We are human, we have done almost this exact thing for thousands of years and leave ecosystem devastation in our wake.
People with rockets would absolutely go down to that planet without a second thought.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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Yep i would expect them to send the blankets down from orbit first.
intergalactic tour guide: now if you look to your left, you’ll see the natural habitats of the Xpheno217 species. This is the only location in the whole universe they can live. And to your right, a brand new residential community fit with Walmart and their very own Chick-fil-A.
I'm sorry. I can't let you do that.
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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?
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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.
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But how else am I supposed to get green *Orion trader women on my arm?
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.
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I heard on the radio that bacteria is what killed the Martians
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There's an entire very large genre of scifi about this very topic
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.
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We won’t even be able to reach it until we can figure out FTL travel or technology that can support multi-generational passenger ships to get there.
FTL travel implies a mastery over spacetime itself. After that, a practical time machine is a matter of engineering details.
We can be sure that we never get there because we are not flooded with tourists from the future. QED.
For that matter they have not sent travelers to us.
As a kid, I once heard the theory that aliens are actually time travelers fucking with people.
i wouldnt call it mastery, implies you can control spacetime as well, just finding ways around the speed of light limitations.
at least beings shows that control are close to being godlike energy beings.
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You don't need FTL travel or multi-generational ships really. If you get close enough to the speed of light, time dilation can make the travel time for the people on the ship be as short as you want. Only for the people that stay on earth would the spaceship appear to take generations. Getting enough energy to reach such high speeds would be the difficult part as well as accelerating quickly without crushing the travellers.
And presumably not vapourising from collisions with random particles in space while travelling at a significant fractions of C.
Shouldn’t and couldn’t are too different questions.
Reminds me of Deathworlders. Some woman got stuck on a planet and had to take a shit and the microorganisms in her shit wrecked the planet.
Oh no, a HFY story... They are kinda entertaining but filled with so much weird pathos and self-dirision. That "btw, religions suck" section was just so out of place.
Imagine that: Getting abducted by aliens, fighting and winning against some of the most dangerous aliens of the whole universe and when being interviewed about it, one of the first things he chooses to say about humanity is "btw, we have religion and it sucks".
And these stories go on for all eternity. 97 long chapters.
That's what you get when people on the level of fanfiction writers write original stories without any oversight by an editor.
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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.
Sexy results?
There's only one way to be sure: nuke it from orbit.
Well we can't have infinite growth without infinite exploitation ConstantPain. Duh
They're talking about sex 😉
We send a member of MAGA to explore first, then dissect them and evaluate the results on the body before exposing the general populace to the atmosphere.
Why would your first act on alien life be to launch our vilest weapons of mass destruction?
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Sure we can. Just send a few people to test the waters first.
And risk wiping the life on that planet? Considering something like that happened to native population in America, I guess people don't care.
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.
Isn't it also possible that their biology would be different enough that there would be basically no interaction ? 🤷🏻♀
I don't think we have any micro-organisms that would be particularly dangerous to silicon-based life, for example, if we did I'd expect it would be a problem already for our computers and everything made of glass ?
That's why this is done: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/space-biosciences/planetary-protection/
I realize you were probably talking about visiting other worlds in person, but we would probably still have unmanned missions there first.
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No we will, the bigger question is if one of the parties will have sex or dinner.
Don't tease me with a good time
Not really much of a shower thought. Pretty sure Clark or Niven wrote entire books on this concept (I forget, just know I read these books 40 years ago, and they weren't new then).
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