"The Earth Strain": Spreading Life To The Stars -A Galaxy Classic

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.

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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

[Shakatany]

Well that's a fine idea for barren rocky worlds or, as you write, worlds capable of bearing life but still lifeless. However that's not what's driving many dreams of space exploration. We dream, like in all those science fiction stories, of stepping on an alien world and breathing in the fresh air. Any world we could walk on without spacesuits would require an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere and, given the promiscuity of oxygen, would probably require an alien biosystem to maintain a breathable atmosphere. Unfortunately even in spacesuits we have discovered it is very hard to maintain complete sterility and so would have to avoid the very planets we desire in order to not contaminate them. The alternative is that we would indeed become a plague on other ecosystems. Will we truly limit our explorations to barren worlds and, in the words of Star Trek's Dr Marcus, prebiotic ones and allow alien ecosystems to remain uncontaminated? Of course it will probably be centuries before this dilemma must be addressed so we have time to plan our strategy.

[john]

As of today we have found no alien worlds. The truth is we have no idea if alien life is common or extremly rare. We do have an idea that sentient life is rare {fermi's paradox} I've always felt that Stanley Kubricks 2001 was more a prediction of our future than our past. There is no one out there. Life is Rare. So we have a manifest destiny to bring life to an other words lifeless universe.