Are We Prepared for Contamination Between Worlds? (gizmodo.com) 54
Slashdot reader Tangential shares what he describes as "an interesting article on Gizmodo discussing how we could easily contaminate other planets/moons as we explore them."
"Based on our recently demonstrated vulnerability to locally evolved bacteria and viruses, what will other worlds's pathogens do to us (and what will ours do to them?) What I also find interesting is what a small percentage of SciFi actually addresses this."
From Gizmodo's article: The year is 2034. Humans have sent a probe to Jupiter's moon Europa to drill through the icy surface and photograph the ocean beneath. In the few hours before it stops functioning, the probe returns images of shapes that could be some form of life. Scientists quickly organize a followup mission that will collect samples of that spot and bring them back to Earth. But, unknown to anyone, the first probe wasn't sterile — it carried a hardy bacteria that had survived even the mission's clean rooms. By the time the samples finally reach Earth years later, they're dominated by this bacteria, which has happily set up shop in Europa's dark, salty waters. Just like that, our first opportunity to study a truly alien ecosystem has been destroyed.
This is a nightmare scenario for NASA and other space agencies, and it's one they've worked intensely to avoid with every mission to another orb. But some researchers from a lesser-known branch of ecology argue that even the current strict standards aren't rigorous enough, and as more ambitious missions to other planets and moons get ready to launch, the risk of interplanetary contamination becomes more dire. They say we need to better plan for "forward contamination," in which our technology disseminates Earth microbes, as well as "back contamination," in which life from elsewhere hitches a ride to Earth.
In fact, we already have a playbook to lean on: the discipline of invasion science, the study of how species on our planet invade each other's ecosystems. "What I would say is that, given that there are now concrete plans in place to explore new areas that could have extant life — these pose a new set of risks that were not in play before," Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of invasion ecology and aquatic ecosystems at McGill University, told Gizmodo. "Invasion science has been applied to biosecurity at national and international levels. My colleagues and I believe that it could similarly guide biosecurity at the planetary or interplanetary scales."
Because of the groundbreaking technological advances of recent years, our ability to explore other worlds — from asteroids to planets to ocean moons — is expanding, and so are the risks that come with that. NASA plans to bring bits of Mars to Earth in the early 2030s, and missions to Titan and Europa, which could very well host life, are set to launch this decade.... Although the 2034 Europa tale is invented, there's plenty of precedent for it. We've likely accidentally brought drug-resistant bacteria into the Antarctic ecosystem already, infecting seabirds and seals.
Our lack of foresight and carelessness is driving mass extinctions on Earth — are we willing to do the same thing to the next inhabited world we touch?
"Based on our recently demonstrated vulnerability to locally evolved bacteria and viruses, what will other worlds's pathogens do to us (and what will ours do to them?) What I also find interesting is what a small percentage of SciFi actually addresses this."
From Gizmodo's article: The year is 2034. Humans have sent a probe to Jupiter's moon Europa to drill through the icy surface and photograph the ocean beneath. In the few hours before it stops functioning, the probe returns images of shapes that could be some form of life. Scientists quickly organize a followup mission that will collect samples of that spot and bring them back to Earth. But, unknown to anyone, the first probe wasn't sterile — it carried a hardy bacteria that had survived even the mission's clean rooms. By the time the samples finally reach Earth years later, they're dominated by this bacteria, which has happily set up shop in Europa's dark, salty waters. Just like that, our first opportunity to study a truly alien ecosystem has been destroyed.
This is a nightmare scenario for NASA and other space agencies, and it's one they've worked intensely to avoid with every mission to another orb. But some researchers from a lesser-known branch of ecology argue that even the current strict standards aren't rigorous enough, and as more ambitious missions to other planets and moons get ready to launch, the risk of interplanetary contamination becomes more dire. They say we need to better plan for "forward contamination," in which our technology disseminates Earth microbes, as well as "back contamination," in which life from elsewhere hitches a ride to Earth.
In fact, we already have a playbook to lean on: the discipline of invasion science, the study of how species on our planet invade each other's ecosystems. "What I would say is that, given that there are now concrete plans in place to explore new areas that could have extant life — these pose a new set of risks that were not in play before," Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of invasion ecology and aquatic ecosystems at McGill University, told Gizmodo. "Invasion science has been applied to biosecurity at national and international levels. My colleagues and I believe that it could similarly guide biosecurity at the planetary or interplanetary scales."
Because of the groundbreaking technological advances of recent years, our ability to explore other worlds — from asteroids to planets to ocean moons — is expanding, and so are the risks that come with that. NASA plans to bring bits of Mars to Earth in the early 2030s, and missions to Titan and Europa, which could very well host life, are set to launch this decade.... Although the 2034 Europa tale is invented, there's plenty of precedent for it. We've likely accidentally brought drug-resistant bacteria into the Antarctic ecosystem already, infecting seabirds and seals.
Our lack of foresight and carelessness is driving mass extinctions on Earth — are we willing to do the same thing to the next inhabited world we touch?
