Always exciting to see news like this. But realistically "alien life forms may have more in common with life on Earth than we had thought" is strongly suggestive that these are not, in fact, alien life forms.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/has-life-been-found-in-a-meteorite/
"Dr David Marais, an astrobiologist with NASA's AMES Research Centre, said he was very cautious about jumping on the bandwagon.
"These kinds of claims have been made before, he noted and found to be false.
"'It's an extraordinary claim, and thus I'll need extraordinary evidence,' he said."
Boy, if only more people would apply this--could we call it "scientific"?--attitude in other areas.
Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' 'bout...
If this was legit, it wouldn't be published in a journal that spouts off stuff like
Sex on Mars: Pregnancy, Fetal Development, and Sex In Outer Space, Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D., Journal of Cosmology, Vol 12. 4034-4050,
and whose volumes are things such as:
"Climate Change, Solar Actvity and the Poisoning of "Mother Earth"
Colonizing Mars The Mission to the Red Planet
I particularly find reading the abstracts enjoyable, like this one on quantum physics and the multiplicity of the mind:
Quantum physics and Einstein's theory of relativity make assumptions about the nature of the mind which is assumed to be a singularity. In the Copenhagen model of physics, the process of observing is believed to effect reality by the act of perception and knowing which creates abstractions and a collapse function thereby inducing discontinuity into the continuum of the quantum state. This gives rise to the uncertainty principle. Yet neither the mind or the brain is a singularity, but a multiplicity which include two dominant streams of consciousness and awareness associated with the left and right hemisphere, as demonstrated by patients whose brains have been split, and which are superimposed on yet other mental realms maintained by the brainstem, thalamus, limbic system, and the occipital, temporal, parietal, and frontal lobes.
I read about this on Yahoo news at
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=3945746&thread=3945732
As I read the article, I realized how unscientific it is to believe that life could only exist on earth. I mean, I realize the burden of proof falls on those who believe in alien life. But it's just as common sense to me as evolution, natural selection, and other theories. Relativity is way harder to get your mind around than alien life.
zip zero nada wrote:
I particularly find reading the abstracts enjoyable, like this one on quantum physics and the multiplicity of the mind:
Quantum physics and Einstein's theory of relativity make assumptions about the nature of the mind which is assumed to be a singularity. In the Copenhagen model of physics, the process of observing is believed to effect reality by the act of perception and knowing which creates abstractions and a collapse function thereby inducing discontinuity into the continuum of the quantum state. This gives rise to the uncertainty principle. Yet neither the mind or the brain is a singularity, but a multiplicity which include two dominant streams of consciousness and awareness associated with the left and right hemisphere, as demonstrated by patients whose brains have been split, and which are superimposed on yet other mental realms maintained by the brainstem, thalamus, limbic system, and the occipital, temporal, parietal, and frontal lobes.
HAHA! That was awesome!
Or maybe - just maybe - the meteorite was contaminated with now-extinct Earth micro-organisms shortly after it landed here.
Apply Occam's razor, people.
Found on a meteorite on earth, which makes you wonder if it was from outer space, the clouds or somewhere on this planet.
Tanya Skagle wrote:
Or maybe - just maybe - the meteorite was contaminated with now-extinct Earth micro-organisms shortly after it landed here.
Apply Occam's razor, people.
I would think that he supposedly found the fossilized bacteria within the meteor, thereby ruling out Terran contamination, but I'll wait for the peer reviews to pour in.
Fletcher Christian wrote:
I would think that he supposedly found the fossilized bacteria within the meteor, thereby ruling out Terran contamination ...
That still wouldn't prove any fossils found in the rock are extraterrestrial. Terrestrial endoliths can penetrate and colonize any porous rock, and carbonaceous chondrites can be quite porous.
Earth was seeded by bacteria from a meteorite.
What a dumb theory.
This That Those wrote:
Earth was seeded by bacteria from a meteorite.
Aliens or Whatnot wrote:
I read about this on Yahoo news at
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=3945746&thread=3945732As I read the article, I realized how unscientific it is to believe that life could only exist on earth. I mean, I realize the burden of proof falls on those who believe in alien life. But it's just as common sense to me as evolution, natural selection, and other theories. Relativity is way harder to get your mind around than alien life.
How does assuming something to be true make it scientific? And how is evolution common sense since you don't even observe it? I mean, you can believe it if you want to, but it's certainly not common sense (and I would argue not scientific, but that's for another thread). Natural selection is an observed phenomenon that has nothing to do with evolution.
The problem with your belief that it's common sense is that it first assumes evolution, so you are guilty of circular reasoning. How, provided a neutral standpoint, is alien life common sense? The chances of abiogenesis happening on its own would be practically impossible, even provided millions of years. What makes you think it would happen on any other planet?
someone else wrote:
The chances of abiogenesis happening on its own would be practically impossible, even provided millions of years. What makes you think it would happen on any other planet?
Whenever life get you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enuuuuuff
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour
That's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way
Our galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars
It's 100,000 light-years side-to-side
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light-years thick
But out by us it's just 3000 light-years wide
We're 30,000 light-years from galactic central point
We go round every 200 million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
Because there's bugger all down here on Earth
someone else wrote:
The problem with your belief that it's common sense is that it first assumes evolution, so you are guilty of circular reasoning. How, provided a neutral standpoint, is alien life common sense? The chances of abiogenesis happening on its own would be practically impossible, even provided millions of years. What makes you think it would happen on any other planet?
Things that can happen, do happen. No matter how rare.
Drake Equation wrote:
Things that can happen, do happen. No matter how rare.
Depends on the definition of "can".
Or, to put is another way - Things that do not happen cannot happen. Do not feel so free to assume it can unless you are certain that it does.
You could not have said it better. It's good to bring science to the masses, but the popularization of politically correct topics, which necessarily has led to a dumbing down of real science, has done more harm than good.
No they didn't. In other news, I see the usual scientifically illiterate and gullible crowd is out today.
Did it fall on his head?
Drake Equation wrote:
someone else wrote:The problem with your belief that it's common sense is that it first assumes evolution, so you are guilty of circular reasoning. How, provided a neutral standpoint, is alien life common sense? The chances of abiogenesis happening on its own would be practically impossible, even provided millions of years. What makes you think it would happen on any other planet?
Things that can happen, do happen. No matter how rare.
Except it can't. Do you even know the chances? They are 1 in way more than the total number of atoms in the universe. That's way below the threshold of practical impossibility. Trillions and trillions of times below it. It may happen, it would just take way more time than the universe has supposedly existed for it to occur once, and that's assuming the amino strand that was created would go on to develop into life and survive all of the conditions on earth to create a valid life form.