Given that mirror life hasn’t arisen independently on Earth in ~4B years, I don’t think we need to take any steps to stop it from doing so in the future. Either abiogenesis is extremely rare, or when new life does arise naturally, it is so weak that it is outcompeted by more evolved life.
I agree that this is a risk from any extraterrestrial life we might encounter.
It’s probably not that large a risk though? I doubt any alien microbes would be that much of a problem to us. It seems unlikely that they would happen to use exactly the same biochemistry as we do, which makes it harder for them to infect/digest us. Chirality is just one of the multitudes of ways in which earth’s biosphere is “unique”. It’s been a while since I was knowledgeable about any of this, but a quick o1 query seems to point in the same direction. Worth going through quarantine, just in case, of course. Though that works on earth pathogens which tend to quickly die off without hosts to infect, which very well might not hold true for more interesting environments.
Peter Watt’s Rifters series goes a bit into this topic. This is by no means evidence either way, but I just wanted to let more people know about it.
Stop right there at “Either abiogenesis is extremely rare...” I think we have considerable evidence that biogenesis is rare—our failure to detect any other life in the universe so far. I think we have no evidence at all that biogenesis is not rare. (Anthropic argument.)
Stop again at “I don’t think we need to take any steps to stop it from doing so in the future”. That’s not what this post is about. It’s about taking steps to prevent people from deliberately constructing it.
Failure to detect other life in the universe is only really evidence against advanced intelligent civilizations, I think. The universe could easily be absolutely teeming with bacterial life.
Re “take steps to stop it”, I was replying to @Purplehermann
Given that mirror life hasn’t arisen independently on Earth in ~4B years, I don’t think we need to take any steps to stop it from doing so in the future. Either abiogenesis is extremely rare, or when new life does arise naturally, it is so weak that it is outcompeted by more evolved life.
I agree that this is a risk from any extraterrestrial life we might encounter.
It’s probably not that large a risk though? I doubt any alien microbes would be that much of a problem to us. It seems unlikely that they would happen to use exactly the same biochemistry as we do, which makes it harder for them to infect/digest us. Chirality is just one of the multitudes of ways in which earth’s biosphere is “unique”. It’s been a while since I was knowledgeable about any of this, but a quick o1 query seems to point in the same direction. Worth going through quarantine, just in case, of course. Though that works on earth pathogens which tend to quickly die off without hosts to infect, which very well might not hold true for more interesting environments.
Peter Watt’s Rifters series goes a bit into this topic. This is by no means evidence either way, but I just wanted to let more people know about it.
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-31/protocells-emerge-in-experiment-simulating-lifeless-world-there-is-no-divine-breath-of-life.html
We have here some scientists making cells. Looks like a dangerous direction
Synthetic cells aren’t inherently dangerous if they’re not mirror cells (and aren’t dangerous pathogens of course).
Is there a reason that random synthetic cells will not be mirror cells?
Yes, they would not be made from mirror components!
Stop right there at “Either abiogenesis is extremely rare...” I think we have considerable evidence that biogenesis is rare—our failure to detect any other life in the universe so far. I think we have no evidence at all that biogenesis is not rare. (Anthropic argument.)
Stop again at “I don’t think we need to take any steps to stop it from doing so in the future”. That’s not what this post is about. It’s about taking steps to prevent people from deliberately constructing it.
Failure to detect other life in the universe is only really evidence against advanced intelligent civilizations, I think. The universe could easily be absolutely teeming with bacterial life.
Re “take steps to stop it”, I was replying to @Purplehermann