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comment by thenewgreen
thenewgreen  ·  3212 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are the ethics of alien contact?

    On Earth, scientists have managed to revive bacteria that has been frozen in ice sheets or entombed in salt crystals for millions of years. So it’s possible that extinct Martians aren’t extinct at all. Warm up Mars, McKay reasons, and the red planet might just spring back to life. But that won’t happen without Earth’s intervention. As McKay put it to me: ‘We should say: “We can help you. We’ll bring back the water, we’ll make it warm again, and you can flourish.”’
Whenever I do the simplest of tasks I like to ask myself, "what are the unintended consequences of my actions?" -Seems like a good rule of thumb here, FOR SURE.

Also, I love aeon.co -I follow that URL. on Hubski.





user-inactivated  ·  3212 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I could have sworn that the reason Mars is dead is because its core is no longer molten. As a result, it has no magnetic field to keep its atmosphere from being blown away by solar wind. If that's the case, warming it up would be a pretty difficult feat to pull off.

As for thinking about the consequences of our actions, I agree that when it comes to the grand scheme of things it's a pretty important safety. I'm sure though that we've had more scientific breakthroughs than we can even figure all because someone said "Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I pull this off."