Should we stop looking for extraterrestrial bacteria in the

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Should we stop looking for extraterrestrial bacteria in the solar system?


Because if we were to discover it, and we came in contact with such, it would wipe out most terrestrial life.

Would the bacteria recognize us as potential hosts? When the Spainish introduced european diseases to the new world, the human population was devastated. The ocelot and tapir populations? not so much.

Would the bacteria have any kind of defense against our immune system? Our lymphocytes would be just as alien to them as they would be to is.

Would the bacteria be able to survive in our atmosphere? Some microorganisms here on Terra can by poisoned by oxygen. Who's to say an alien microbe will even be able to survive on Terra?

How do we know the extraterrestrial bacteria is even pathogenic? There are probably millions of bacteria entering your body right now, put they aren't making you sick because they're not the right kind or your lymphocytes are "eating" them all.

Besides, most attempts to contact alien life are being done via robotic drones that we do not intend to return to Earth, so there is no risk of infection.

It will find it's way here eventually.

As others have said... If bacteria is discovered, it would be discovered by one of our rovers which have built-in testing equipment. We're still yet to figure out to bring the rovers back to Earth. They're gonna stay wherever we shot them at until we decide to go to them.

So, should we stop? Hell no. If there is life elsewhere our solar system, could you imagine how much life is beyond our solar system? There are trillions and trillions of stars. Many of them multiple planets swirling around them. Such knowledge would shake the foundation in which our civilization has been built and would be considered one of the most greatest discoveries in the history of mankind. Churches will temporarily lose control of their bowel movements!

When a novel species is introduced to a new environment, one of three things happens:
1)Very, very rarely, the species will fit itself into a previously unoccupied niche and increase the local diversity by one species. The ring-necked pheasant has been suggested as an example of this.
2)Most commonly - almost always - the new species either dies immediately due to conditions that it cannot handle (such as the aforementioned oxygen) or is incapable of reproduction in the new environment due to fragile life stages. Any species that anyone has failed to successfully cultivate is representative of this.
3)Not rarely enough, the new species finds the new environment amicable and, lacking the constraints (such as predators, parasites, or disease) that kept it in check in the old environment, it overpopulates and becomes an invasive species that either out-competes or actively kills off the local species. The brown tree snake on Guam is a paradigmatic example of this.

Conditions, would have to be pretty similar to earth, to be adapted enough. They would be extremophiles.

It is difficult to speculate however, I think it can be done responsibly and with bio-containment measures,.

Also we talk of bacteria like, not necessarily bacteria, but microbial. The reason is this is what is likely to survive in minimal situations.

In such situations, these environments would probably be more vulnerable to us than we are to them. When there is minimal to no diversity, life is vulnerable. It happened on earth, cryno-bacteria nearly completely eradicated life on earth, itself. Too much oxygen = snow ball earth. It was only by tolerating extremes that life continued,

When people talk about life on many planets, they are not necessarily saying it cover the whole planet, it could literally be one puddle of primordial soup