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Re: Back-contamination
>BUT FIRST,
> needed to make all this certain, in other words that Mars was indeed
> dead.
That defies common sense. For all of the science payoffs JPL has given
us, their robots can never replace manned exploration. Robots alone
can't get down in canyons and turn rocks over and hunt fossils. Humans
can. Your biologists want Mars closed off for what will take unmanned
probes millennia to accomplish.
> I don't know if its particularly wise to make flat out assertions
> about hypothetical life forms which may or may not exist. I don't do >it.
Why, simple logic! Did you know that oxygen, ozone, and water would all
be poisonous to Martian life? First, oxygen is a deadly poison, and it
is doubtful Martian microrganisms have encountered it.
Second, water is very plentiful. A little water is needed for life, but
too much? Drop a cactus in a lake, and you will see what happens to
Martian life on most of Earth.
Finally, the temperature is too high here. They couldn't survive. (If
you believe otherwise, explain why Arctic algae spores are found
everywhere yet the algae is extremely rare. Answer: it needs cold.)
> Actually, the biologists propose a different remedy
> than quarantine.
> The biologists want to be real sure whether or not
> those possibilities are indeed unfounded.
Again, there is only one way to know. Robots won't cut it without
sending back samples.
> I'm pretty sure they are not concerned about your evaluations of their
> sanity.
But you might as well be, you are jumping at shadows and quoting
biologists I have never heard of.
We don't know even if there is life on Mars or not. You and some
microbiologists want us to close it off to exploration just because of
the very unlikely chance of contamination of Earth. That is like not
breathing for fear of disease and not driving for fear of being killed.
The commute to work places you at far more risk than any Martion
biology. Fortunatly for everybody else, it is doubtful they can veto a
Mars program without showing very conclusively that there is life on
Mars and that it is an obvious hazard. Maybe these biologists should all
go back to Kitum Cave and find out where Marburg is hiding, or worry
about an HIV vaccine. Something more useful than fearing the unknown,
when that unknown is as alien to Earth as sharks are on the Serengeti.
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