Should we spread life in the universe?

[Rdivine]

Life; a parasite in the universe, or nay?

This video highlights the pathway humans may take if we ever decide to go to mars definitely. I highly recommend this documentary if you have time to watch

"Here we are on earth, a world that's very sophisticated and developed and complete. Anything we do is just a subtraction, because we live in such a biologically rich planet. When we go to Mars, we have an opportunity that we don't have here on Earth. Here's a planet that has died. Here's a world that is not full of biology, where we can do something to help." -Chris McKay

"Many people think that the universe has a big sign on it that says "Do not touch". I think that the universe has a big sign on it that says "Go fourth and spread life". When i look around the universe i think life is the most amazing thing we see." -Chris McKay

Given the plans to go to mars put fourth by SpaceX, do you think we should really terraform Mars? Would that be destroying the natural habitat on Mars, or helping Mars? And asking the bigger question: Should we spread life in the universe?

Additionally, many problems would arise if the human race actually spread life. If the race were to be divided into smaller fractions, would we have wars, conflicts, end up destroying each other? Would we infect already developing biology on other planets with our diseases and wipe out their life? Would some of us get to advanced and use other humans as slavery? Would it ultimately be good for us if we grew too big?

Edited June 6, 2016 by Rdivine

[PB666]

Yes, we should, because life is a product of the universe and we are thermodynamically driven to propogate. 

[RocketSquid]

Yes. Our options are "spread out" or "die on earth".

[HazelPine]

I voted yes, but I imagine that it would be best for all intents and purposes to research all we can first of important places and their geology and other things before, you know, we spread life everywhere and technically infect a planet, which was sterile of life and may have had some fragile ecosystem or even undiscovered  life hidden from us. Attempt no landing on Europa, at least not before we do some submarine probe and send it there and find no signs of life or almost-life.

[Mitchz95]

Yes, I think we absolutely should. But we should do our research first to make sure we don't screw over any indigenous life.

[kerbiloid]

Should we spread life in:

• autoclave of Mercury, Venus and Io;
• cryostat of Mars and all all outer moons and plutos;
• gas chamber of gas giants

?

We definitely should!

Edited June 5, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Bill Phil]

Yes. 

Who knows. Maybe we're the Lovecraftian Elder Things.

But I think that it would be better to seed life. 

Mars is something that terraforming can make livable. But it's a lot of effort for only so much living space. 

We've already spread life around Earth. Kudzu is a good example.

[Superfluous J]

Yes. Unmitigatedly.

Do we have the "right"? I don't care. Does an asteroid have the right to hit a populated planet? Does a star have a right to go supernova? Does an interplanetary rogue planet have right to perturb an orbit? It has nothing to do with "right" or "wrong." It's the nature of the Universe. Planets collide. Stars die. Life expands.

[Scotius]

Yes, absolutely. As long as we don't eradicate indigenous, unique forms of life.

[Green Baron]

Voted "yes" but it's improbable.

Though it has something of a conquista ... so, go ahead :-)

 

[Wjolcz]

Only if there's no other life forms on another planet.

Unless the life forms we put on the surface somehow help those already there. Kind of like 2001 scenario, except you don't put a monolith on the surface and instead microbes that can coexist and help evolve one another.

[kurja]

4 hours ago, Pine said:

I voted yes, but I imagine that it would be best for all intents and purposes to research all we can first of important places and their geology and other things before, you know, we spread life everywhere and technically infect a planet, which was sterile of life and may have had some fragile ecosystem or even undiscovered  life hidden from us. Attempt no landing on Europa, at least not before we do some submarine probe and send it there and find no signs of life or almost-life.

If a world is "sterile of life" it by definition would not have ecosystems on it, no?

Eventually we should spread out to the universe and certainly it would not be right to just stomp on any life already there should we ever find it, but I don't think we should be too concerned of simple life, like bacteria or such. We're not worried about those here on earth either as long as it does not concern our own well being.

As for altering lifeless alien worlds themselves, as human presence would - the universe isn't going to mind. Neither should we.

