""The search for life in space isn't just a science question,""
""It's a moral question, it's a philosophical question, for some it's a religious question.""
""Managing public fear is going to be incredibly challenging, however it is possible to communicate in a way that at least gives the public information about how afraid they should be and what they can do to protect themselves," she said."
""you're talking about planetary protection.""
Evidence of extraterrestrial life remains elusive despite numerous recent missions to potentially habitable worlds. Missions such as the Pandora Space Telescope target transiting exoplanets to search for molecular building blocks of life. Communicating any suggestive findings would be difficult because data may be limited to spikes of molecules in spectrograph readings that require intermediaries to interpret. Communicating confirmation would confront cultural preconceptions and raise moral, philosophical, and religious questions while provoking public fear. Managing public fear can draw lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic but must also account for planetary protection. NASA has established a framework to distinguish tentative signals from definitive signs of life.
Read at Futurism
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