And if there were extra-terrestrial organisms out there, we might end up inadvertently killing them with Earth-based bacteria or viruses, like the fate of the aliens at the end of War of the Worlds. If microbes snuck onboard, it would confuse any attempts to detect alien life. Spacecraft needed to be sterilised and carefully packaged before launch. When humanity first made plans to send probes and people into space in the mid-20th Century, the issue of contamination came up.įirstly, there was the fear of 'forward' contamination – the possibility that Earth-based life might accidentally hitch a ride into the cosmos. Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?.Why catastrophes can change the course of humanity.The nuclear mistakes that nearly caused World War Three.So, what happened that led to these decisions? And what can they tell us about attitudes to the kinds of risks and crises we face today? Not just the end of their own lives, but the end of everything. There was a chance that their experiments might accidentally ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life on the planet.Īt a handful of moments in the past century, a few rare groups of people have held the world's fate in their hands, responsible for the tiny-but-real possibility of causing total catastrophe. As they waited to watch the first atomic weapon test, they were aware of a potentially catastrophic outcome. The downside? There was a small possibility of unleashing deadly alien microbes on Earth.Ī couple of decades beforehand, a group of scientists and military officials stood at a similar turning point. Nasa officials decided to make things more pleasant for their three national heroes. Following the Apollo 11 Moon landings, the three astronauts were waiting to be picked up inside their capsule floating in the Pacific Ocean – and they were hot and uncomfortable. In the late 1960s, Nasa faced a decision that could have shaped the fate of our species.

Quotes what the worst that could happen