"The Earth Strain" -Spreading Life To The Stars (whether we want to or not)

When the Apollo 11 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific they were immediately whisked off into quarantine, spending three weeks in a rather unglamorous steel shell for fear that they'd contracted lethal space-plagues.  A recent paper by Professor Cockell of the Open University points out that the flow of life is more likely to be FROM the vast dirty ball teeming with billions of organisms TO the utterly dead space rocks.  Who could have guessed?

The idea is that hardy hitchhikers on our interplanetary probes could face alien ecosystems with "The Earth Strain", and they won't even have a rugged team of determined scientists to find a cure.  Never mind that anything capable of surviving extended exposure to cosmic rays would have to be King Hardcore of the microorganic kingdom.

One problem with this viewpoint is that it talks about the spread of Terran life as 'contamination', which is like describing painting as 'contaminating' a pristine canvas.  In case you haven't noticed we haven't actually found any life anywhere yet, and if we can bring some to a habitable location then it's not just a good idea - it's our duty. 

In a vast, cold universe we aren't just "Keepers of the Sacred Flame" of life, we are the bloody flame, and like Prometheus before us we must share this infinitely precious resource (hopefully without the subsequent eagle/liver unpleasantness).  There are life-capable habitats out there that just haven't lucked into the right chemical sequence to get the party started.  Bacteria from Earth could be the only trigger needed, the difference between waiting for lightning to strike and using a match.

If we do find alien life then by all means avoid contaminating them with the War-of-the-Worlds-ending common cold, but that's no problem. If there's one thing we've learned from our history of space flight it's that destroying our craft before they get somewhere is easy.  It's preventing the damn things from exploding that's the trick. 

One objection will be the "What's so great about life anyway?" crowd, demanding to know what right we have to spread it.  Luckily these nihilistic losers are usually too overcome with ennui to achieve anything of note and can be safely ignored (I assure you, they are in their own lives).  Another will be the cries that we should not play God, that the seeding of life is His right alone.  To which the only reasonable response is "If we can do it with a tank of fuel and a jar of goo and He doesn't stop us, then we're fairly sure He doesn't mind."

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Eradicating Emigrants From Earth?

MIT Asks: How Would Extraterrestrial Astronomers Study Earth?
"The Great Silence" -A Galaxy Insight
Harvard-Smithsonian Scientists Zero In On Key Sign of Habitable Worlds
Cruising the Goldilocks Zone -The Search for Super Earths
Dead Zones in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
  Non-Carbon Lifeforms -Why We May Overlook  

Comments

[Dennis]

Nice to see someone thumbing their nose at the terminally self-righteous for a change.

[Pastageek]

Well as the Urey Miller experiment showed, even electricity going though the right chemicals doesn't produce what you need, you get only a few of the organic compounds you need and what you do get will always be aprox. 50% of it backwards. rofl. (see www.drdino.com)

As far as those who whine about us not having rights left and right about life and want to keep the Universe sterile, they need to quite trying to force their acid trips on the rest of the populous. As a Christian, I firmly believe in God's command to be fuitful and multiply and if I can multiply in ourter space I will do it Duggar family style. God didn't give us all this space to sit around and be pious boaring monks about it.

If there is some other form of life out there and its protien structure is compatible with mine, I want to taste it and see if our animles can breed with it for I belong to people eating tasty animles. Remember that buffet stands for big ugly fat folks eating together. I say we contaiminate the first few giga light years of the universe within the next three decades. Muahahahahaha.

[Kevin Bracken]

Totally agreed, we should definitely be planting the seeds of life far and wide. Sterile planets may be beautiful, but not as beautiful as life.

[Dennis]

Hey Pastageek, shouldn't you be a pastafarian?

[Jamais]

I like how Christians think that god gives them the right to do anything, and mistake schizophrenia for talking to god.

Pastageek, a bit bold to be denouncing Buddhism for your own oh-so-peaceful religion.

Haha

[Brent Allsop]

An open survey has been created at http://canonizer.com/topic/65 to see what everyone thinks on this issue. Please help create a concise specification for all possible camps on this issue, and the rational for each - along with quantitative measures of how many people are in each camp.

Thanks

Brent Allsop

[Brent Allsop]

Sorry, here is the real url:

http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/65

[Tom Buckner]

I wrote this song a long time ago: it fits the subject perfectly, I think...

