From Richard Swifte, Darmstadt, Germany
I am alarmed by Claudius Gros's suggestion that we should deliberately seed life throughout the cosmos (18 November, p 10).
Space agencies quite rightly try to sterilise spacecraft sent to planets or moons that might harbour life, however remote the possibility, in order to avoid contamination. Gros's plan is in direct contradiction to this.
We still need much more investigation to verify whether any of the bodies in our solar system contain life or not, so it is unrealistic for us to think we can show that any planet in another star system is truly sterile. Without such proof, it should be considered unethical to risk wiping out alien life forms with Earth-despatched panspermia. I hope this idea will fail to become reality.
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