
Lava tubes may be havens for ancient alien life and future human explorers - pseudolus
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/07/2012176117
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elihu
> "The first such feature on the moon—a hole 50 meters across and dozens of
> meters deep—was discovered more than a decade ago in an image captured by
> Japan’s SELENE orbiter. Many more skylights have been found on the moon
> since then, and hundreds of possible skylights have been spotted on images
> snapped by Mars orbiters, the first of which were taken in the mid-1970s.

Interesting. I didn't know that we've spotted that many likely candidates on
Mars.

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sandworm101
Life on earth is literally everywhere. Life even alters the planet's chemistry
to suit more life. I cannot see "life" living in a microbiome under a rock or
in a lava tube, totally disconnected from some other life 100m away in another
tube. If life exists, even if only as microbes, it will have taken the entire
planet. It will have adapted itself, or the planet, as it did earth.

So stop spinning ideas about how it may be in some fine layer between one dead
zone and another. Such possibilities are interesting but not very
inspirational. Let's break out the telescopes and start seriously looking for
biosignatures in alien atmospheres. I don't care if an amoeba is found on
Mars, resulting in a decades-long debate on where it came from. I want to find
a jungle of life. I want a Degoba.

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vmception
> So stop spinning ideas about how it may be in some fine layer between one
> dead zone and another. Such possibilities are interesting but not very
> inspirational.

The possibility is very inspirational to me.

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sandworm101
Good. Let the possibility inspire. We can then hold off on the next Mars
rovers until we have appropriate space telescopes in place.

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a1369209993
How about we hold off on _yet another_ telescope until we have appropriate
_colonists_ in place? On Mars or elsewhere, it really doesn't matter at this
point.

Really ought to get to work on a space elevator too, but that'll take long
enough that we shouldn't delay other important projects.

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cagenut
This makes me wonder, are there any places in alaska where you can buy a lava
tube as real estate, like the land it runs under w/mineral rights?

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Joof
Maybe, but lava tubes are also really boring. Can see we do the karst stuff on
Mars?