If this pandemic is any indication, then (Score:4, Insightful)
no
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Re: If this pandemic is any indication, then (Score:2)
You beat me to it. It's of course impossible to predict all scenarios but SciFi authors have covered an astonishing amount of ground. Like geosynchronous orbit, for example...
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Then you have guys like Greg Egan who deploys his vast knowledge of Math and Physics to imagine up some truly alien scenarios (and then provide the math for it on his website). My dream scenario has Paramount hiring Greg Egan with one simple mission in mind "Fix Star Treks insane nonsense pseudophysics". Cos if anyone could, it'd be Egan.
Re:If this pandemic is any indication, then (Score:4, Interesting)
H,G. Wells' early science fiction novel The War Of The Worlds used this concept to rescue Earth from Mars invasion so it's no new idea.
Yep, and NASA has been sterilizing the things they launch and quarantining the things that come back since day one.
All this shows is that the article's author is an ignorant millennial who hasn't read anything.
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Re: If this pandemic is any indication, then (Score:2)
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Not that you would have bothered to read it but it's unfortunate the OP didn't include a link to TFA because if you'd read just a little bit more of it you'd see the author talking about what NASA does to prevent this scenario but that there is concern now that other gov'ts and private organizations are getting in on the game.
Like that Tesla that Dear Leader Elon launched into space, it probably wasn't anywhere near clean the way NASA does things.
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Maybe it'll start a new civilization if it actually hits another planet.
How did life start on Earth anyway?
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Yep, and NASA has been sterilizing the things they launch and quarantining the things that come back since day one
But forward contamination has already been shown to occur:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Did you even read the page you linked? There were several points at which the microbe could have been deposited on that camera after it returned to Earth. That's a long way from "shown to occur".
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There are questions over how effective NASA's (and the USSR's/Russia's) efforts have been.
They was the contamination found on the Surveyor probe that was returned on Apollo 12. Might have happened on Earth, which is a problem in itself, but might have been the result in incomplete sterilization.
It's actually pretty hard to sterilize a probe, and keep it sterile until after it has separated from the launch vehicle.
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You obviously have not watched Prometheus and Alien Covenant....
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We're not prepared for stuff like this happening on earth, and it's far more likely here than there. Why? Environments are going to be radically different. It's possible for some bacteria or a fungus that can tolerate the exact environmental conditions to hitch a ride and set up shop, but not probable.
Yeasts are in the air all around us, and we breathe them in every day. They're hit with radiation every second of every day. They're currently coating plastics throughout the world.
Can you imagine the chaos he
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
We can even double mask (Score:1)
A virus can't penetrate a paper surgical mask. As long as we get everyone to mask up there will be 0 possibility of contamination. - Dr. Fauci
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Aside from not understanding what was said, have you any actual quotes? No? Too busy making stuff up to listen?
Obligatory (Score:3)
Recent evidence suggests no (Score:2)
Based on the last two years, we're not even prepared for contamination across countries.
Of course, a lot of that was people being assholes for the sake of being assholes, exacerbated by politics, but it still doesn't bode well.
If we don't.... (Score:3)
Maybe we should contaminate, we are here through survival of the fittest after all. If we contaminate moons, there could be other intelligent life develop there in 100 million or a billion years time. There's a good chance that in the meantime we will have wiped ourselves out or Earth might end up looking like Venus or Mars, sterile... or simply the sun getting hotter will extinct us.
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What does it even mean to "contaminate"? The word implies that humans would inject things into "pristine" worlds that should not be there. But "pristine" is a human-contrived concept, that puts humans in a separate category from all other life and all other natural processes. Natural process constantly alter the "pristine" state of every world. On earth, all of life alters the environment in which it lives, in some way. Why should humans not be allowed to alter their own habitat in ways that make their own
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This about leaving behind earth bacteria on other planetary bodies/moons in the solar system, I use the word contaminate because the summary used that word. Other places in the solar system are not currently our habitat and 'contaminating' them could endanger us in the distant future or it could kill any non-terrestrial life if there is any. OTOH we might be the only life in the universe with our level of intelligence, perhaps we should 'contaminate' as much as possible to allow further life to evolve.
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I agree with your post, by the way.
We can't let fear of the potential for dying of some future contamination, keep us from exploring other worlds. There are many unknown dangers, and as we spread throughout the solar system, people will surely die in the attempt. Others will learn how to better protect themselves.
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An interesting but unlikely possibility is that our solar system is booby-trapped by aliens who don't want any other intelligent life to be around. There could be a myriad ways we could set this off and what the defense could be (bio / chem / nuke / black hole / other), although we're still here so not bog standard radio communications.
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The universe is indeed "against" life. Life is a constant struggle to survive. No booby-trapping necessary.
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Using the excuse that we are just pushing evolution along is pretty lame, and also one used by some very unsavoury characters in human history when they felt like trying some eugenics.
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Not an excuse what - so ever, I literally am talking about seeding everywhere possible with bacterial life so that it has the possibility to evolve in places where it may not have came into existence in the first place.
