this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
1097 points (98.2% liked)
Microblog Memes
6016 readers
4012 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What I'm saying is the best evidence available might not be the right evidence
So when do we make decisions?
All the time, but every aspect should be considered. For example, there was one commenter in this chain that mentioned the potential of bacterium on Mars. If they exist and we land on Mars then we inadvertently impact said bacterium and potentially impact Mars on a scale that we can't comprehend or at the very least understand. Is that right or wrong?
Sure, we should consider the possibility of life on Mars. But we've already impacted possible organisms by sending spacecraft there. Even if you sterilize your craft in an autoclave and send it through the vacuum of space for months to years, there's no guarantee that all terran organisms will be inert. Samples taken from an asteroid during the recent Hayabus-2 mission were found to have terrain organisms on them. If you want to completely cordon off martian ecology, you should've convinced NASA and the Soviets back in the 70s.
Bottom line is, we've already irreversibly changed the course of martian ecology, if there is any. What remains? Check if there's actually anything alive over there. The best way to do that is with boots on the ground. The best places to look for life on Mars are:
All of which are much easier to explore with humans.