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Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

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Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#131

Post by akiselev »

nnq wrote: post #118
crusso wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know that. There are plenty of examples on Earth of cross-species infections. No telling how microbial/fungal agents could directly attack or indirectly impact the delicate balance here on Earth. Further, any microbe hitching a ride aboard an alien may well find Earth's general environment to be easy to thrive in. Think Kudzu, but at the microbial level. Eventually, the alien microbe and/or the natural Earth…

You assume that all life would be carbon based. And even assuming a "super fit" carbon-base alien microbe, the worst you could get would be some kind of eco-disaster that will end up being controlled anyway - like some sort of alien-algae overpopulating our oceans doing some eco-havoc. Even that would involve a kind of "super-fitness" created by an accelerated evolution running for much longer than here on Earth, as…

The possibility of non-carbon based life is so remote as to be irrelevant. We'd have to go through many star birth and supernovae cycles to get to the point where silicon is even anywhere near as abundant as carbon is now.

As for microbes from other worlds, who knows. The properties of water are pretty much required for life (as far as we know) and so they'd have 0 trouble interfacing with most organisms. Combine that with the fact that the basic amino acids can form in a wide range of conditions and you've got the recipe for interference. Also, infections happen when organisms invade and multiple, some times the damage is a secondary side effect (i.e. waste or toxic byproducts)

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#132

Post by rsheridan6 »

vacri wrote: post #124
rsheridan6 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sixty years is not a long time, and there's no reason to believe that this trend will continue forever.

There's also no reason to believe it won't, unless you're aiming for bias in the analysis.

I would not deny the possible that, for reasons I don't understand, any species advanced enough to be capable of interstellar travel behaves like a cross between Bono and Peter Singer. But I would not stake the survival of my species on it.

And there is a reason to believe that they probably won't be - they will be the product of Darwinian evolution, just like us, which is really not a very nice thing.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#133

Post by illuminate »

wubbfindel wrote: post #55
mixmax wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

religions have an uncanny ability to either ignore scientific facts or bend their religion to fit with the facts. Remember that originally it was thought that the Earth was in the center of the universe because God had put it there. When the facts changed religion was eventually bent to acomodate the facts. Science changes and religion adapts.

Religious tradition and dogma changes yes, but their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves. Interestingly the bible doesn't make any comment to suggest there is no other life in the universe. In fact it does refer to extra terrestrial life; God sent "angels", literally translated "messengers", to the earth.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/8009299/Po... I always found the Catholic Church's response amusing.

"The senior Vatican scientist, Brother Guy Consolmagno, said that he would be delighted if we encountered intelligent aliens and would be happy to baptise them. His pronouncement opens up the possibility of space missionaries heading out to the stars to convert aliens to Christianity. Speaking on the eve of addressing the British Science Festival, Dr Consolmangno said he had no problem with science and religion co-existing together. But he dismissed Creationism and claimed that the revival of “intelligent design" – the controversial theory that only God can explain gaps in the theory of evolution – was “bad theology". Dr Consolmango is one of a team of 12 astronomers working for the Vatican, said the Catholic Church had been supporting and funding science for centuries."

Granted, not enough centuries, but still a nice statement.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#134

Post by gbog »

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #60
gbog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is nice with alien is that we really don't know. So the sentence above tells much more about your pessimism than about aliens.

I tend toward a similar pessimism. Hawking has said that we need only look at the history of inter-species relationships on our planet (let alone race relationships) to get a hint of what exopolitics might look like. He goes on to mention that in terms of the search for alien life, we'd do best to keep our heads low.

The strong assumption here is that the is no divide between intelligent and non intelligent life forms. I don't think it is the only view.

I'd rather compare alien encounter with something like Marco Polo going to China: he didn't wish to kill them all, was impressed by some achievement and inventions but was also disgusted by the Chinese diet. Came back and wrote a book, and it was so foreign most readers didn't believe him.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#135

Post by gbog »

rsheridan6 wrote: post #91
gbog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is nice with alien is that we really don't know. So the sentence above tells much more about your pessimism than about aliens.

