On 20/05/2013 5:38 AM, jacob navia wrote:
Le 19/05/13 04:38, Yousuf Khan a écrit :
I was referring to Earth, not the United States.

Yousuf Khan


OK, I misunderstood. But even in that case, the question arises that we
would "own" something there ONLY if there isn't ANY life in Mars or
elsewhere.

If we find even a small bateria, the planet is not empty and we have NO
RIGHT to destroy that bacterium/alien life.

I'm thinking that if we find even single-cells in another planet within
the Solar System, then we have a right to call it part of our family of
living organisms in this Solar System.

This is crucial. Alien life owns their planets, we have no right to
invade them, colonize them, destroy them.

It is just the golden rule: do not do onto others, what you wouldn't
like that others do to you. We wouldn't like being invaded, so we
shouldn't invade others.

Of course if the place is empty (no life at all) there is no problem.

I don't think we'd deliberately destroy any life on another planet, it's
more important for us to figure out how it survives there, and therefore
we would want to make sure it stays alive. That would then enable us to
learn how to survive there too.

Yousuf Khan