hi all
just thinking about simple life, if titan is habitable do you think it would be worth introducing some earth based bacteria to see how it survives and evolves. or would it be far to dangerous? what are your thoughts?

Dangerous is a relative term. If there were pre-existing life, and we introduced extra-body organisms, then we run the risk of inducing alien mutations and destroying a self-contained system, which would preclude any viable study of this system. However, if we do not find any life, it doesn't mean that it isn't there, just that we lack the ability to detect it. Therefore, anything we do is potentially dangerous.

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The visions we present to our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. - Carl Sagan, 1992

I'm with Devilmech on this one. I think it's a very short-sighted approach to seed Titan with earth-based lifeforms. Once they're there, they will potentially mask or corrupt any of the local life that might be there.

My opinion is that we should treat any other planets with care and not just go wading in without thought.

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Spike
:)

totally agree we shouldent disrupt an envoroment that already excists but what if there is no living organisums up there? then would it be a great experriment to begin to see how life evolves, changes over comes etc

We will probably be introducing bacteria to Titan anyway. I doubt all the bugs were killed before launch nor while traveling through space.

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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Why don't we freeze up them and then ship them to Titan, you know space temeperature is 2.7 K below absolute zero.

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We come without a thing and gone without a thing. We need simple life. A cup of teas and a couple of meals per day, that is good enough. And this is my standard of living.

If there's microbial life on Titan already, how do we examine it cleanly? It is like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - by plunging our meauring stick into the porridge we are contaminating it & thus contaminating our measurements.

It's amazing how we worry about microbes on another world but lions on this planet are a dying breed

But observing microorganisms on another world may take time. A lotta time.

First off, I think that we should carefully examine for indigenous life. Barring any discovery (after a pre-determined amount of time), I think that it should be adapted to profit humanity.

Seeding it with bacteria to observe evolution would not be wise. Firstly, evolution is an extremely slow process. Second, it is too valuable a resource to spend on a petri dish experiment.

Please note that nigh-infinite resources could be spent looking for pre-existing life on Titan (or Mars). In the end, in a cost-benefit analysis, we'd have to stop spending resources on the place, and start pulling resources on it.

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Live long enough to see Space!

We can get to space as a species. The above link is information about life-extension (living longer) so that you can personally see a space-based civilization.

The MPrize (a prize to encourage life extension research now contains over 3 million dollars.

I agree with QJones, that the search for life on another planet would be an extremely tiresome and time consuming one. We are constantly finding life on earth in places we would never have previously thought of ie: bacteria living around black smokers where the water temp is around boiling point (not at deep sea intense pressure of course). How could we possibly scour an entire new planet, inside and out to determine if there is any life? There could be just one soupy lake somewhere that could be teeming with life, and we could miss it totally.

To the matter of introducing bacteria to a newly discovered planet, it is an interesting concept filled with moral and ethical dilemas. If we were to try this, how would we possibly monitor it? A more realistic way would be to take samples and readings of as much of titan as we can, and simulate a terrarium or biodome somewhere here, or on the moon perhaps, and then introduce bacteria to it. We could also 'play God' to a certain extent, by changing conditions, forcing "un"natural selection and having the bacteria evolve how we want it to.

In regards to your post Tiny, just to clarify, I think you meant 2.7K above absolute zero, not below.

There is no un-natural selection. We are part of nature and nature has allowed us to evolve a level of curiosity that guarantees we will spread our microbes all across not only the solar system but also the entire universe. Where life has not evolved sufficiently to resist us, we will overwhelm it. If not us then some other aspect of nature. Ethically, we must make certain that the overwhelming, whoever does it, is compatible with our interests....lest we become the overwhelmees.

Having said this, I too would like to see as much of "alien" life preserved as can be safely done within the constraints of the "overwhelming" conditions cited above.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

I can't see how the temperature of space can be below absolute zero, sorry.

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That may be because you haven't contemplated negative energy which may relate to such temperatures.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

<_< <_< Transfer of microbes...to survive could most likely be beneficial more than a waste, especially if it were a planned event. Simple little tadpoles or Kodiaks'- creatures that defy the elements are the pre-wonders of the world.

It's quite probable that life arose here on Earth do to contamination from space.

Consequently, millions upon millions of microbes ago; perhaps, that one simple cell took off on the division of H2O and ... :P

This is a bit late, but...
Do not introduce only one lot of bacteria, but enuf species for an assemblage of life-forms to form that will live together. Simply, there should be organisms that graze, and others (the wolves) that feed upon the 'sheep'; all of this to form something of an ecology. We all said and believe, not before we know what it there and if life is there. But, what sort of lives are we sending our little critters out to live?, and for how long will they 'enjoy' it? Brrr!--don't send me!

I'm with Gourdhead. I say spread life from Earth far and wide. If you start with bacteria then use ones that photosynthesize so oxygen production can begin. Those extremophiles that live just under the surface of rocks in Antarctica would be a good start. I say send batches of them to both of Mars' poles and any other spot where there may be water, and to Ganymede, Callisto, and Titan (although Titan's average temperature is a few hundred degrees Farenheit below zero and gets little sunlight). Anything to get the expansion of Earth life started is a step in the right direction to me.

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...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...