Clarification: I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about biological exposition.
That won’t stop humanity. I’ve seen enough movies to know that a man-eating crazy alien monster infestation isn’t enough to keep people off some rock they found.
And they’ll bring that shit home too.
And they’ll bring that shit home too.
Of course, why would you leave your new significant other in outerspace?
More importantly the most advanced labs are on earth. Would you leave something so dangerous to a second rate lab?
On the other hand, the two biologies could be so different from each other that they don’t interact at all.
This is an interesting idea. If neither biologies used the same fuel molecules then they wouldn’t compete for resources, but perhaps they would compete for space? But then if both biologies were that different from each other would they be able to even live in the same environment?
The sci-fi book Children of Ruin (sequel to Children of Time) covers this somewhat. There humans encounter a planet with a breathable atmosphere but with a toxic environment that slowly kills them.
I’ve read that one, it was quite good.
If the biology is different enough, things like viruses wouldn’t easily cross between the planets. But bacteria could still probably exploit us (and them), and nothing would stop things with claws, teeth, and spikes from hurting us even if they couldn’t ultimately digest us.
Ah, drat! My one weakness! Claws! Oh, and teeth. So two weaknesses.
Oh, and spikes.
Oh, and fire.
Pointed rocks.
Long falls off of cliffs.
Ok, I have many weaknesses!
You’ll just have to come in again.
Even if the alien species had completely incompatible biology (no DNA or RNA), a human body is still a warm habitat that contains water and useful minerals. So something small would probably settle inside of us.
And our immune system couldn’t interact with it and therefore not kill it.
But how else am I supposed to get green *Orion trader women on my arm?
There’s an entire very large genre of scifi about this very topic
we could never set a foot on it
I’m not talking about sex
It’s ok Quentin.
What does that life taste like? Someone will figure out how to prepare a dish that is truly out of this world.
Shouldn’t and couldn’t are too different questions.
Sexy results?
They’re talking about sex 😉
My brother, we have spacesuits and decontamination protocols.
Also, by the time we get to meeting other life forms on other planets we’ll have cracked genetic engineering enough to make that inconsequential.
Well we can’t have infinite growth without infinite exploitation ConstantPain. Duh
There’s only one way to be sure: nuke it from orbit.
No we will, the bigger question is if one of the parties will have sex or dinner.
We currently couldn’t detect life on earth from nearest star and it is unlikely we ever can build anything good enough to. Which means if we discover life we know they are plenty advanced as to make our efforts uneeded as they can tell us a better protocol. Not that we have the ftl needed to reach them anyway.
