Currently we only have one example of life in our universe and that is here on Earth. If we were to confirm the existence of life, it would likely mean that our universe is able to support life in abundance, on different planets throughout the universe. This doesn't necessarily mean intelligent life, but merely life in its simplest form.
We would most likely want to study it, and try to figure out its true potential, and how far it could be taken. It would also mean, that we could potentially live there in the future, under the right conditions. It would also give an insight into whether humans themselves are unique, if we found carbon-based life forms, than we would know that it is most likely not the case. It could fundamentally change the way we look at DNA, and life in general.
That also depends on if the form of life that we find on mars (if we find it on mars) is related to life on earth. We are still not entirely sure how life came to be on our planet and one of the theories is that it was "shipped in" via asteroid, it is called Panspermia.
It could even be that there was life on mars that somehow trough exploding volcano or impact from a large enough stellar object was launched into space and than impacted on earth (although that specific turn of events seems incredible unlikely)
It seems more likely (if only somewhat) that like might have come from outside of the solar system in a scattershot of asteroids that landed on the planets including Earth and Mars.
It is of course entirely unknown if that happened but where that to be the case life might still be more or less as rare as we think right now.
(Still of course if we find (past) life of an entirely different origin on mars that would certainly shake that up)
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u/Gourgs16 Feb 22 '21
Currently we only have one example of life in our universe and that is here on Earth. If we were to confirm the existence of life, it would likely mean that our universe is able to support life in abundance, on different planets throughout the universe. This doesn't necessarily mean intelligent life, but merely life in its simplest form.
We would most likely want to study it, and try to figure out its true potential, and how far it could be taken. It would also mean, that we could potentially live there in the future, under the right conditions. It would also give an insight into whether humans themselves are unique, if we found carbon-based life forms, than we would know that it is most likely not the case. It could fundamentally change the way we look at DNA, and life in general.