dioxol-5-yl t1_iswy1na wrote
Reply to comment by Dungeonmancer in The Europa Clipper mission may be as exciting as a manned mars mission and it’s only two years away by Wide-Escape-5618
How will it teach us a lot about extraterrestrial life if it's barren?
push__ t1_it330pw wrote
We learn that extraterrestrial life can not exist on bodies like Europa, and why not.
dioxol-5-yl t1_it3gml7 wrote
You can't generalise from one icy moon, the only sample you have anything more broadly. All you can say is that specific moon formed in that specific manner with these kinds of heavier elements that wasn't quite right in terms of the environment. Maybe that's the odd one out, maybe all other icy moons are teaming with life but you'd just assume based on a single moon orbiting a single planet in a single solar system that nup, none of them do.
If you did find life it would be strong evidence that it doesn't matter where you are so long as you have roughly the right stuff lying around life will spontaneously develop. Does any credible scientist truly believe its likely? No. Not based on life on earth which all stemmed back from a single common ancestor suggesting that even on earth, a place that was once teaming with life everywhere. If we only had one instance of life that survives on this awesome planet that was once able to sustain amazing amounts of life, then it's extremely unlikely you'd find conditions to sustain life. But we don't know for sure so I guess we have to find out and sell it like it's plausible or the public would never buy it. Don't let the fact that under the most ideal conditions, here on earth, there was only one instance of successful life, only one time in the planets history did functional life develop dull the dream that it could actually just be everywhere, but that's all it is, a dream.
Finding it would be amazing, cos the chances are so slim, but if we don't find it we learn nothing except that life doesn't spontaneously appear everywhere which seems kinda likely given we have this perfect planet but only once did functional life develop.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments