A similar argument could be made for making first contact with an alien species. There’s a decent chance one or both species carries some form of microscopic life that the other has no defenses against, assuming both species can even survive in the environment necessary for the other.
Not only will starship captains and crew not be able to have sex with the hot aliens they meet, “they have an nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere” won’t mean the away team can land without environmental isolation suits. Planets with oxygen in their atmospheres might be the most dangerous ones out there for us.
I think chirality is something most people overlook in those situations too. Even if you found a world of beings exactly like you, a perfect earth with plants and low CO2 concentrations, if their proteins have opposite chirality to yours, you’re probably going to die of prion disease.
“Oh look a perfectly human person on an earth like planet I’m sure I can take my helmet off”. Nope. You just inhaled spores or skin cells or pollen or viruses or literally anything that contains “misfolded proteins” and if any of those get at all digested they could cause your body to produce more misfolded proteins, a cycle that will eventually lead to your demise.
“Look this plant isn’t poisonous” chirality is harder to check than chemical makeup. So yeah it has vitamin B but is it the kind that could kill you? (We don’t have to worry about this much on earth because basically all life on this planet makes and uses proteins of similar chirality)
“Wow that alien sex was great” too bad there were skin cells in saliva you both exchanged/ingested (or proteins in other bodily fluids) so you’re both going to die now.
Worst part is that prions are really slow acting. You could all be chilling in this wonderful earth like home for months until around the same time you all suddenly get sick and die. There’s no cure, so there’s nothing you can do besides leave a warning for the next crew who might stop by.
Oh and the same dangers go for native life on the planet too. To them you’re made of misfolded proteins so any scavengers who eat you and maybe even predators who eat them have a chance of developing and spreading prion disease. Your bodies are basically bioweapons. Any earth crops or animals you brought with would be biohazards too.
Prion diseases are not as simple as coming into contact with a protein composed of D-amino acids.
While it’s still not fully known, it’s generally one specific type of protein PrP^C that gets transformed by PrP^Sc, converting the C to Sc, and so on.
D-amino acids also occur naturally on earth.
As for B vitamins, none include proteins as far as I remember, they’re all small(ish) molecules like biotin and folate. Also having a difference in stereochemistry with most of these vitamins, wouldn’t cause toxicity.
Obviously there are some cases of small stereochemical changes being toxic (thalidomide). But generally small changes won’t automatically make something toxic.
Prions wouldn’t work like that. They would have to be very similar, and the same chirality, as our own proteins, or else the misfold would not self-replicate like prion diseases do.
I personally trust humanity that we will work out a way to have sex with something we shouldn’t rather quickly. Our horniest scientiest and our brightest perverts will find a way, even if it’s at great personal cost.
Yeah, it is probably going to be one of the top 5 reasons to join a starship crew, so life will probably, ah, find a way. For all we know, NASA might even have a focus group working on this already.
BUT that doesn’t mean it won’t lead to the extinction of one or both species involved.
There’s a decent chance one or both species carries some form of microscopic life that the other has no defenses against
I’d argue there’s essentially zero change we’d be biologically similar enough for any microbes to bridge the gap. It’s a big deal when microbes jump species here on earth
That’s the result of a balance between different microbes and their own defensive measures. Entirely novel microbes and biological functions could overwhelm all of that. Hell, if they have just evolved a next level ATP, they could have access to an order of magnitude more energy than our microbes and bodies can use, in which case we’d probably have no chance unless it doesn’t recognize us as food.
It’s not guaranteed to happen, but with 0 data about alternate evolution trees, any reasoning about the odds is speculation (including my use of “decent chance”).
Edit: This would be the case for viruses. Unless they work very differently or our biochemistry has some convergent evolutions, alien viruses should be harmless to us and vice versa. Just like the hundreds of viruses we are exposed to with every breath, most don’t react to our cells any differently from how they’d react to wet rocks.
I guess it’s possible to have safe alien sex with a full body latex suit and respirator. Though maybe think twice if the alien has sharp spike features.
Oxygen is reactive enough that free O2 doesn’t tend to stay that way. Even to us, too much oxygen is toxic because it starts reacting with things we don’t want it to inside our bodies (which is why antioxidants are beneficial). The presence of oxygen in an atmosphere implies there’s life producing it (or maybe some other process we aren’t yet aware of). It can also imply that there’s also life using it to keep it in a balance that doesn’t freeze the planet or allow it to destroy any life because oxygen producers keep pumping more of it into the atmosphere.
And the danger part comes from a combination of alien life maybe having microbes our immune systems can’t defend against and the possibly of picking one of those up and bringing it back to other human settlements before the carriers realize they have a fatal infection.
That second part is what makes it more dangerous than a ship accidentally flying into a star or trying to land on a gas giant, which would probably be fatal to all aboard the ship but not dangerous to humanity as a whole. Even just entering an oxygen atmosphere with a ship that never lands could be bad if that ship must later return home.
A similar argument could be made for making first contact with an alien species. There’s a decent chance one or both species carries some form of microscopic life that the other has no defenses against, assuming both species can even survive in the environment necessary for the other.
