Alien Ocean

Just got home from my monthly poetry reading and I was quite pleased.  My stuff was well received, I really enjoyed a poem by our featured performer, Tom Draper (Hi, Tom!) about how people were gathered, much like we were gathered, for poetry readings and whatnot in London, Berlin, San Francisco and it’s like we’re all connected on some level.  Then I caught the same bus as a guy who hadn’t performed, as it was his first time there,  but anyway, he talked about the book store where he works and how he organizes a reader’s group, like a book club, read and discuss, and then he told me they have a philosopher’s club, too.  Now, that sounds a bit too educated and fancy  for my tastes, but dang, you’ve got to love a city that’s got that going on.

all kinds of terror and weird commotion, wait for us in an alien ocean

But none of that is what tonight’s blog is about.  It’s about this.  I believe I touched on the subject a week or so ago,   but I’d like to talk about it in more depth.  When we send a probe to an ice covered world which we suspect had a liquid ocean within, how do we go about exploring and finding out if there are life forms down there, without  dooming those poor, little, harmless, alien watercreatures to extinction?

Also, I wonder how scientists can be certain that this moon, Encephalitis I believe it’s called, has unfrozen water beneath the surface.  Maybe it’s ice right down to the core.

I suppose they have their ways.  After all, they seem to be able to look at bones that are over a thousand years old, and tell you what they had for lunch before they died.

Then, moving toward the right had side of the Drake Equation, finding life in an alien ocean before we’re even out of this Solar System makes us realize we are not alone in the universe, and that could have major effects. Even if it’s life more-or – less, it most definitely  points out the ability of life to adapt to other worlds.

But, there will be no undersea civilization, with golden palaces and stuff.  No metallurgy without fire.    No civilization without metallurgy.

In fact, they would be seriously surprised to see a periscope suddenly poking its goddamned glass eye into their world.  They live under a shell of ice.  They have never seen the stars.