 

[SinBad]

The problem is prooving sterility. A vocal portion of our population will only be satisfied if we micoscopically inspect every grain of sand on a potential planet all the way down to the core. That opinion could also be argueably extended to asteriods and comets. Fortunatly, its very hard to make a cute and clever logo with a negative space bacteria. so like today, the folks who make the descisions can feel free to ignore them.

My personal opinion though, if it tastes good, eat it. If it eats dirt and poops gold in a vacuume, farm it. Exploitation begins in the home... star system. Humanity exploits natural resources, including those that metabolise. I think planets with complex ecosystems would be prime candidates. Imagine if we found a less advanced intelligent race. No human rights violations there, capitalists can have all the slave labor they want without having to trick them into thinking they have freedom first by giving them minimum wage.

[Greenfire32]

Manifest Destiny!

[Rdivine]

Would it be responsible of us to spread life in the first place?

If we spread life, they might start building colonies on other planets, mining and using resources, eventually depleting and destroying the planet if done inefficiently like what humans are doing now. In the wake of our footprints, thousands of planets and even more may be damaged, combined with conflicts and war and weapons, that number may be amplified. However, this scenario is purely fictional, and we cannot surely determine if there will be war if we become far more intelligent.

Should we just stay on Earth and build spaceships with the sole purpose of exploring, not colonizing? Should we just live in our own spaceships and leave other planets' ecology and biology alone? Should we just not intervene and minimize our footprint? In my opinion i think yes, if we want to be responsible.

[kBob]

Yes we should spread Standard Poodles everywhere they will make the universe a happier nicer place.

But really, I'd take a kind of Star Trek attitude, yes with caution.  Of course it will all end eventually anyway.

[Frozen_Heart]

2 hours ago, SinBad said:

The problem is prooving sterility. A vocal portion of our population will only be satisfied if we micoscopically inspect every grain of sand on a potential planet all the way down to the core. That opinion could also be argueably extended to asteriods and comets. Fortunatly, its very hard to make a cute and clever logo with a negative space bacteria. so like today, the folks who make the descisions can feel free to ignore them.

My personal opinion though, if it tastes good, eat it. If it eats dirt and poops gold in a vacuume, farm it. Exploitation begins in the home... star system. Humanity exploits natural resources, including those that metabolise. I think planets with complex ecosystems would be prime candidates. Imagine if we found a less advanced intelligent race. No human rights violations there, capitalists can have all the slave labor they want without having to trick them into thinking they have freedom first by giving them minimum wage.

If there is an intelligent race that is not yet as advanced as us, using them as slaves would be wrong and immoral. In addition they should have any rights to their own star system.

Though this is humans we're talking about. I can picture them enslaving and wiping out other intelligent races.

[Scotius]

2 hours ago, Rdivine said:

Would it be responsible of us to spread life in the first place?

If we spread life, they might start building colonies on other planets, mining and using resources, eventually depleting and destroying the planet if done inefficiently like what humans are doing now. In the wake of our footprints, thousands of planets and even more may be damaged, combined with conflicts and war and weapons, that number may be amplified. However, this scenario is purely fictional, and we cannot surely determine if there will be war if we become far more intelligent.

Should we just stay on Earth and build spaceships with the sole purpose of exploring, not colonizing? Should we just live in our own spaceships and leave other planets' ecology and biology alone? Should we just not intervene and minimize our footprint? In my opinion i think yes, if we want to be responsible.

Are you saying that dead rock in space is more preferable than a planet teeming with life, or providing minerals and energy for another inhabitated world? It...doesn't make sense. Universe is not a being that has use for the rocks, ices and gases - you need living organisms for that.

[Rdivine]

57 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Are you saying that dead rock in space is more preferable than a planet teeming with life, or providing minerals and energy for another inhabitated world? It...doesn't make sense. Universe is not a being that has use for the rocks, ices and gases - you need living organisms for that.

I feel like the universe is an art piece, that we should preserve it. We should spread across the universe, but colonizing planets and potentially destroying a dead rock in space may not be a great idea in my opinion.

[PB666]

2 minutes ago, Rdivine said:

I feel like the universe is an art piece, that we should preserve it. We should spread across the universe, but colonizing planets and potentially destroying a dead rock in space may not be a great idea in my opinion.