Dandelion Seeds 1996 Tom Buckner

Out of gas and run too far, red shifted to infinity
A rain of light from a cloud of stars gently covers me
Look up there, starry maps, home fires of others perhaps
If they're out there, hope they come
When you break down you stick out your thumb

You'll have no reason to smile again with all of the good things gone
If you take your place with the final men in a wasted dawn

[Chorus]
So it's up to you, you're the fulcrum of what you do
We have a duty to carry life from the cradle where it grew
It's time we flew from the old world to the many new
Where the currents lead at interstellar speeds like dandelion seeds in the blue
[Bridge]
And like the patter of rain ripple rings in the ocean that sings in our hearts
Sunlight will scatter in Saturn's rings as we pass and the real journey starts
I only hope I live to see it come

We could live every wizard's wish, we children of lizards and fish
We hold the future but can't forget every creature we owe a debt
By the compass needle we are led, lay a graph on the wine dark sea
That computer sitting in your head is the master key

Before you burn all your enemies in the furnaces of your mind
You'll find we all have the same disease, we are all confined
Stay here and smother in your own waste or sail for a new found shore
With such horizons to be embraced you'd forget this war

So it's up to you, you're the fulcrum of what you do
We have a duty to carry life from the cradle where it grew
It's time we flew from the old world to the many new
Where the currents lead at interstellar speeds like dandelion seeds in the blue
Dandelion seeds in the blue

[Pastageek]

Some of you should stop posting immature comments. Christianity is not a belief that God lets us do anything we want. While I did not directly denouce Buddhism, I can't say I am in favor of some of the odd things including the possible nilhism or Janism that seem to come from that area. You might try reading the Gospels and you will see that Christianity is indeed peaceful system. That is not to say Roman Catholicim or the many masquerading things in the world are peaceful. It would help if ppl these days could differentiate.

Oh btw, the whole, "I like how Christians think that god gives them the right to do anything..." is what is known as a straw man argument.

Besides what is the point of going to a planet without starting colonies on it? Seriously the people that came to America didn't come just to paint a picture and leave.

Pastafarian? Yeah Right! lol No I am Dr. Frankenstein 2.0 Muahahahaha

[Dave]

Would it be possible to take a lifeless planet, introduce life to that planet, fail and have screwed up further chances for life to thrive on that planet?

I think we should proceed with caution as we do not yet know the intricacies of our own ecosystem....

I think it may be prudent to follow the rule: understand our ecosystem before building a new one..

Of course to devil's advocate here and throw my whole theory out the window one could argue that one MUST start a new ecosystem to fully understand our own ecosystem...

What a dilemma... in any case, it's not a simple matter thats for sure.. whatever the case.. it should not be left to religion to decide.. this matter is far too complicated... you would need to form a group of hundreds of scientists to determine:
a) if it is feasible
b) if it is safe (see above concern)
c) how best to go about launching 'project genesis' [no this is not a religious reference, it is a reference to the movie 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn']

[Pastageek]

Dave you do bring up a good point. Let me ask you something. Do you always fully understand anything you are using? Just an example, but do you understand each and every detail about computers both hardware and software such that you could build one from silicon scratch and program it in binary? Apply that to any other situation. I do agree that we must be cautious, but if we keep waiting around trying to passivily understand our ecosystem and never experiment, we never will understand it and thus I believe that it really is not too much of a dilemma.

Like all the other great scientists in the past we must take chance, make mistakes, and like Ms. Frizzle, get messy. lol

Are we just going to strand ourselves on this planet just because accidents are possible? It does seem to be the popular and politically correct thing to do these days and came from decades ago from the hippies to the liberals to first not let something happen because something bad could happen so we should just staggnate and then when the inevitable happens because we live in an imperfect world, they tell us to withdraw.

Let's see where that would take us. If everytime one soilder dies we quit a war and now everyone thinks the US is a coward. If an accident happens in a nuclear power station, let's just stop using that and never mind that it cuts down on C02 emitions. Everytime we could fail let's just do nothing and stagnate in our current state because the ones before us who gave us our current state of technology could not have possibly taken risks to bring us where we are.

Ok my sarcasticlly said soapbox aside, colonizing is just what we do. Exploration is just what we do. We don't need armchair philosophers wasting our time telling us how evil are just for our curiosity. Besides you never saw cats build spaceships right? lol