Fallow Earths

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here's a good discussion about colonizing planets with little or no life, rather than ones with a thriving biosphere.

Riiiiiiight.  Because humans are SO good at keeping their monkey paws off something attractive.

Comments

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

The people of Traipah (who admittedly are not human) live in harmony with their environment. When they go out into space, like *really* go out into space, they colonize worlds that, for whatever reason, could have developed life but didn't. A few tweaks like restoring plate tectonics or altering the planet's mass, a few tons of genetically-engineered First Worms, 10 or 15 years waiting, and lots of tossing around seeds, insects, and animals later, and they've got a whole new world to colonize. And they follow the same "harmony with nature" credo as they did on the homeworld.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Rather a moot point until we develop FTL.

However, one of the things that writers seem to miss, is the simple fact that most alien life is likely to inedible or toxic to earth life forms.

As biologist I know how many ways there are for terrestrial life to be nasty.. add in the fact that species from our evolutionary tree only use a small sub-set of the vast number of possible biological molecules, and it's not hard to imagine that alien life forms would be inedible, or induce violent allergic reactions, without adding in whatever toxins they've developed for defence.

Much better to find a vacant planet and move in..

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>Rather a moot point until we develop FTL.<<

Mars is in reach, and could be terraformed. There are a few stars within much longer reach. We could get a bit done prior to FTL.

>>However, one of the things that writers seem to miss, is the simple fact that most alien life is likely to inedible or toxic to earth life forms.<<

Plus the even more extreme diversity before it settled down. Ante-Devonian lifeforms were downright alien, some of them.

However, it depends on which theories of life manifest. One, panspermia, suggests that life may have evolved rarely, or even just once, and then spread through the galaxy via meteors (plausible) or sentient seeding (stretching a bit). Another, convergent evolution, suggests that no matter how many times life evolves, it follows a particular pattern and will therefore tend to arrive at some of the same places: form follows function. Those two imply that at least some alien life may be harmless and/or edible. Which is not to say safe, just functionally compatible.

On the other hoof we have "life not as we know it." A thriving ecosystem may evolve from a sufficiently different starting point that humans couldn't survive there no matter what -- methane worlds, for instance. Then again, the atmosphere may include something humans can't breathe, along with things they could; or the biosphere may use a toxic element. Yet another option is that the alien world might be harmless to us, but humans could be toxic to it. The more often life evolves, in the more diverse places, the less likely it is to be mutually compatible.

We won't know until we go find out. It's entirely possible that all of those theories could coexist in this very large galaxy. We have a sample of one-and-a-maybe. There are hints of all those theories right here on Earth. The only way to discover which ones are active out there is to go.