Seeding Life

[The Hammer]

As we have not detected signs of Life in the universe outside of our own, and if in the future, we have the capability to travel to other planets that are habitable by people (there are many observed), or to terraform a planet (such as Mars) to make it habitable, should we seed that planet with primitive lifeforms first and allow it to Evolve there?

Say due to the time and distances involved we land a space craft on a planet millions of light years away, leave primitive multicellula lifeforms there, then due to time and distances involved for travel, by the time people arrive later, these Lives have evolved to fill the various niches on that planet?

Is that "playing Gods" or just being the "Creators" we are?

 

[JustGeorge]

Eh, just because we can, doesn't mean we should...

If everything here were great, I'd say go for it, but being as we struggle in not destroying our own planet, I feel we should leave other planets alone.

 

[The Hammer]

Eh, just because we can, doesn't mean we should...

If everything here were great, I'd say go for it, but being as we struggle in not destroying our own planet, I feel we should leave other planets alone.

Every act of Creation is also a Destructive process, maybe in the near future we learn how to mitigate that.

 

[Jainarayan]

We’ve already contaminated at least two celestial bodies... the moon and Mars. Tardigrades are known to survive in space, where the radiation, cold, and lack of oxygen is worse than on Mars. If they made it there on our probes and can remain dormant long enough that if at some point in the future Mars rehydrates they might come out of their dormancy. Idk, just a thought experiment.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I think we should look at the timescales involved - given our understanding of what occurred on Earth. Options to turn any planet not in the goldilocks zone (like Mars probably) into something habitable by humans would be a bit pointless, such that it would only be wise to attempt to colonise any planet with similar conditions as on Earth (probably quite rare) or on a planet that might be entering such a zone over time rather than exiting it - moving away from any star or star changing so much. Seems more likely that humans might come across a planet much like Earth, but with rather different life, and where we would have a chance of surviving and thriving, given that we wouldn't have to do anything major to alter any climate we find. Might be quite a few of such places, might not be.

 

[Martin]

Some speculate that aliens seeded the Earth with primitive life forms - us!