Wow! NASA finds "Alien" life

[ckilgore1]

Time and research has proven time and again that many things we "know" are wrong. History has recorded many examples of this. Yet we continue to cling feverishly to all the things we "know". This is mainly true in religion and science. This is most especially true in religion, and I suspect the primary reason is fear. With science I have always suspected arrogance. Science seems to openly and furiosly cling to the tenet that something is untrue unless (and until) proven to be true. On the surface this seems logical based on a rigid adherence to strict rules which makes accepted science irrefutable . . . all things are either true or untrue. But it is wrong. All things are either true, untrue or unknown. I think arrogance prevents science from acknowledging "unknown".

I agree with Marc especially in his statement, "i just find it quite naieve of us as humans to assume all of the billions of light years and zillions and zillions and quadrillions of miles of space are all assumed to follow the laws we observe here on earth". We are incredibly arrogant and terribly shortsighted. I really enjoyed the line in the movie "Contact" which essentially says, "If we are alone in the universe, it sure seems like a waste of space". To many people it seems unbelievable that there may be life (especially intelligent life) elsewhere in the universe. To my way of thinking it seems beyond believable to think there isn't.

Someone once said (to the effect), "not only are there things more amazing than we have imagined, there are many amazing things which we cannot even imagine". I know I "slaughtered" the quote (sorry).

Chuck

[laser_freak]

If you want to know what the Science article really says/means without having to read it: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives...ve_thought.php

Written by a guy far smarter than the "scientific" journalists in media. He is really good at writing and I can definitely recommend reading it.

Thanks for the link. He explained it in a much more intelligent and accurate way than any of the media blogs.

[ckilgore1]

The Truth is Out There...

I agree. But I am somewhat elderly, and I fear we will not know this truth in my lifetime.

Chuck

[mixedgas]

YAWN,

How about some perspective here, on the terminology?

Alien, NO. Shocking No. Surprising, yes.

This is at least the second time in my lifetime for "NONSTANDARD" bacteria. The first ones to get this level of hype were the non photosynthetic bacteria. They survive in the deep sea smoker vents that release the mega hot, hydrogen sulfide laden jets, hundreds of meters down. They have cousins who live on land around geysers, again living off H2S, which kills everything else on the planet. Smoker vent ecosystems are just as crazy as this.

Adaptation is a wonderful thing, life does evolve and adapt.

Now for the satire.

I'm sort of yawning every time I hear this sort of thing in the news media. God (If offended, insert deity of your choice there.) has his/her/its ways of doing things, and one of the ways I have found he/she/it makes life interesting, is that every time I think I have some structure figured out, he adds another layer, which. I'm quite sure when the new supercollider at CERN really gets going, there will be a new layer found, under the elusive Boson, and once again I will play the Weird Al song "Everything You Know is Wrong!", while not understanding a word the physicists are saying.

Sometimes I wonder if he/she/it does it for fun, or just to keep us otherwise useless boffin types employed. Perhaps it is the other way around, and it keeps media types employed?

I guess exotic, outlying, nonstandard, new, revolutionary, shocking, does not cut it and the media reached for the "A" word.

I just do not think this worthy of the term "ALIEN". It grew up, and lives, here, the third rock from the sun.

Ok, subbing As for P is a neat trick. Considering the difference in outer shell electrons, a really, really, neat trick.

Lets see if the standard DNA sorter can handle it. That will be the really interesting part, how much arsenic is really in the DNA? Even if it messes up existing test reagents, I bet it gets cracked in a year or less.

Who gets the first patent for bioremediation with this one? I'm getting old, and parts of Life are getting too predictable.

Steve

[soforene]

..... I'm getting old, and parts of Life are getting too predictable....

You are becoming a Guru.
Time to seek out Mountain top properties.

[ckilgore1]

[QUOTE=mixedgas;173824]YAWN,


I'm sort of yawning every time I hear this sort of thing in the news media.

I fully understand what you are saying, but I continue to find amazement by being very discerning. The media tries desparately to create amazement, and over the years I've learned to filter out hype. The older I get the more I recognize how much there is to be truly amazed by. Perhaps I am naive, but I truly enjoy toying with obscure notions. One I am currently considering is the theory there is no such thing as "nothing", which if true is quite significant. A number of my friends are amazed that I am amazed by everything. I think I just confused myself. Perhaps I am not naive . . . perhaps I am senile.