Not only will starship captains and crew not be able to have sex with the hot aliens they meet, “they have an nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere” won’t mean the away team can land without environmental isolation suits. Planets with oxygen in their atmospheres might be the most dangerous ones out there for us.
I think chirality is something most people overlook in those situations too. Even if you found a world of beings exactly like you, a perfect earth with plants and low CO2 concentrations, if their proteins have opposite chirality to yours, you’re probably going to die of prion disease.
“Oh look a perfectly human person on an earth like planet I’m sure I can take my helmet off”. Nope. You just inhaled spores or skin cells or pollen or viruses or literally anything that contains “misfolded proteins” and if any of those get at all digested they could cause your body to produce more misfolded proteins, a cycle that will eventually lead to your demise.
“Look this plant isn’t poisonous” chirality is harder to check than chemical makeup. So yeah it has vitamin B but is it the kind that could kill you? (We don’t have to worry about this much on earth because basically all life on this planet makes and uses proteins of similar chirality)
“Wow that alien sex was great” too bad there were skin cells in saliva you both exchanged/ingested (or proteins in other bodily fluids) so you’re both going to die now.
Worst part is that prions are really slow acting. You could all be chilling in this wonderful earth like home for months until around the same time you all suddenly get sick and die. There’s no cure, so there’s nothing you can do besides leave a warning for the next crew who might stop by.
Oh and the same dangers go for native life on the planet too. To them you’re made of misfolded proteins so any scavengers who eat you and maybe even predators who eat them have a chance of developing and spreading prion disease. Your bodies are basically bioweapons. Any earth crops or animals you brought with would be biohazards too.
Prion diseases are not as simple as coming into contact with a protein composed of D-amino acids.
While it’s still not fully known, it’s generally one specific type of protein PrP^C that gets transformed by PrP^Sc, converting the C to Sc, and so on.
D-amino acids also occur naturally on earth.
As for B vitamins, none include proteins as far as I remember, they’re all small(ish) molecules like biotin and folate. Also having a difference in stereochemistry with most of these vitamins, wouldn’t cause toxicity.
Obviously there are some cases of small stereochemical changes being toxic (thalidomide). But generally small changes won’t automatically make something toxic.
Prions wouldn’t work like that. They would have to be very similar, and the same chirality, as our own proteins, or else the misfold would not self-replicate like prion diseases do.
I personally trust humanity that we will work out a way to have sex with something we shouldn’t rather quickly. Our horniest scientiest and our brightest perverts will find a way, even if it’s at great personal cost.
Obligatory “that Venn diagram is basically a circle.”
Yeah, it is probably going to be one of the top 5 reasons to join a starship crew, so life will probably, ah, find a way. For all we know, NASA might even have a focus group working on this already.
BUT that doesn’t mean it won’t lead to the extinction of one or both species involved.
Read “scientities”
I’d argue there’s essentially zero change we’d be biologically similar enough for any microbes to bridge the gap. It’s a big deal when microbes jump species here on earth
That’s the result of a balance between different microbes and their own defensive measures. Entirely novel microbes and biological functions could overwhelm all of that. Hell, if they have just evolved a next level ATP, they could have access to an order of magnitude more energy than our microbes and bodies can use, in which case we’d probably have no chance unless it doesn’t recognize us as food.
It’s not guaranteed to happen, but with 0 data about alternate evolution trees, any reasoning about the odds is speculation (including my use of “decent chance”).
Edit: This would be the case for viruses. Unless they work very differently or our biochemistry has some convergent evolutions, alien viruses should be harmless to us and vice versa. Just like the hundreds of viruses we are exposed to with every breath, most don’t react to our cells any differently from how they’d react to wet rocks.
Not so fast, we do have some convenient barrier device to avoid contamination in this context.
I guess it’s possible to have safe alien sex with a full body latex suit and respirator. Though maybe think twice if the alien has sharp spike features.
At which point would it be worth it anyways?
If the alien is hot and willing. Preferably not crazy, but I’m sure some will take the risk even if they are.
Can you explain more about the last sentence how planets with oxygen might be the most dangerous please? I’m interested
Oxygen is reactive enough that free O2 doesn’t tend to stay that way. Even to us, too much oxygen is toxic because it starts reacting with things we don’t want it to inside our bodies (which is why antioxidants are beneficial). The presence of oxygen in an atmosphere implies there’s life producing it (or maybe some other process we aren’t yet aware of). It can also imply that there’s also life using it to keep it in a balance that doesn’t freeze the planet or allow it to destroy any life because oxygen producers keep pumping more of it into the atmosphere.
And the danger part comes from a combination of alien life maybe having microbes our immune systems can’t defend against and the possibly of picking one of those up and bringing it back to other human settlements before the carriers realize they have a fatal infection.
That second part is what makes it more dangerous than a ship accidentally flying into a star or trying to land on a gas giant, which would probably be fatal to all aboard the ship but not dangerous to humanity as a whole. Even just entering an oxygen atmosphere with a ship that never lands could be bad if that ship must later return home.
Wow, the isolation I felt from NoMansSky is real.
I gotta buy that game again.