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Should We Seed Life On Alien Worlds? (sciencemag.org)
Slashdot reader sciencehabit quotes an article from Science magazine: Astronomers have detected more than 3000 planets beyond our solar system, and just a couple of weeks ago they discovered an Earth-like planet in the solar system next door. Most -- if not all -- of these worlds are unlikely to harbor life, but what if we put it there?
Science chatted with theoretical physicist Claudius Gros about his proposed Genesis Project, which would send artificially intelligent probes to lifeless worlds to seed them with microbes. Over millions of years, they might evolve into multicellular organisms, and, perhaps eventually, plants and animals. In the interview, Gros talks artificial intelligence, searching for habitable planets, and what kind of organisms he'd like to see evolve.
"The robots will have to decide if a certain planet should receive microbes and the chance to evolve life," the physicist explains -- adding that it's very important to avoid introducing new microbes on planets where life already exists.
Science chatted with theoretical physicist Claudius Gros about his proposed Genesis Project, which would send artificially intelligent probes to lifeless worlds to seed them with microbes. Over millions of years, they might evolve into multicellular organisms, and, perhaps eventually, plants and animals. In the interview, Gros talks artificial intelligence, searching for habitable planets, and what kind of organisms he'd like to see evolve.
"The robots will have to decide if a certain planet should receive microbes and the chance to evolve life," the physicist explains -- adding that it's very important to avoid introducing new microbes on planets where life already exists.
Background: Proteins are made by chaining tlgether amino acids drawn from a specific set, and there is a coding scheme that selects a specific amino acid for each DNA nucleotide triplet.
According to my biology book, the amino acids that make up life on this planet are largely random. There are a couple that are so close in form and function that they can substitute for one another with little difference, there are other compounds which might have useful forms which are not used as amino acids, and there are gaps and duplication in the coding scheme.
Once the amino acid and coding scheme evolved, it became a survival characteristic to use that same scheme, simply because you could eat the other living matter on the planet. As a result, virtually everything on the planet uses the same amino acid/coding scheme.
On another planet, life might evolve with a different set of amino acids (possibly even mostly the same as ours, but with one or two differences) and a different coding scheme. While AAA might be Lysine on Earth, it might code for something else on a distant planet.
This means that if we find life on another planet, it probably wouldn't be edible by humans. It's highly likely that none of the vegetation could be farmed or eaten, and any animal life would probably be poisonous. (But the good news: alien pathogens wouldn't be able to infect us, so there's little chance of bringing "space herpes" back to Earth.)
If we seeded the distant planet with life from Earth, it's likely that the same amino-acid/coding scheme would proliferate and remain unchanged. If and when we choose to go there, the flora and fauna would be available to us as a resource.
We would of course need to sort out the philosophical implications of doing this. If we could get to another planet, we'd probably also have the technology to make our own food as needed, and it would seem wrong to destroy a planet harbouring animal life for our own gain. Maybe if it only had plant life, lichens or moss, say.)
In ancient Rome the zeitgeist of the times would be "yeah! let's do it".
I don't know what the prevailing opinion would be 100 years in the future.