Re: Alien habits and pet peeves

At 02:19 PM 3/7/02 +0000, katie wrote:
>We did crash that probe into jupiter to avoid the theoretical chance it
might
>crash into Europa and any bacteria it might just possibly be carrying
could
>contaminate any hypothetical[1] biosphere there...
>
>[1] Only hypothetical from our point of view of course; if they're
there they
>know they're not hypothetical...

I seem to recall some debate about whether or not to include some
primitive 
monocellular critters on the Huygens probe to Triton, so that life there

will get a jump start when the Sun enters the red giant stage (which, 
according to some calculations -- at least in my memory <grin> -- will
then 
be in the "habitable zone" with liquid water).

Dunno if that was serious or not -- from the time span, I think the 
magazine I was reading it in was probably Discover, which is a neat mag
but 
somewhat sensationalist at times....