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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

#151

Post by subroutine »

donny2018 wrote: post #123
idlewords wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would turn your logic around and say, everywhere we are able to look, we find evidence that life is more likely than expected. Until the 1990's it was an open question whether any other star had planets; as soon as we got the tools to test that, we found they were ubiquitous. As soon as we got the right instruments to Mars, we found signs of moving water, methane sources, and complex organic molecules in what is ba…

“England has developed a hypothesis of the physics of the origins of life, that he calls "dissipation-driven adaptation."[3][5] The hypothesis holds that random groups of molecules can self-organize to more efficiently absorb and dissipate heat from the environment. His hypothesis states that such self-organizing systems are an inherent part of the physical world.[7]” If Jeremy England’s hypothesis is true, then life…

It seems like a more fundamental phenomenon would be the ability to self replicate. I imagine some organic compounds forming a primitive vesicle in a relatively calm lagoon. As the vesicle collects more organics it gets too large and eventually blebs off a small vesicle (primordial fission). The heartiest vesicles that can replicate fastest tend to survive the longest and produce the most copies. Evolution takes it from there.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#152

Post by mcfig »

superposeur wrote: post #86
mcfig wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point, I had glossed over the title. That is definitely clickbait, “life-sparking” is not the same as “potential life precursor”. The rest of the article seems unusually restrained, though.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#153

Post by RajT88 »

idlewords wrote: post #148
addicted wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point isn’t Mars already contaminated?

No, almost certainly not. There are individual living microbes and spores on the various landers, but unlike the microbiome that would travel with a human mission, they're not viable and have no mechanism to get to somewhere where they'd be viable.

I mean, you say that, but also this story was a thing that happened:

https://www.cnet.com/science/sea-plankton-found-on-the-outer...

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#154

Post by troyvit »

superposeur wrote: post #6

This 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…

Personally I think articles like this are actually the shreds of evidence you say don't exist.

If there isn't life on Enceladus this is still incredibly exciting because then it might make the perfect lab for us to put life and study how it evolves.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#155

Post by ANewFormation »

vlovich123 wrote: post #126
brokeAstronomer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that we are limited to "speculating" due to n=1. However, personally my sense is that simple life is more likely to be ubiquitous than not. This is informed by the fact that currently there is no evidence that conditions on early Earth were particularly unique in comparison to first principles modelling of rocky planet atmospheres**. This coupled with the relative speed with which simple life emerged points t…

To me the simpler question is “if life didn’t originate from inorganic conditions somehow, what other explanation is there? Life came into being with the creation of the universe?”. It’s possible the latter explanation is what happened, it just feels extremely unlikely. So the more likely explanation is that life originates from inorganic conditions. Then the question is where? Is it on a planet or in space? Pansperm…

Taking a slight sidetrack to relativity, consider just how absurd our universe is. To maintain the consistency of the speed of light from all reference frames, time (and 'real' distance) are instead the variables, and there is every reason to believe this is correct. If you didn't know this to be the actual case, it'd feel absurd to even consider it.

Trying to intuitively and logically reason about something with no answer in sight, all while assuming the truths of our era, may ultimately be pointless.

Our universe, logical though it may be, plays by its own rules, and many things will be simply irreconcilable until those rules are further elaborated on.

As an aside the big bang also does not really answer the prerequisite question of where the initial inorganic matter/energy came from. The idea there being some sort of a quantum fluctuation, which then begs the question of its origin. I suppose it's just turtles all the way down.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#156

Post by Shekelphile »

malfist wrote: post #111
hesk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provided you're actively and systematically looking for evidence, then absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

But we've not even started doing that yet. None of the mars rovers have landed anywhere close to where we think is must likely to currently harbor life due to fear of contamination. We've just now learned how to analyze atmospheres of exoplants. 5 years ago, we couldn't see exoplanets smaller than jupiter. A decade ago, we couldn't see exoplanets at all.

We still can’t see the atmosphere of the majority of exoplanets. Can’t get around it unless we build a telescope thousands of times bigger than anything else or we make some incomprehensible breakthrough in optics. If we could we would detect life on another planet within a matter of a few hours of telescope time most likely.

I find the entire idea that life could only exist on earth farcical. A lot of people in this thread don’t seem to understand that we can’t directly image many exoplanets to begin with and that we haven’t even been trying to find life on other planets and moons in our own solar system, it has in fact been suppressed every time credible circumstantial evidence of life is found (Viking lander experiments and methane on mars both come to mind)

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#157

Post by NineStarPoint »

fzeindl wrote: post #29
superposeur wrote: post #6

This 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…

I once heard: „The universe is unbelievably huge and unbelievably old so rare events happen all the time.“ I think it meant that even if life started itself accidentally by some unbelievably slim chance, this could happen somewhere else as well simply because the dice are rolled that often. I think time is the factor here. When you take into account not only the size of the universe but also it‘s age, the chance that…

Almost certainly there is more life out there somewhere. But if the level of rarity is “for every billion years, it happens once in every thousand galaxies” rare, then unless FTL travel is real humanity will probably never get to see it. And until we see a second example, we can’t begin to calculate the level of rarity.

But it’s also not like we’ve looked at enough of our galaxy to say it’s rare either. We just don’t know.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#158

Post by nescioquid »

superposeur wrote: post #6

This 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…

I think you enjoy the top comment for the phrase

>> 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.

There is nothing like the blunt expanse of a simple fact to sharpen the mind. If the consequent should be that, based on the evidence we are alone and therefore first, I postulate an obligation to seed the cult of Apollo throughout the universe -- the god of the one thing without which life itself would be a mistake.

I leave it to HN to fuck up the answer.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#159

Post by rqtwteye »

echelon wrote: post #136
rqtwteye wrote: post #135

I really, really, really hope we will discover life on another planet, preferably in another solar system. Right now we have a sample size of one so a lot of thinking about the origin is speculation. I hope this will change.

I always like to daydream about the various solutions to the Fermi Paradox. If we're not early, if life isn't rare, and there are intelligent species [1], what might most of it look like? I don't think most of them would match the techno signatures we're familiar with. Factories, gas emissions, etc. are an industrial age thing. What if they're really smart? What does that look like? What kind of signals might we dete…

"I also imagine they've found a way to escape the limitations of intelligence and death, perhaps by becoming computers of some kind."

I am 100% convinced that this is in our future, not even very far out. Why put up with our flawed bodies if we don't have to? First we will probably replace parts of the body with something better until eventually the whole body has been replaced.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#160

Post by NineStarPoint »

holoduke wrote: post #84

The fact that there is something, just something can drive me crazy. Why is there something and not just nothing.

In the end, if you go all the way back through the chain of causation (whatever causation even looks like outside of the bounds of reality we know within our universe), whatever it is that resulted in our universe (whether it be the big bang or a god or alien that created the bing bang or a higher being that created said god or alien)…at some point, something must have come from nothing. It’s the only inevitable truth, and it drives me crazy too.
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