I always thought Enceladus was just an icy moon, but turns out it's cooler than that.
NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
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Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s worth remembering that there is not one single shred of evidence that life has ever existed anywhere in the observable universe but Earth. I’m curious how your epistemology is working here. It seems to me that this will also be true in the future if we have found life on a hundred other planets. There still won’t be a shred of evidence of life anywhere else , and we still won’t have the faintest estimate of ho…
idk, I think if we see even simple life at multiple points in our own system that we can increase our expectations for the prevalence of life very significantly. And of course given how vast and indifferent to life the universe is, life would still be vanishingly rare in the universe. It's going to be always precious and a gem.
Why? That could just mean our solar gave rise to life and not earth alone. Still don’t see why that increases the odds outside of our solar system
Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#83This is intriguing and I’m very happy this exploration is being done. But, for decades, I’ve been reading reports of the discovery of evidence for the trappings of life elsewhere: water and organics and “habitable” exoplanets. These are valuable discoveries, but the tone of the reports suggest they imply life is about to turn up. It’s worth remembering that there is not one single shred of evidence that life has ever…
The universe is 13 billion years old. Planet earth is 4.5 billion years old. Life on earth started 3.7 billion years ago. We sent our first radio wave just 125 years ago. Probably life is not than unusual and we just don’t have a way to verify this (yet).
What is this probability based upon?
Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#84The fact that there is something, just something can drive me crazy. Why is there something and not just nothing.
Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finding a new particle doesn't necessarily threaten strictly up held religious beliefs like finding life somewhere other than this rock
Catholics officially believe in aliens, and that we should save them (if they weren’t visited by Jesus) Jews wouldn’t care either. Don’t know about Muslims, but it’s not threatening to the other Abrahamic religions
Muslims recite that Allah is “lord of all the worlds” every day. Think they’ll be fine. This is true of every religion I think, it’s only the non religious projecting that state it would “upend widely held beliefs”
Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#86This is intriguing and I’m very happy this exploration is being done. But, for decades, I’ve been reading reports of the discovery of evidence for the trappings of life elsewhere: water and organics and “habitable” exoplanets. These are valuable discoveries, but the tone of the reports suggest they imply life is about to turn up. It’s worth remembering that there is not one single shred of evidence that life has ever…
People are reacting negatively to your comment, the reason is that however accurate your complaint may be about most such reporting (IMO you are correct), you have chosen to attach it to this article. I find no evidence in this article of “tone implying life is about to turn up”. I think you have misread the tone. The article certainly has a tone of excitement throughout. But it’s excitement for further knowledge, in…
Fair enough. On the other hand, to my ear the title "NASA finds life-sparking energy source and molecule" sets the tone, as though life was sparked, or that we even know could be sparked by the presence of these ingredients with some degree of confidence.
Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#87This is intriguing and I’m very happy this exploration is being done. But, for decades, I’ve been reading reports of the discovery of evidence for the trappings of life elsewhere: water and organics and “habitable” exoplanets. These are valuable discoveries, but the tone of the reports suggest they imply life is about to turn up. It’s worth remembering that there is not one single shred of evidence that life has ever…
The universe is 13 billion years old. Planet earth is 4.5 billion years old. Life on earth started 3.7 billion years ago. We sent our first radio wave just 125 years ago. Probably life is not than unusual and we just don’t have a way to verify this (yet).
The three and a half facts you listed (life may have started earlier if it came to Earth from Mars or elsewhere) do not logically lead to your conclusion.
Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree it’s an open question, but I think it’s highly likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life. We already know that’s the case in highly controlled environments. We don’t yet have confidence about the exact mechanism on Earth but based on those experiments it’s likely (& generally currently accepted as the most likely…
>Our type of society is probably much much rarer because you need access to mineral and energy deposits to go through each technological phase. For example, because of all the mining we’ve done, if humanity were to disappear it’s highly likely the Earth would not sustain another technological society because all the “easy to get to” deposits of crucial metals & things like oil are gone and there’s no way to bootstrap…
Readily obtainable hydrocarbons are lost for the forseeable future. However, haven't we made it easier for future civilizations to obtain minerals and metals? We have extracted, refined and placed them all in concentrated surface areas all over the planet (i.e. city limits)
Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree it’s an open question, but I think it’s highly likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life. We already know that’s the case in highly controlled environments. We don’t yet have confidence about the exact mechanism on Earth but based on those experiments it’s likely (& generally currently accepted as the most likely…
> I think it’s highly likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life Out of curiosity, if you reject religion, what other possibilities are there?
Just inorganic material combining at random and eventually, over about 10 billion years, randomly creating something that self replicates in some way, beginning the process of evolution through natural selection and inevitably progressing to life as we know it.
I don't think religion is needed at all for this. I also don't think this has to be a common thing (after all, here on Earth it only happened once, but it's also possible that once life is widespread it makes it very difficult for emergent new forms of life to take off).
Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
These factors are what I call the “trappings of life”. It is a completely open question (and I mean completely ) how likely life is to arise spontaneously when these factors are present. One single instance of life elsewhere or successful abiogenesis in the lab would change that, but we have neither.
I agree it’s an open question, but I think it’s highly likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life. We already know that’s the case in highly controlled environments. We don’t yet have confidence about the exact mechanism on Earth but based on those experiments it’s likely (& generally currently accepted as the most likely…
This is what I referred to as "speculation" in the literature for life's origins on Earth. This speculation is a good first theoretical stab... or it might not be. Until life is created from inorganic matter in a laboratory (enabling us subsequently to estimate how rare or not it might be elsewhere in the observable universe), we should substantially dial back our confidence from "life is likely extremely plentiful throughout the universe at one point in time or another".