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Scientists Want to Build a Moon Quarantine to Stop Alien Germs From Reaching Earth

It’s a space truck stop.

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For as long as we’ve been sending people to space, there has been the worry of bringing back some kind of as-yet-undiscovered pathogen from beyond Earth. So far, thankfully, nothing has come of the fear. But according to a new paper published in the journal Ambio, researchers argue that NASA’s long-term plans for a permanent lunar colony should include a quarantine facility for space germs on the Moon.

The proposal comes via Frederick Moxley, a former Pentagon adviser and biodefense specialist, and Anthony Ricciardi, an invasive-species expert at McGill University. The pair argues that since we are going to be bringing so many samples from the moon and Mars back to Earth, along with potentially other worlds down the line, and since we currently have no way to guarantee that there aren’t any potentially unknown........

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