As you may be aware the Huygens space probe to Titan (Saturn's moon) has landed sucessfully to help develop our understanding of how the solar system and the origins of life.
however while we search for this 'life' by sending probes, etc what about the possibilties of sending life from earth through space onboard a probe would they be anypoint to this??
could this be somehow even turned into a conspiracy? and by that i mean. could a space organisation send a probe outside of the public eye with life on board and send it off to some remote part of the solar system and plant life . Then later send a probe that everybody knows about to the same place and discovering what had already been planted and claiming it to be alien (wheather it had survived or not as the evidence would still be there)
nice thread - very interesting! 😉
I think there is every chance this will happen. I would like to see it done openly. I.e. We are sending life to Titan, we will go back in 10yrs and see if it survived.
Are all space probes sent 'sterile' i.e. kept in an environment free from bugs? We may have unwittingly been taking life to other planets for many years. Maybe this is a well known and accepted fact of space travel?
A.
If the elements to support life were there, they probably would.
Can't send life from here to Titan (or any other spot in the solar system) and expect it to survive once it's outside the contained environment that sent it htere.
All life here needs Oxygen and water. Unless there are those two basic elements, life cannot exist.
Originally posted by stammerthere are some little tubey things in the mid-atlantic that live of sulphur vents by the plate margin. No Oxygen there...
All life here needs Oxygen and water. Unless there are those two basic elements, life cannot exist.
I thought the whole excitement about Titan is that there is likely to be water and Oxygen there?
Originally posted by stammersome forms of virus or bacterium are extremly resiliant and adaptive, there may be a slight possibilty, that say if life was sent to mars and placed into water (that is alledged to be under the surface) then it would have all it needed to survive as water contains oxygen, there does not have to be an oxygen rich atmosphere. There is also evidence of methane in the martian atmosphere and the main producer of methane on earth are living things
Can't send life from here to Titan (or any other spot in the solar system) and expect it to survive once it's outside the contained environment that sent it there.
jupiter's moon europa has a surface that is almost entirely made up of water ice and it is beleived that under the ice they may be volcanic vents and liquid oceans and they may not even be a need to send life to this moon as i think it is the most likely place to find life in our solar system.
dont quote me on this but i heard that there are also some forms of virus or bacteria that can remain dormant for extended periods of time, and may even be capable of surviving the vacuum of space. so there could be a very real chance of life surviving once sent to other worlds.
Originally posted by rhbI think a lot of it had to do with the moon's hydrocarbon atmosphere (read: organic) which led to the belief that it could be a blueprint for Earth some billions of years ago, rather than any expectation to find life there.
there are some little tubey things in the mid-atlantic that live of sulphur vents by the plate margin. No Oxygen there...
I thought the whole excitement about Titan is that there is likely to be water and Oxygen there?
Originally posted by rhbI dont think there is large abundance of water or oxygen on titan (I could be wrong mind)
there are some little tubey things in the mid-atlantic that live of sulphur vents by the plate margin. No Oxygen there...
I thought the whole excitement about Titan is that there is likely to be water and Oxygen there?
I think the excitment was that it looked alot like what the earth may have looked like during its early evolution. so maybe the possibility of finding organic molecules on titan (such as amino acids) is still not out of the question
Originally posted by soulbyWater does contain oxygen as part of it's molecules. However this is not the oxygen that organisms breathe. They breathe gaseous oxygen that has been dissolved in the water. If there is no gaseous oxygen, I don't think organisms can get the oxygen in the molecules of the water.
some forms of virus or bacterium are extremly resiliant and adaptive, there may be a slight possibilty, that say if life was sent to mars and placed into water (that is alledged to be under the surface) then it would have all it needed to survive as water contains oxygen, there does not have to be an oxygen rich atmosphere. There is also evidence of methane i ...[text shortened]... cuum of space. so there could be a very real chance of life surviving once sent to other worlds.
Originally posted by soulbyThe problem with that scenario is the ability to sustain the life for the long journey does not exist at this time. What the National Science Foundation has been working on is the inputting of all aspects of humans (personality, emotion,intellect,likes, dislikes etc) into a computer and eventually sending a number of these "personalities" in probes into areas of the universe where life might exist. Of course it may take thousands of years to reach another civilation. I have examined some of these programs which are designed to help assemble the information on individuals. The future direction is nanotechnology but not for at least 40 or 50 years.
As you may be aware the Huygens space probe to Titan (Saturn's moon) has landed sucessfully to help develop our understanding of how the solar system and the origins of life.
however while we search for this 'life' by sending probes, etc what about the possibilties of sending life from earth through space onboard a probe would they be anypoint to this?? ...[text shortened]... d claiming it to be alien (wheather it had survived or not as the evidence would still be there)
In Love there is Life
Angela
Originally posted by KneverKnightScientists are very aware of this problem.
Just an observation: It would seem to be poor science to look for micro-organisms on another planet using a probe contaminated by earth bacteria. "Hey, those bugs look just like ours!"
A lot of time and effort is put into the prevention of cross-contamination in both directions.
Here's a link to an interesting article that gives a flavour of how some of the issues are dealt with.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/astrobio_guards_020213-1.html
I feel perhaps that this is a little counter productive. I suppose it would be interesting to see if life could be supported on Titan, but if we could find a bacteria that could not only feed off the methane based hydrocarbons potentially found there, but also withstand the temperature, pressures and radioactivity of the planet, there'd be little point in seeding the planet with it. Before any decent form of evolution could noticeably be studied (ie: assimilation of amino acids, creation of new species, anything above and beyond the normal evolution of bacteria on earth) we'll probably have all died out because we crashed into the sun anyway....
of course it makes some selfish pragmatic sense to seed ...
if an uninhabitable planet has six moons ... and all moons are "moonlike" and barren ... then we have to work with six barren places.
if 5 are barren and one was "infected" with a dose of a variety of earthly forms ... then we have much much much more to work with.