I've always found the framework we use to search for extraterrestrial life to be too based on our own experience. It could take countless forms, most of which we could never recognize or understand, and might be present everywhere without us knowing. I'm glad that more of the science community is pushing to broaden our horizons.
The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
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Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#12For those who don't know, there's a very significant movement happening within factions of the US government to push disclosure on potential non-human intelligence visiting earth. This 15 minute guide is worth the read https://www.uap.guide Other significant efforts searching for alien life include the Galileo Project by Dr. Avi Loeb of Harvard https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home Edit: For those who don't kn…
"...An UFO has landed in America...the only country UFO's only seem to land in..." - https://youtu.be/HIVZa7c7WZU
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#13Question for people up to date with modern biochemistry: if there were extraterrestrial microbes on Earth right now, with totally unique chemical origins unrelated to proteins, nucleic acids, saccharides, etc., how likely would we be to notice them? And which analytic method would find them first?
Is there a systemic search for this kind of crazy stuff, and where are the review papers for them? I don't know the keywords!
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#14Life may not look like us, but it sure seems like it's going to have nucleic acids just like us.
The building blocks are extremely common, they seem to have fairly broad initial conditions, and it seems like they are practically inevitable once those conditions exist.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#15For those who don't know, there's a very significant movement happening within factions of the US government to push disclosure on potential non-human intelligence visiting earth. This 15 minute guide is worth the read https://www.uap.guide Other significant efforts searching for alien life include the Galileo Project by Dr. Avi Loeb of Harvard https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home Edit: For those who don't kn…
Funny how both UFO and Angel/Devil sightings went down just as ubiquitous personal video recording devices became commonplace...
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#16Life may not look like us, but it sure seems like it's going to have nucleic acids just like us. The building blocks are extremely common, they seem to have fairly broad initial conditions, and it seems like they are practically inevitable once those conditions exist.
> it seems like they are practically inevitable once those conditions exist
Given that we have exactly one occurrence of Origin of Life, how did you conclude this? From life originating quickly on Earth once it had cooled enough? That could be explained by the conditions in which life might originate not persisting for very long after a planet forms.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#17For those who don't know, there's a very significant movement happening within factions of the US government to push disclosure on potential non-human intelligence visiting earth. This 15 minute guide is worth the read https://www.uap.guide Other significant efforts searching for alien life include the Galileo Project by Dr. Avi Loeb of Harvard https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home Edit: For those who don't kn…
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Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#18We'll make lousy pets.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#19The first alien intelligence we humans will encounter is likely to be one created by ourselves.
"V'Ger": https://youtu.be/kHUZCVl28lg
V’Ger wasn’t built by humanity it was built around a fictional Voyager spacecraft, who built it was never disclosed by the common fandom theory is that this might have been the progenitor idea to what eventually became the Borg in TNG.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#20I've always found the framework we use to search for extraterrestrial life to be too based on our own experience. It could take countless forms, most of which we could never recognize or understand, and might be present everywhere without us knowing. I'm glad that more of the science community is pushing to broaden our horizons.
I wrote a little blog about this many years ago that’s still online on my basically unupdated site:
https://adamierymenko.com/titan/
In this I’m at least speculating that Titan might be likely to host alien life in its steamy cryotropical environment. I’d love to see NASA sink a submersible in those methane seas and look for cryowhales. (Or more likely cryobacteria but cryowhales would rule.)
I’d expect life there to be wholly biochemically alien, probably based on methane or ammonia as solvents, and probably very metabolically “slow” compared to most life here. We might miss even macroscopic Titan life without time lapse photography.
To any intelligent Titanians we would look like the Balrogs from Lord of the Rings: burning lava monsters with blood of molten water.