? Maybe one day, we will meet a Martian coming home to find his relatives on the bathroom sink.

This sounds like a great idea.

Perhaps we could eventually use genetic engineering to ensure a greater likelihood that whatever species we use to seed the planet or moon will end up producing a being like us.

That would be nice.