#i was gonna say astrobio except astrobio people are more concerned w quarantine protocols and contamination and preservation in the event

[dreadfutures]

my hot take is the whole "search for life in the universe" thing is truly just a spin to put sparkle in children's eyes and make dumb congresspeople who like the idea of aliens fund science that actually helps people

the endeavors bring about a ton of great science that is related to health and ecology and atmospheric monitoring and all sorts of stuff and understanding how our planet and life was former and the scientists who do this research and stare at radiograms and try to figure out if that chemical stretch is a C-S or a C-C or a C-O bond, are amazing scientists

but god do I have no interest in "uwu we might have found signs of life on other planets!"

the first time was vaguely neat, now we know it's entirely possible and not novel and probably there's phytoplankton (at best) in some ocean planets that we will never ever visit woo hoo

most of the astro people I know working on these projects are mostly interested in the spectroscopy part too and not the whole search for alien life thing so it's very hard for me to look at the press releases with anything but weariness

no one's interested when we figure out what metals are in the active sites of proteins or that actually a redox inactive metal mutated into this other protein actually increases its activity bc the mechanism involves redox active ligands and cofactors, rather than the metal itself. just. you know. as an example. but every time there's a little blip of "oh there's NOx and SOx and VOCs on another distant planet according to this one spectra--" gets a front page news thing.

#blue is a hater: astrophysics edition #i was gonna say astrobio except astrobio people are more concerned w quarantine protocols and contamination and preservation in the event #that anyone ever brings stuff back from an expedition or colonization effort lol #like look i am the furthest thing from an applied sciences girly #i think studying distant spectra in the universe is valuable fundamental science and an amazing feat of tech and analysis #but the whole search for life!!!!! uwu!!!!! just does not stir me whatsoever lol #long post