Major Tom, Terraformer

October 27, 2016 1:27 PM

Could an astronaut’s corpse bring new life to another world?
posted by DirtyOldTown (18 comments total)

ObSF: Alfred Bester's "Adam and No Eve" (1941)
posted by The Tensor at 1:34 PM on October 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

I've always wondered if life can originate in outer space. As in literally in outer space. Do we actually need solid ground and liquid water for life to come into being? Could life begin in outer space itself?
posted by I-baLL at 1:36 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

But it is possible. “And who knows,” says Cronin, who muses that “hypothetically speaking, it's not impossible to imagine that life on Earth could have started through a similar process.”

We could be the regenerated cast-offs of a team of doomed alien explorers! That would explain SO MUCH.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 1:45 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I-baLL, read up about panspermia and related ideas. It doesn't seem impossible, but with just one planet-with-life to survey it's hard to say how likely it is. On the other hand, we are learning more about compounds that can form spontaneously in space and space-like situations, including PAHs (see PAH world hypothesis) and RNA bases (see Abiogenesis#Extraterrestrial_organic_molecules). (all are referring to wikipedia but I'm too lazy to hyperlink)
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 1:46 PM on October 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I-baLL: please see the panspermia hypothesis. Not exactly what you're talking about (that would be more along the lines of SF stories--there have been a few in Star Trek--showing "living starships"), but it's an intriguing idea. (Or what the antecedent of that pronoun said.)

WRT the link in the FPP, I'm reminded of this poem from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slapstick:

I was those seeds,
I am this meat,
This meat hates pain,
This meat must eat.
This meat must sleep,
This meat must dream,
This meat must laugh,
This meat must scream.
But when, as meat,
It’s had its fill,
Please plant it as,
A Daffodil.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:48 PM on October 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

We could be the regenerated cast-offs of a team of doomed alien explorers!

Yes. The Golgafrincham B-Ark.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:54 PM on October 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

We could be the regenerated cast-offs of a team of doomed alien explorers! That would explain SO MUCH.

Or it could've been a deliberate seeding.
posted by fuse theorem at 1:56 PM on October 27, 2016

I've often thought of how the best way of colonizing a planet -- indeed, the only one we could possibly make work with our current understanding of physics and technology -- would be to send microbes and lipids in their own little version of the Voyager Golden Record and wait for the next iteration of Earthlings.

Then I see things like, say, the next FPP down, and decide that, on balance, we had probably better not.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:58 PM on October 27, 2016

Who said the aliens had to be doomed? It could have been a Roadside Picnic.
posted by kjs3 at 2:04 PM on October 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

ObSF: Asimov's "Founding Father".
posted by Chrysostom at 2:04 PM on October 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

“And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.” ― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

And sometimes, when nobody was looking, they dumped a body or two
posted by Auden at 2:14 PM on October 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

A version of this happens to our own planet in the classic Alfred Bester short story "Adam but No Eve".
posted by tavella at 3:01 PM on October 27, 2016

It speaks volumes about the caution with which we have done our exploration to date that there have been only 18 astronaut/cosmonaut deaths ever during spaceflights, and only 3 actually in space (above 100 km/62 mi). No bodies left on the moon.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:14 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Going by the experts in the article, the answer is "probably not." The astronaut would have to die in "ideal" conditions, like inside a crashed spacecraft. Some poor guy in a spacesuit who has an accident and spins off into the void will probably just burn up if he enters an atmosphere, or be sterilized by eons of cosmic radiation if he keeps on drifting.

A crashed spacecraft could act as a sort of incubator if the water and air is distributed around the inside of the craft (after the crash, say), but it might end up fairly sterile if most of the volatiles are still stored neatly in tanks.

So the "best" scenario is a spacecraft crash on a planet that's already got a potentially inhabitable surface, where the spacecraft doesn't burn up completely, but is wrecked enough to mess up the interior. Then incubating bacteria and other microbes could slowly leak out of the holes into the surrounding environment.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:49 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Could life begin in outer space itself It has to start some where
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:20 PM on October 27, 2016

So its possible (in my fantasy life) that Bowie's body is spreading life across the universe.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:41 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Does it have to be an astronaut? Because I know some...other candidates
posted by obiwanwasabi at 7:42 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

No bodies left on the moon.
That we know of!
posted by hot_monster at 8:16 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]