"Seeding" an astronomical body

[p1t1o]

Sometimes in space exploration, you hear about efforts NASA (or whoever) make to prevent the "contamination" of various bodies by man-made equipment. For example, Casini is being dropped into Saturn, partly to prevent it crashing onto one of its solid moons, where life might theoretically, hypothetically exist. We dont want to introduce Earth organisms so that a) it does not harm any already present organisms, and b) so that they do not confuse the search for any extra-terrestrial life by already being present.

But what if we chose a moon, or other body, one with some decent liquid chemistry available, preferably an atmosphere, and scrutinised it for life. Once we have done as much as we can to rule out ETs, why not deliberately "seed" it with a cocktail of earth biology?

If we make a decent effort to choose a lifeless body, we wont be ruining any precious alien biology or ecosystem. Ok, it would complicate the further scientific study of said body, but we dont have to choose Europa or something, could be a more minor body. And we make effort to max out research on said body before proceeding.

It would be quite safe as nobody would be exposed to the experiment without actually visiting said body.

It would be quite cheap, because if all you want to do is contaminate something, the mission is pretty simple. Although I imagine scientists and the like would want to complicate things by being all "careful" and want a "controlled experiment" or somesuch. But I say, just load up a canister with a decent mix of various bugs and perhaps some supporting compounds, and just smash it into the surface. You could drop many of these, perhaps each with a different cocktail aboard.

It would be very interesting, and probably of extreme scientific value, to have a closed alien biosphere and watch how life deals with it. Would it all die off quite quickly? Or would ecological niches be found by organisms quite readily? How quickly would evolution tailor them to the new environment? Would it start a slow "terraforming" or would the organisms be themselves "un-terraformed"?

One downside would be that the place would be off-limits for quite a while. Firstly to preserve the experiment, but also for safety reasons. Not because there is any chance of a ravenous and carnivorous  killing machine rapidly developing from earth bacteria, but simply because of the uncontrolled and biological nature of the experiment. But this is ok, we just choose a body with little to offer to human settlers.

 

So what are the downsides? The up-sides seem fairly clear-cut:

As far as major space science goes, it could be quite cheap and simple. "Experiment" can be allowed to "run" on its own long-term, assuming the outcome is not rapid death.

The science that could be generated could be directly relevant to advancing humanity as a spacefaring species.

Any "contamination" would be contained to the chosen body, Earth being pretty good proof of this.

Worst case scenario, all organisms die off rapidly, though observation of the process and the aftermath would still be of high scientific value.

Best case scenario, life explodes generating a completely new ecosystem, starts to affect the chemical makeup of the environment. Having it converted to more human friendly conditions is unlikely, naturally, but the scientific value of observing what happens would be incalculable.

 

Downsides:

Body written off for "normal" exploration. Solution: explore it as much as is practical before proceeding. Choose a body that is less worth exploring than other places.

Unpredictable results, unpredictable chance of success, generally low chance of any other result than rapid death. Solution: careful selection of cargo, potential delivery of multiple different cargos to different locations on chosen body, rapid death still produces scientific data.

If rapid death is not the result, it could be a long time before anything of significance is detected. Not least because its happening very far away, so close observation is difficult.

Sample return would have to be handled very carefully for biological safety reasons, but this is the case in any experiment dealing with extra-terrestrial life.

What else?

 

To me this seems like very low-hanging fruit in terms of space science and the evolution of a spacefaring technology.

The main obstacle is the scale - we as a species have been trying very hard to *stop* contaminating ecosystems or chemically poisoning environments - the deliberate seeding of a closed environment with outside flora and fauna goes against this in a very big way. It would be difficult to 100% guarantee that we are not destroying an already present ecosystem, though seemingly unlikely.

 

Discuss. I attached a poll for poops and giggles.

[Green Baron]

I don't see the science behind it (edit: but the fun of making a splatter *devilkerbal*). What's not killed on impact will waste away under lack of energy, low temperature and hard radiation. Resistant (i avoid "surviving" :-)) remains of low level chemistry will only have the effect of influencing future readings of whatever is measured. So imo the scientific effect would only be negative, prohibiting future examinations.

One could say it is a "scientific principle" to leave things in piece for future exploration that can't be examined today. 80% of archaeology depends on this :-))

But i may be wrong.

Edited April 28, 2017 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

We have a whole Saturn for this.

Sept. 15, 2017 is the beginning of new life. Happily, it has much more food there rather than on puny saturnian moons.

[p1t1o]

44 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I don't see the science behind it (edit: but the fun of making a splatter *devilkerbal*). What's not killed on impact will waste away under lack of energy, low temperature and hard radiation. Resistant (i avoid "surviving" :-)) remains of low level chemistry will only have the effect of influencing future readings of whatever is measured. So imo the scientific effect would only be negative, prohibiting future examinations.

