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A comment on Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing.

Re:Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Not... by bioweek on Sunday January 10, 2010 @12:28PM (#1043320)
He doesn't address the possibility that the start of life is "the great filter", but after that point, microbes were shared between planets in our solar system via metoerites, impacts, etc.

In which case it wouldn't matter what we found on Mars.

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Re:Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Not... by gort on Sunday January 10, 2010 @12:52PM (#1043356)
He does use the word "independently", presumably to take this into account.
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Re:Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Not... by dmfdmf on Sunday January 10, 2010 @11:30PM (#1044338)
Right. But that is a big assumption of his position. If there is life on Mars and it is DNA or RNA based I would say the independence assumption is less certain. Then the author can go on happily assuming that the "filter" is probably behind us. Not sure why that is such a big thing though.
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