Any alien lifeform that can reproduce would be subject to Darwinian natural selection. It would tend to grow exponentially, if the resources were available, and if you do the math, the universe ain't big enough for more than one exponentially reproducing species.

You don't know. Alien could be of a different scale, ant or mountain sized, and then most likely wouldn't even notice or mind our presence.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#136

Post by gbog »

crusso wrote: post #103
gbog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is nice with alien is that we really don't know. So the sentence above tells much more about your pessimism than about aliens.

we really don't know I think that's the point. When you don't know anything about the motivations of an alien race that can easily wipe out our species, why would you take any chances? Pretend for a moment that I have a Button. The owner of that Button can push it and eliminate every person on the planet besides the people that owner didn't want to kill (friends, family, city, state, country, whatever) Would you be a…

Well I don't think I said I'd purposefully give such a killer switch to an alien race, I just said we don't know.

We are all aware of the reasons to be pessimist, because of all the books and movies, but there are reasons to be optimist too: advanced technology may come with advanced ethics, for instance.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#137

Post by snowwrestler »

akiselev wrote: post #129
snowwrestler wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enlightenment and technological superiority don't necessarily go hand in hand. In fact, looking at human history, a lot of technological advancement came directly out of actual or potential warfare. (Remember that the U.S. went to the moon to beat the Russians.) As Douglas Adams said: "Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so…

You're trying to use humans as an example for the possible disposition and psychology of aliens? Really? Does it not strike you inappropriate to do so considering the billions of years of evolution and absolutely random events like mass extinctions that led to the rise of mammals and eventually humans?

Humans are the only real evidence we have of how a technological society develops. Evolution produced us, and evolution arises from the physical laws of the universe. Why should we believe it would operate differently elsewhere in the universe?

No planet will have infinite resources, so it's logical that life will develop through continuous competition for territory and materials--just like it did here.

Looking back at Earth's history, it's not like we are the only violent forms of life we know of. Quite the opposite.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#138

Post by snowwrestler »

stcredzero wrote: post #108
crusso wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

enlightened species Name the occurrence in the history of our planet where the much-more advanced/capable species did not displace and diminish the indiginent one. In many cases, the more advanced or aggressive species completely wiped out the existing one. There's a lot more that's extremely unlikely in the Star Trek universe besides just transporter beams and faster-than-light travel. A sufficiently advanced specie…

> Name the occurrence in the history of our planet where the much-more advanced/capable species did not displace and diminish the indiginent one. Name the occurrences where they did. That word, species, I'm not so sure you know what it means.

Humans and buffalo. Humans and passenger pigeons. Humans and mastodons. Humans and elephants. Humans and tigers. Humans and smallpox. Humans and dodos. Etc.

Re: Curiosity images strange metallic-looking object on Mars

#140

Post by kenbellows »

martinced wrote: post #126
wubbfindel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious tradition and dogma changes yes, but their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves. Interestingly the bible doesn't make any comment to suggest there is no other life in the universe. In fact it does refer to extra terrestrial life; God sent "angels", literally translated "messengers", to the earth.

"...their "holy" books can't rewrite themselves." I'm shocked. Just shocked. You mean there's no hope that translation errors are going to be fixed? For example in hebrew the same word is used for either "young woman" and "virgin". And some believe that the christian made a translation mistake by transforming the young woman mary into the virgin mary. I think that if that one is a mistake, it should be fixed ; )

Just a note, the "virgin" that applies directly to Mary (Luke 1:34, "And Mary said to the angel, 'How will this be, since I am a virgin?'", among other passages) is written in Greek, not Hebrew. Granted, there are some prophetic passages in the OT that use virgin (e.g. Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."), but just make sure everyone's on the same page when challenging dogma. Is the Greek word thought to be mistranslated as well?
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