Should be dropping packets of extremophiles into the atmospheres of the other planets to see if anything takes hold.

I.e. practice panspermia.

ianburrell 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That destroys any possibility of finding out if there was or is life on other planets. Life that would be better evolved to handle the conditions.

It is also unlikely to do anything. The conditions are well beyond anything on Earth. Mars is near vacuum; life has survived in vacuum but didn't grow. Titan has liquid organics, but is really cold and microorganisms don't really handle hydrocarbons.

	▲	WalterBright 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> That destroys any possibility of finding out if there was or is life on other planets. Life that would be better evolved to handle the conditions. Those two statements contradict each other. It's a given that Terran life would be poorly adapted to the conditions. So native live would overwhelm it.

▲

triceratops 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I didn't downvote you. However, there are ethical and moral quandaries to doing that. What if you accidentally wipe out existing, undetected life on that planet?

You aren't going to see anything "take hold" on a human timescale. Evolution takes place over geological time. By the time there's something to observe, there might be no one to observe it. Or all knowledge of the experiment might be lost.

	▲	WalterBright 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There is no other civilization in the solar system. If it's humans vs alien slime mold, I stand for humans. > ou aren't going to see anything "take hold" on a human timescale Right. Seeding life onto lifeless planets takes a long time, but it is a moral imperative. We are the only life in the solar system, and maybe even in our galaxy. BTW, the Earth is going to fry in 100m years. We'd better learn how to colonize the other planets.

▲

WalterBright 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I know this is an unpopular idea. But it's the right thing to do.