251
NASA just scored a badly needed win: The best potential evidence of alien life yet
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
251 points (89.8% liked)
Space
8735 readers
29 users here now
Share & discuss informative content on: Astrophysics, Cosmology, Space Exploration, Planetary Science and Astrobiology.
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions.
- Share relevant content.
- Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
- Use appropriate language and tone.
- Report violations.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
Picture of the Day
The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula
Related Communities
๐ญ Science
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
๐ Engineering
๐ Art and Photography
Other Cool Links
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
Contrarian opinion:
Discovering that Mars once had life would be bad for NASA. It would mean that human exploration of Mars might not be allowed as it could contaminate the evidence.
And it would be terrible for humanity, according to Kurzgesagt, because it would indicate that we may soon go extinct.
It's okay, they also say we might be ahead of the great filter. We're more than just life, we're physically super complex.
I mean it's not like Human exploration of Mars is even viewed as remotely doable right now.
And I think there are more glaring signs here on earth that we may not be around much longer.
More glaring than a million alien species that should exist, simply not existing?
That's a lot of life to discount.
Humanity is doing a fine-enough job causing problems for itself without dead aliens. They probably wouldn't even make the top 5 extinction-level issues we could have.
I think you're missing the point, they point to our extinction by our own hands. If millions of alien species have tried to survive through an era of technological advancement, and all of them have failed, that suggests that we don't have much chance of surviving either. We'll probably fall into the same talks that all of them have.
If on the other hand, we saw lots of alien civilizations existing somewhere out there, or even some civilizations, that would suggest that as long as we don't totally screw things up, we at least have a chance. Survival is at least possible.
And while it may look like we're screwing it up, to be honest, things aren't so bad. There have been a lot of mass extinctions on this planet, but there's still life. The planet has both been much cooler and much hotter at various times in the past, there's still life. There's really no guarantee that we're going to kill ourselves, things could turn out fine. But on the other hand, what we're seeing when we look around the galaxy is not super encouraging...