Should we seed other planets with life?

Well what if humans are more than that? What if we're a new and stronger driving force of nature ... we have the potential to spread life through the universe ... why shouldnt we do that? Would it be better leaving the universe barren and desolate? Im not saying interfere with planets that already have life, but undoubtably a lot of the universe will have no life on it.

~TR

Hi,
on existing planets no.
But imagine where we might be in a few hundred thousand years from now. Maybe we would be able to build our own Planets, put them in orbit around an artificial constructed sun and then have our own long time Life experiment. In this case seeding would be ok in my opinion.
I know, I`m dreaming.
Cheers

reply to post by loam

I agree with loam.

I also think a degree of contamination, in both directions, is inevitable.

As always, natural selection will pick the winners and losers.

Evolution: not just for Earthlings.

* * *

reply to post by Xeven

And I agree with you, too. Not about having the right--we certainly don't have any such right--but about doing it anyway, sooner or later, whether we like it or not. In this we are, as Tomb Raven says, mere agents of destiny.

[edit on 30/11/09 by Astyanax]

I have a feeling if the conditions are right yet we don't find any life on Europa we will probably seed the under-ice oceans. Personally I don't have any problem with this on the condition that Europa is devoid of life.

i dont think the science needed to seed a planet with simple life is beyond us ... we just need a good enough study of the conditions on the planet we would seed then we look for the right extremophiles, and bacteria and single celled organisms we have here and shove them into a probe/probes and land it on the selected planet. If there is no indiginous life on the planet then the organisms we seed should flourish and take over very fast because of the lack of competition, provided they can survive in those conditions. It would be interesting in itself to see how fast the life could spread across the planet. Once we have the first bacteria and simple organisms there... we can send more complex ones that require other life there for sustainance, viruses and fungi that eat the original microbes.

TBH i would settle for a good scientific experiment in a lab to see whether this would be possible.

~TR

Originally posted by Tomb_Raven

i dont think the science needed to seed a planet with simple life is beyond us ... we just need a good enough study of the conditions on the planet we would seed then we look for the right extremophiles, and bacteria and single celled organisms we have here and shove them into a probe/probes and land it on the selected planet. If there is no indiginous life on the planet then the organisms we seed should flourish and take over very fast because of the lack of competition, provided they can survive in those conditions. It would be interesting in itself to see how fast the life could spread across the planet. Once we have the first bacteria and simple organisms there... we can send more complex ones that require other life there for sustainance, viruses and fungi that eat the original microbes.

TBH i would settle for a good scientific experiment in a lab to see whether this would be possible.

~TR

My question is has it been done? I know we have the technology to mimic the other planets inside a glass box. Has it ever been tried?

i dont know if weve tried it. Weve tried various "evolution" experiments trying to get dna to arise spontaneously, but i dont think weve tried anything like a seeding simulation.

Ill have to look up on the net see if its been done. Has anyone heard of it having been done?

~TR

If we discovered a planet that was utterly devoid of ALL life, then I would say.......

NO! We do not have the right to Terraform or "seed" anything until we have learned to not screw up THIS planet.

As a level 0 civilization in a omniverse already seeded, maintained and developed by level 3 civilizations in the Drake Formula, don't you think theres some major ego in that question?

i say whoever lands and starts a colony on that planet first gets to decide. that's just me though.

we need to colonize other celestial bodies as soon as possible. for the survival of our species.

Well there are stars billions of years older than ours, and the universe is huge. Applying the Drake's formula, we already lost billions of years ago. We're not in that equation and cant decide where to seed planets, others decide those things already.

yeah i think there is a huge level of ego in the question.

But as a species we sell ourselves short a lot of the time. Why do so many of us see ourselves as being backward, stupid and emotionaly retarded? I cant accept that.

We are the way we are, and the only way to develope and get better is through progress... we wont get very far as a species if we give up all tech because it pollutes things and go back to twiddling our thumbs and living in trees. We have to make do with how we do things now, untill we find better ways of doing them that arnt detrimental to the environment.

Progress for the sake of progress i say. People who want to go back to being apes are free to do so, i dont see the point in that though.

Why give up the thing that makes us so unique?

~TR

reply to post by Tomb_Raven


Already done that. Once we sent our space ships to Titan, the Moon, Venus, Mars, etc... We've already introduced bacteria, etc to these planets.

Whether or not anything takes hold and develops who knows. It happened here...

As you might know, space is the perfect cryogenic supended animation vehicle... I'm pretty sure all molecular decomposition, and activity cease once introduced to the Vacuum of Space, probably preserving perfectly the state of anything thing that happens to be onboard our Space Craft, that goes equally so for anything entering our atmosphere from somewhere else...



[edit on 12/7/2009 by Brainiac]

[edit on 12/7/2009 by Brainiac]

Wouldn't they put a small biosphere around any sort of seeding experiment they did anyway, to rule out random factors? I don't really have much problem with the idea of seeding other planets. If it survives then that's an important lesson among countless planets, if it dies then it's not going to effect anything.

reply to post by Tomb_Raven


I heard of an experiment where Mars like conditions & atmosphere are maintained in a bell jar type experiment. The scientitst was astonished to find that not only did some bacteria survive, but they were actually active and reproducing.

I'm all for infesting other worlds. Whats the worse that could happen? Maybe a scenario similar to the movie "Starship Troopers" and nasty bugs declare war on Earth? Nah, probably not...

But seriously, I loved the movie where they sent algae to Mars to produce Oxygen. I'm all for terraforming other planets...

Nice to have somewhere to go in case all hell breaks out here. A home away from home.