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Mark

Banned

From: Australia

Registered: 2003-12-27

Posts: 44

Re: A "what if" question - Finding other life in our solar system

Say for instance, the Huygens probe dives down to Titan's surface and finds some kind of evidence of life, microbes or a hydro-bot drills and explores the liquid oceans of Europa and were to find some sort of alien fish swimming around, how do you think the space and science world would react to this and what do you think theyre next steps would be if this scenario were to happen.

Shaun Barrett

Member

From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2001-12-28

Posts: 2,843

Re: A "what if" question - Finding other life in our solar system

Well Mark, I think:-
a) The scientists at NASA would be hopping up and down yelling for sample return missions.
b) The pork-barreling U.S. congressmen/women would ignore the whole thing and keep calling for a new OSP.
c) The creationists in positions of authority in America would either go into denial-mode or contrive to find a passage in the Old Testament which specifically mentions bacteria on Titan and alien fish in the Europan ocean!!!

d) I should stop being so cynical and paranoid.
                                             :laugh:

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The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

Mad Grad Student

Member

From: Phoenix, Arizona, North Americ

Registered: 2003-11-09

Posts: 498

Website

Re: A "what if" question - Finding other life in our solar system

Two interesting scinerios, but what about this one that's (resonably) likely and will happen in the next four months or never. Okay, imagine if they finally fix that nagging airbag problem on Spirit and get it off and roving. With all the airbag problems lately, you'd think they kill more probes than they save.   Anway, Spirit then heads over to Sleepy Hollow, and what do you know, there's a rock right in the middle that shows clear evidence (From mini-TES) that it is sedimentary and formed in water. Yay! NASA scientist slap each other on the back and demand the RAT to open it up for some imaging.

Robot arm unfirls, the RAT scrapes away an inch of material off the surface. Wouldn't you know it, the interior is porous and shows signs of evaporating seawater. Excellent news, but it gets even better. The micro-imager pans down just a smidgen, and sees live, moving microbes. No doubt about it, they're alive and replicating, kind of. Within 40 minutes of exposure all have either died from exposure to oxides or converted into spore form. Now what?

So, NASA gives their case to Washington, and gets big articles in every magazine on the planet, that much is a given. Probably NASA would send a much more expensive probe to Gusev to try to examine the life more intensely and culture it in an internal lab. They'd want to send people, but there's always the possibility of leathal contamination. However, congress is finally convinced that its safe to go (The bacteria die in oxygen and temperatures of 0 degrees C+) and does so. Yippe!

Or what do you think would happen? ???

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A mind is like a parachute- it works best when open.