In the past few years, discoveries of ice on Mars, and evidence appearing to show proof of liquid water on the planet, have raised the serious possibility of Martian (microbial) life, either now or sometime in the past. Then a little less than two weeks ago, NASA’s Curiosity rover successfully launched. Its primary goal is to dig up more evidence that suggests life, or the holy grail – evidence of life itself.
All of this raises a whole host of other issues, including, and importantly, ethical ones. If life is found on the red planet, what should we do about it? Are we obligated to abandon exploration or give up on an idea of expanding to Mars, to let it follow its own path? After all, humanity’s track record when it comes to colonizing new worlds is not impressive, so do we get the right to more? And what sort of interference with the evolutionary process (if any) might be acceptable? On Earth we experiment on single-celled life all the time. We encourage our children to do so. Would it make a difference – should it make a difference – if the life we’re looking at came from somewhere else? And if the answer’s yes, doesn’t that imply something about how we define life in the first place?
Just a few questions without answers. At the moment they’re fairly trivial, but if Curiosity finds something, or when, eventually, something somewhere is found, they’re going to be very important. Looking forward to that day.