Destroy it or not, its fate is to be destroyed, wait 5 billion years. 

This is just like a plant saying, i shouldnt photosynthesize because it will deprive the ground of light. The plant is rock, it is made from space rocks, whatever decision it makes is that of a space rock. You think because yor are living your fate is different from rock, then wait 80years and reask

We can ask the question about divesity, its a reasonable one, but the caveot of Earth is already in progress, it aint going to stop because of antiselective behavior, those things just go extinct and we find their remains only as rocks. 

[SinBad]

2 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

If there is an intelligent race that is not yet as advanced as us, using them as slaves would be wrong and immoral. In addition they should have any rights to their own star system.

Though this is humans we're talking about. I can picture them enslaving and wiping out other intelligent races.

Agreed whole heartedly, to both paragraphs. Greed will put humanity in space as we seek to feed the continued growth our economy is dependant on. Unfortunatly, you start to hit diminishing returns. As our sphere of influence increases, new resources are made available only at the edges. Those edges must supply the entire volume of occupied space. We may start out moral and benificent, but when the surface of the sphere cant supply the volume anymore, all those protected pockets of primitives within our sphere of influence will be consumed out of desperation. Its a dystopic way of looking at things, but i think its the one most likely to happen if humanity doesnt grow out of its adolecent greed by the time we start star hopping.

[Robotengineer]

As far as we know, there are no indigenous life forms in our immediate vicinity (relatively), and what life might be out there is likely to be primordial or non-intelligent. The only people arguing against expansion are those who are against humanity. 

3 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

If there is an intelligent race that is not yet as advanced as us, using them as slaves would be wrong and immoral. In addition they should have any rights to their own star system.

Though this is humans we're talking about. I can picture them enslaving and wiping out other intelligent races.

Who gets to be the arbiter of right and wrong in the universe? I'm not saying that by today's standards that would be wrong and immoral, but it is foolhardy to assume that we will maintain the same moral system we have at this moment for the rest of our existence as a species. We should also be wary of granting rights to beings that we have not had time to evaluate yet. IMO, we should evaluate intelligent ET's on a case-by-case basis. 

Edit: Forgot this: ‘I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future.’ – Elon Musk https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation

Edited June 5, 2016 by Robotengineer

[PB666]

27 minutes ago, Robotengineer said:

As far as we know, there are no indigenous life forms in our immediate vicinity (relatively), and what life might be out there is likely to be primordial or non-intelligent. The only people arguing against expansion are those who are against humanity. 

Who gets to be the arbiter of right and wrong in the universe? I'm not saying that by today's standards that would be wrong and immoral, but it is foolhardy to assume that we will maintain the same moral system we have at this moment for the rest of our existence as a species. We should also be wary of granting rights to beings that we have not had time to evaluate yet. IMO, we should evaluate intelligent ET's on a case-by-case basis. 

Edit: Forgot this: ‘I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future.’ – Elon Musk https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation

I don't want to be the one who colonizes a inhabited system. I might land a sample return rocket to a laboratory in a decaying orbit to see what type of life developed and maybe look for new and interesting chemistry which would be digitally summarized and sent before the probe-lab decayed into orbit. 

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, SinBad said:

Agreed whole heartedly, to both paragraphs. Greed will put humanity in space as we seek to feed the continued growth our economy is dependant on. Unfortunatly, you start to hit diminishing returns. As our sphere of influence increases, new resources are made available only at the edges. Those edges must supply the entire volume of occupied space. We may start out moral and benificent, but when the surface of the sphere cant supply the volume anymore, all those protected pockets of primitives within our sphere of influence will be consumed out of desperation. Its a dystopic way of looking at things, but i think its the one most likely to happen if humanity doesnt grow out of its adolecent greed by the time we start star hopping.

Not how space works. 

We wouldn't expand as a sphere. It'll be a strange blob of a few stars at a time. 

Let's say we expand across the entire solar system out past Neptune. There are plenty of resources in that volume. Asteroids, comets, Trojans, moons, and Kuiper Belt Objects.

[Nightside]

7 hours ago, Greenfire32 said:

Manifest Destiny!

Prime Directive!