I personally see those millions of years as being absolutely glorious. Yes there was uncountable
misery, but also many amazing creatures evolved. I’d hate to throw all that wonder out
the window just to avoid the suffering (I’m a quasi-Buddhist BTW).
On topic: IMHO it would be unethical to seed an alien planet which already has life. It is
possible that super-intelligent nanorobots (tho I have grave doubts about AI) could explore
and then seed where there is no life currently but long-term prospects look good. I once had
an idea of a nanoship carrying instructions on how to build cells & DNA, which would then
craft an orbiting ship/nursery around a colonizable planet, build babies from the ground up
then raise them using robotic humanoid surrogate parents.
Since “they” would have seeded Earth several billion years ago by now they’re either extinct or advanced into something beyond our comprehension. Even if the never contact them a few new religions will probally spring up.
I think we ought to find out what’s out there before we start running around “seeding” the place with anything. Might be there’s already life crawling all over the place. If not, I don’t know that the human race is sufficiently altruistic (if altruism it would be) to expend much effort on something as long-range as seeding the galaxy with bacteria, just so something would live billions of years from now. Of course, we might seed the galaxy with grass, cows, pigs, chickens, cats, dogs, rats, mice, cockroaches, hamsters, rhinoviruses, and ourselves, if we could manage it.
Or, I wouldn’t include predators for anything smarter than an amphibian in my hypothetical world, or I’d design them to kill more or less painlessly. Certainly not wolves.
Why “boo-hoo for me” ? I was expressing sympathy for animals, and for the people of the past and less pleasant places right now. I’m not the one being eaten alive by wolves or lions, or dying of cancer witout painkillers, or being worked to death as a slave.
Just because the life we seed the galaxy with has its origins in our own bio chemistry doesnt mean that it will necessarily evolve into anything like us let alone into beings that share our values ,it would be a real pisser if we eventually discover FTL drive, go "out there "and find an advanced ,psycho killer civilisation that immediatly decides that we must be eradicated for not being of the chosen ones ,or the right religion/politics,or even that we make good "eatin". Even more of a pisser would be us NOT discovering the drive but they do! and bring their "death to all human scum" campaign and optional poker tournament to us! particulary (as were talking about fantastically unlikely possibilities here!) if its during the incredibly remote chance of the england cricket team winning a test series.
Except that if they are there because we seeded their world with algae, we’ll be hundreds of millions older than them or more. The confrontation would go like this :
Psycho Aliens : “Die human vermin !”
Humans : “WE ARE THE HUMANS. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. PREPARE TO BE ASSIM . . . OH, HELL, JUST DIE.” < ZAP >
Should we seed life in this Galaxy?
Why should we seed the worldwide disfunctional international societal morass of incompetenance on anyone or anyplace?
We have the wonders of science from the nano scale to the space station.
But collectively we can’t or won’t solve the problem of evil in the world and the propensity of mankind to destroy rather than cooperate for good.
It thus appear that “intelligent” life is an oxymoron as we do that which is NOT in our own best interests.
As Lust4Life point’s out, the creatures evolving from our seeding project will br no more similar to us than bacteria now are. They will be carbon based, and will have a nucleaic acid based genetics (RNA DNA or something else), but other than that they will evolve (or die out) their own way. Most planets probably won’t develop at all, some will develop into complex ecosystems, and maybe some of those will develop sapient minded beings. But there would be no reason to consider them likely to be anyway like us at all.
The pressures of evolution and survival of the fittest will exist, so maybe there is reason to believe that any life will ‘suffer’ like life on Earth does. I’m of the oppinion that a lifeless planet is unmeasurable less important than a planet with life.
Is there really a need for a separate panspermia effort? From what we’ve seen from in-system space travel, just sending anything to another planet is likely to contaminate it with terrestrial bacteria/microbes/whatever.
If we’re going out there, we’ll be bringing space smallpox with us to infect any space natives whether we intend to or not. The choice, to me, seems to be “do we stay home, or not?”
I don’t think we should do it. If a planet is suitable for life chances are good that life will develop eventually, if it hasn’t currently. Therefore we would be cutting off the chance that the planet would evolve life on its own, which IMO would be a terrible thing to do, promoting Earth life at the expense of other forms of life. If a planet is unsuitable for life there is very little chance that even anaerobic bacteria will be able to survive, and who knows, maybe even a planet like Pluto might generate its own life someday. The point is, we don’t know which planets may or may not already have (very simple) organisms, or whether there is any possibility of organisms developing in the future. It’s best to err on the side of caution and not wreck budding ecosystems because of our own hubris.
I am also generally against terraforming and inhabiting other planets for this reason. By the time we’re ready to leave the planet we’ll have the technology to manufacture our own satellites or even planets, so it won’t matter. (Of course I don’t believe we’ll get to that stage either before some catastrophe happens.)
This is for the planets we won’t be going to ourselves. A spaceship capable of carrying bacteria over great distances is much easier to create than one able to carry people.
I am not convinced life is likely to form on a planet just because it is within reasonable temperature zones with complex enough available chemicals and surface water. We shouldn’t be surprised to find everywhere in our solarsystem that can support any form of life does or has done so. Panspermia from one planet to another through natural causes seems to be quite likely.
The following link suggests that significant numbers of large pieces of Earth rock would have reached Saturn’s moons just through natural ejection of material from the Earth during metor strikes.
But we can’t know that in advance, can we? Any given seed-ship might land on a world with indigenous life – and displace it.
In any case, we don’t have the technology, yet, to send out such a ship and make sure it will land on any planet at all, outside our Solar System. We could send them out in random directions and them most would drift in space indefinitely.
Say that by some freak accident* we do replace indigenous unicellular life with our own terrestrial unicellular life. So then… what? God will get angry at us?
I mean, what are the odds that Earth bacteria will defeat (in a Darwinian sense) life-forms that have just spent millions of years adapting to the planet’s unique environment and to each other, and who outnumber “our” guys by one billion zillion to one? They wouldn’t stand a chance in hell.
Unless, for example, we are speaking of dropping a mix of microbes containing oxygen-producing micro-organisms on a planet that hasn’t evolved them. Then our microbes would annihilate most or all of the native life. There are plenty of examples even on Earth of imports wiping out natives.
Can’t say, but it would definitely be a bit of a knock for biodiversity, wouldn’t it?
I mean, extinctions are natural and inevitable, but it seems a pity to cause them unnecessarily or heedlessly. If abiogenesis really has occurred or is about to occur independently on some other planet, I think that’s way cool and I’d be sorry to have it wiped out for the sake of monocropping our own terrestrial bacteria.
“Monocropping” isn’t the most accurate term - whatever we plant ther will evolve into something completely and utterly alien to what we’re familiar with.
As I said earlier, for every planet we seed that’s “inhabited”, there’ll be thousands that aren’t. Those odds look pretty good to me.
When all’s said and done, all we’ll be able to do is seed our own little corner of our own little galaxy. Even if we seed every single planet within a 1000 LY radius, it’ll still just be a drop in the ocean. Barely a statistical anomaly.