One could say it is a "scientific principle" to leave things in piece for future exploration that can't be examined today. 80% of archaeology depends on this :-))

But i may be wrong.

Well first off, some of those concerns can be offset with proper experimental design. For example, some bodies around Jupiter receive considerable energy from Jupiter itself. Or one could include a large RTG to warm the general area of the landing site. And you could specify cold-hardened species in your organic soup. If there is a bit of liquid water anywhere going spare, environment will not be an issue.

But mostly, 

 

Even if everything is soundly sterilised, multiple times no matter how you set it up, at the very least this would enable us to start thinking of exploring other places with less fear of contaminating them.

[kerbiloid]

Or they can rename some moon to Arena and begin dropping different microbiological cultures over its surface, taking bets like "who wins?", "how long it survives until extinction?", "will Marsococci and Encelophagi marry and have kids?"

This will make the experiment self-sustainable and even profitable.

Edited April 28, 2017 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Or they can rename some moon to Arena and begin dropping different microbiological cultures over its surface, taking bets like "who wins?", "how long it survives until extinction?", "will Marsococci and Encelophagi marry and have kids?"

This will make the experiment self-sustainable and even profitable.

10/10 would watch

[kerbiloid]

Btw, in another thread there's a nice advice on it

Indeed, Io is too hot, Europa is too cold (life should run slowly), but if heat Europa with mirrors, there will be oasis of life in radiation.belt which will make thing more dynamic.

[sevenperforce]

27 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Or they can rename some moon to Arena and begin dropping different microbiological cultures over its surface, taking bets like "who wins?", "how long it survives until extinction?", "will Marsococci and Encelophagi marry and have kids?"

This will make the experiment self-sustainable and even profitable.

All you need is some GoPro bots with a long, long operational lifetime...

[kerbiloid]

And trade-o-mats with remote control from the Earth.
Put your coins and drop a capsule on your choice.

[YNM]

No. As much as I want to wash cats, I know cats doesn't go that well with water - they have their ways.

[WinkAllKerb'']

well the concern here is shall "we" impact the universe like a virus, bacteria or shall "we" not

it's a bit complex at larger time scale, but well i tend to think why not if it give a chance to life at our scale to expand where whe have not even an idea yet ... let's hopes our seeding will be responsible as they grow, plus a counterbalance tend/use to happen whenever something push it to far in an @scale.ecosystem

Edited April 28, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''
we = earth beingsssssssssssssssssssssssss

[munlander1]

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

One could say it is a "scientific principle" to leave things in piece for future exploration that can't be examined today. 80% of archaeology depends on this

Agreed, think about what we could not observe or measure 100 years ago and what we can do now.

[WinkAllKerb'']

14 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

All you need is some GoPro bots with a long, long operational lifetime...

so you intend to disturb local life with your "emp" fields and laser beams  ? ^^ rlly ? why not anyway ^^

Edited April 29, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[Bill Phil]

12 hours ago, munlander1 said:

Agreed, think about what we could not observe or measure 100 years ago and what we can do now.

They didn't do that all that much a century ago... or even now...

[munlander1]

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

They didn't do that all that much a century ago... or even now...

Could you explain that in a different way? You have confused me. 

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, munlander1 said:

Could you explain that in a different way? You have confused me. 

They didn't consider future observations. Or future tech.

[StrandedonEarth]

On 4/28/2017 at 5:37 AM, kerbiloid said:

Indeed, Io is too hot,

Sure about that? http://www.space.com/8564-jupiter-volcanic-moon-io-target-life.html

We're humans, since when have we cared what was there before us? Oh right, just in the last few decades. But once we've proven that life arose on its own somewhere else, do we really need to worry about preserving the entire body for it? Or worrying about life somewhere else? It's not like those microbes are going to do anything.

OTOH, once we wipe those unique ET microbes out, we'd never know that they harbored/produced the cure for cancer. Not like the pharma companies would really care, because the money is in treating cancer, not curing it. But I digress. 

[NSEP]

Im just afraid that once we put Earth bacterium on another body, that people from the future wont know if its real alien life or from the science mission.

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, NSEP said:

that people from the future wont know if its real alien life or from the science mission

They call it "protomolecule".

[lajoswinkler]

Not before it's thoroughly examined. Since we didn't even examine Earth in such fashion, the answer is no. It would be a crime against science.

[munlander1]

On April 29, 2017 at 0:44 PM, NSEP said:

Im just afraid that once we put Earth bacterium on another body, that people from the future wont know if its real alien life or from the science mission.

We have put different organisms on other planets.  Don't know about bacteria, but stuff like tardigrades survive.

[ARS]

To be able to do this kind of experiment, it's logically more sensible to choose planetary body with atmosphere. That way, there's a higher chance that the experiment subject survived instead of being placed on airless rock

[Combatsmithen]

They better not send spiders. We might end up with super-space spiders that try to come back and invade Earth