By not doing this you could argue that we are anti-life. We may wipe ourselves out, right now it's looking like we probably will. By seeding life, we are giving it another chance, maybe other intelligent life will evolve, are you against other intelligent life evolving?
Andromeda Strain... (Score:2)
The onl
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Which is what is being discussed and not the scenario you dismiss.
Re: Andromeda Strain... (Score:2)
I understand what parent is saying, and he's right. I'd contradict you and explain why, but your reply is so short I have no frikkin idea what your point is.
Is your ISP charging you by the word, by any chance?
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May have already happened (Score:2)
Despite our best efforts, it's possible we have already contaminated Mars [businessinsider.com].
Also, NASA, and others, have already done stuides on how to limit cross-world contamination [nasa.gov].
But yeah, some random guy thinks he's forward looking. Because what do the experts who study this stuff for decades know?
Hardly Matters (Score:2)
Meteors have been contaminating are world with the stuff of other worlds since the beginning of the planet.
It would be much better if we actually prepared and developed effective methodologies to deal with novel pandemics. The response to covid was pathetic and counterproductive. Thankfully it wasn't that dangerous(not even up to spanish flu levels). I shudder to think what would happen if the next one is on the level of small pox, or the black plague.
Dumb question (Score:2)
No. (Score:1)
The sad thing is that the world has yet to come to grips with the cold hard fact that we're not even very well prepared for contamination between households let alone ecosystems. Maybe after it's been more than 100 years since the last time contaminated meat from Chipotle or Jack In The Box has killed someone.
This needs to stop (Score:2)
Not a real concern (Score:3)
Three reasons this is not a real concern.
1) While contamination is possible, the chances that terran containment will survive on another planet is so minuscule that it is a ridiculous concern. Life is environment focused. That is, life that survives in the artic ocean can not survive near an underwater volcanic plume, let alone on a mountain top or inside a human being. Any life that is strong enough to survive the decontamination procedure and also the long trip will NEVER thrive in the far different environment on another world. If we want to seed life on a new world we will have to design and breed it for that specific world. That would be like expecting a salmon to survive if you took it and dropped it into Time Square.
2) Scientifically we know Earth life and will be able to easily identify it. Just as if you saw a squirrel on Mars you would mistake it for Martian life, a competent biologist will not mistake terran mold, fungus, or other life for non-terran. Not after a DNA test.
3) Finally, if terran life did manage to thrive, it would still get it's ass destroyed by actual native alien life. Luck does not defeat millions of years of evolution. If a salmon did manage to survive in a puddle in Time Square, a rat would kill it.
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While contamination is possible, the chances that terran containment will survive on another planet is so minuscule that it is a ridiculous concern. Life is environment focused.
That's why it's a legitimate concern. Earth has such variation of terrain and biome (with life everywhere from the upper reaches of the atmosphere to the deepest parts of the ocean, and beneath that as well!) that it's conceivable that something from Earth can survive basically anywhere we might want to visit.
Scientifically we know Earth life and will be able to easily identify it.
Scientifically we still don't know most Earth life, if you count by number of unique organisms. Most of the unknown ones are microscopic, which is specifically what we're talking about here.
Finally, if terran life did manage to thrive, it would still get it's ass destroyed by actual native alien life. Luck does not defeat millions of years of evolution.
Or Earth mi
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This reads a lot like the dunning kruger effect.
First of all, no, life on earth will not survive anywhere. If that were possible, then we would have already found life on the Moon, Mars, etc. This is not one constraint, but three. a) the tough as nails life must live somewhere near where we manufacture the the gear. b) it must also be capable of surviving the decontamination process, and c) it must then be capable of living on the destination. I can see life doing 2 of those constraints, but passing a
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But if the conditions are close to being the same (the so-called Goldilocks zone), then there's a great possibility an alien life form could survive. To think of an Earth-based analogy, we got Covid-19 because the genes of some bat virus mutated and survived through at least two different animal host species. If the target planet has environmental conditions that are merely at the climate catastrophe level, then there's a good chance even multicellular organisms would survive.
The hardest part in the evoluti
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Wildfire (Score:2)
We therefore urge the establishment of a facility designed to deal with an
extraterrestrial life form, should one inadvertently be introduced to the earth.
The purpose of this facility would be twofold: to limit dissemination of the life
form, and to provide laboratories for its investigation and analysis, with a view
to protecting earth life forms from its influence.
We recommend that such a facility be located in an uninhabited region of the
United States; that it be constructed underground; that it incorporate
The only constant is change (Score:2)
"Contamination" likely already occurs "regularly" (in cosmic terms) and it is a fairly well explored concept called panspermia. And while I wouldn't say we should be spreading biomatter haphazardly throughout the cosmos it's also probably not something that is a terribly big concern either. At least our experience with organisms suggests that the specialize for a specific environment and don't generally do well outside of that environment. Most biomatter that evolved on Earth would probably do poorly or