Chuck

[ckilgore1]

Just now heard an announcement that astronomers have determined the universe is three times bigger than previously thought . . . 300 sextillion stars (a 3 followed by 23 zeros if I heard correctly). I suddenly feel only 1/3 as significant as before . . . very demoralizing. They did not name the astronomer who did the count.

Chuck

[ckilgore1]

Sorry. But it just now occurred to me that the announcement mentioned above helps prove my theory that there is no such thing as "nothing".

Chuck

[buffo]

life on earth requires water, sun, carbon (whatever) as basic things to sustain life. why do we assume thats the case on planet "X" 500 billion trillion miles away?

We don't. At least not explicitly. We know that life *can* arise on planets similar to ours. The stuff of life -amino acid(s) - is amazingly simple to manufacture. Harold Urey and Stanley Miller proved this back in the 1950's by sparking a mix of gasses similar to our primordial atmosphere. (The sparks simulated lightning.) And after just a few days, they had manufactured a multitude of organic compounds, including the constituent parts that make up proteins and nucleic acids.

But we don't know a lot about other possible forms of life, because we don't have any examples of it. So we look for the things we understand.

maybe life elsewhere requires NO sun and NO water to sustain life. maybe water and carbon and the basics of life HERE is not necessary elsewhere.

Maybe. But how would you go about detecting such life? If you are designing an autonomous spacecraft that will carry out experiments designed to detect life on another planet, what assumptions do you make about that life? If it's life that is similar to life here on earth, then you should be able to detect signs of respiration and/or waste production from the metabolism of food. But if the life you're looking for is completely foreign to you, then how are you going to detect it? You have no idea how it works, so you can't begin to design an experiment that will show if it's there or not.

That's why we look for worlds with liquid water. That's why we look for amino acids and DNA. It's what we understand. It's testable.

why do we (our scientists) presume that life elsewhere must follow the same laws they follow here.

The laws of Chemistry are the same everywhere. And Chemistry dictates that certain structures (such as amino acids) are almost always going to be based around carbon, simply because it's so versatile. It's a fantastic element, because it can bond in many different ways with just about anything. Thus, it's a perfect building block.

Granted, Silicon shares some of these same properties, but to a lesser degree. Could life be based on silicon? Maybe. But it's much easier to do it with carbon. Also, since we have no examples of Silicon-based life, it's quite difficult to go searching for it. We wouldn't know what to look for.

I just find it quite naieve of us as humans to assume all of the billions of light years and zillions and zillions and quadrillions of miles of space are all assumed to follow the laws we observe here on earth.

The laws of Physics (and by extension, Chemistry as well) are the same for everyone in the universe. Thus, carbon will be just as versatile for building the structures of life here on Earth as it will be on the other side of the universe. I'm not saying that other forms of life are impossible, but I am saying that carbon-based life seems more likely, given that the precursors of carbon-based life are so easy to generate using nothing more than naturally-occurring (and quite common) phenomenon.

Did the Science article address DNA? The CNN report stated that the DNA was totally foreign (I think they actually used the word alien). I strongly suspect this was their attempt to make the story much more interesting in the minds of the average viewer, and of course succeeded in making it misleading.

Exactly. The structures are identical, with the exception that Arsenic has been substituted for Phosphorus. So it's *different*, yes, but not exactly alien.

To me, Alien DNA would be something that had a completely different molecular structure, and also behaved differently (from a Chemical standpoint) than the DNA we're familiar with. But this organism doesn't fit that bill.

Honestly, I think the life they've discovered around the "hot smokers" on the ocean floor are more "alien"... That's an entire eco-system that operates without any input from the sun. Sulfur metabolism? That's cool! (And very, very weird.)

Adam

[hydrogenman15]

I was very excited when I first heard about this, but I thought I already saw somebody on the science channel talking about Mono lake and how the bacteria in it was able to use Arsenic as a substitute for Phosphorus. So didn't we kind of already know about this?

--Hydro15