Asteroids sound delicious!

"planets with our conditions" is doing a lot of work here.

how many planets meet that criteria? most of the closest have typcially been labeled "super Earths" so their gravity will be greater than 1g. what effect will that have?

Yeah or Mike Levin

https://youtu.be/5MQq4n2QrNw?si=a7gFLLgQL1Soq0mt

The big bang did. And following it, supernovae. But there's a lot we don't know and science is always advancing!

For example, JWST observed early galaxies are both larger and more diverse materials than we expected. Means there's something new to learn!

There's a theory that at the very beginnings of the universe, as it cooled down, there was a period where the average temperature of the universe was between 0-100º C, meaning the whole universe was within a "habitable" temperature range, and this could have supercharged the creation of the building blocks of life. I think I learned about it on a Veritasium video... Maybe someone knows which one? :)

When Carl Sagan said, "The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself" he was poetically accurate. The comets are seeded with the remains of untold countless exploded stars.

It's sorting and mixing. Comets, asteroids, and planets all had different factors governing their formation (sorting). When comets or asteroids hit planets, you get a mixture of those different compositions.

Wait till you hear about God!

God

Space gummy tardigrades (because they can survive in space and their nickname is "water bear")!

Who doesn't like sugars and gum? It's the perfect alien incubation delivery mechanism! I wonder which will be the first scientist to get their chest popped...

Most organic molecules are different from it's mirrored version, and living thing usually produce only one version. But inorganic reactions produce an even mix of 50% and 50%. So in most cases it's easy to spot.

Also, some sugars or amino acids are very common here and others very rare, and the commet probably has another mix.

Also, the ammount of isotopes of the atoms (like Carbon 14) is probably different.

There are papers covering contamination prevention and detection for every stage of the mission. There are papers with the designs and intentions before launch and papers with how well it went and their specific findings after return.

Here is one sick paper covering some of the clean rooms https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230005897

>”Once soft and flexible, but since hardened, this ancient “space gum” consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Such complex molecules could have provided some of the chemical precursors that helped trigger life on Earth”

That would be some stale big league chew if that were the case. By orders of billions of years. Making it the oldest wad of big league chew we know of in existence. ;)

"I will assume that the experts involved have not taken any reasonable precautions, and learned nothing from the past 60 years of acquired experience in space exploration. I will then ask other non-experts in the field if the experts are minimally competent or not."

I think the article does a good job clarifying in simple words those questions risen by the slightly click-baity title.