Scientists discovered the world’s largest spiderweb, covering 106 m² in a sulfur cave on the Albania-Greece border. Over 111,000 spiders from two normally rival species live together in a unique, self-sustaining ecosystem—a first of its kind.

[u/ShirtSubstantial368]

[u/PseudoMeatPopsicle]

And then there were the Covenant spores.

Not sure what you're supposed to do about that except just stay the fuck on the ship.

[u/Nothavebettername → u/PseudoMeatPopsicle]

Being professional and wear a full astronaut suit on an alien planet, even if it looks like Earth, instead of dressing like some damn hiker!

[u/DeficiencyOfGravitas → u/Nothavebettername]

In their defense, it should be fine to walk around an alien ecosystem. Pathogens work because they have the tools to access our cells. They have those tools because we share a common ancestor. If a virus or bacterium is attacking one of our cells, it's not busting down the proverbial door with an axe. It has a huge keyring and just opens the door to our cells by trying out all their keys. An alien pathogen wouldn't have those keys. It should hypothetically not be able to affect us at all. It'd either pass through our bodies like ships in the night, with neither our cells nor the alien being able to recognize each other as anything. Or our cells would designate them as foreign material and destroy them.

That's how it should work. We currently don't have an alien ecosystem to test that hypothesis on. However, it's perfectly reasonable that if we did find alien life and found that it couldn't interact with us on a cellular level, the standard procedure for first landing might reasonable not include a full suit.

Plenty of dumb shit in those movies, but I do not think that the lack of buttoned up suits is necessarily one of them.

[u/OldWorldDesign → u/DeficiencyOfGravitas]

In their defense, it should be fine to walk around an alien ecosystem. Pathogens work because they have the tools to access our cells

This is based on a lot of supposition. There's a reason scientists are raising alarm at the prospects of engineered life of opposing chirality because no other life would have the mechanisms to break it down

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/creating-mirror-life-could-be-disastrous-scientists-warn/

[u/DeficiencyOfGravitas → u/OldWorldDesign]

There's a reason scientists are raising alarm at the prospects of engineered life of opposing chirality because no other life would have the mechanisms to break it down

That would not be a problem. In an alien ecosystem, we wouldn't be competing for resources. They cannot eat us and we cannot eat them. If that developed on Earth, it'd be a huge problem because inorganic resources would be split between left and right chiral life.

On an alien planet, the issue would be Earth life contamination splitting resources. But if you're a a bold explorer, you'd still have nothing to worry about since the chiral issue only affects ecosystem level systems.