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Is There A Giant Life Form Lurking In Our Solar System? Possibly, Say Scientists

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11–20 of 61 posts

Re: Is There A Giant Life Form Lurking In Our Solar System? Possibly, Say Scientists

#11
post #4

To be cynical, a lot of things are possible. It's possible that anaerobic bacteria still live in small pockets beneath the surface of Mars. It's possible, if unlikely, that extremophiles survive on the sweltering surface of Venus, or floating in its sulphurous clouds. Of course, the fact that these things are possible is still incredibly cool. While this article lacks much technical substance, this is the kind of thi…

Floating in the clouds of Venus, sure. There's some semi-Earthlike zones in the cloud layer. On the surface, very probably not. It is unlikely that there is any structure that could pump entropy out of the cell faster than the horrific surface environment of Venus would be pumping it in. (More conventionally known as heat, but I find this formulation helps focus on the fact that "too hot" really is an intrinsic problem for life, not merely an incidental one that might be overcome by more chemistry.) I'm not even 100% convinced that a technological solution is possible that could work over geologic time frames, let alone adding the restrictions of abiogenesis on to the structure. (Though on the topic of abiogenesis, it's difficult to see how to apply any of the current thoughts on that to an atmospheric environment; Venusian extremophiles would also probably be immigrants from Earth.)

Re: Is There A Giant Life Form Lurking In Our Solar System? Possibly, Say Scientists

#12

I feel like I've been trapped in the corner at a cocktail party by someone who insists on showing me bad drawings on a cocktail napkin. This guy's writing style is so annoying that I couldn't even make it to the end of the article. Attempting to parse this has left me feeling slightly dumber than 5 minutes ago.

If you think his writing is bad, you should hear him talk. Excruciatingly dumbed-down drivel.

Re: Is There A Giant Life Form Lurking In Our Solar System? Possibly, Say Scientists

#13

The entire article is based on this sentence "Thus, life on Titan could involve huge (by Earth standards) and very slowly metabolizing cells, in which case biomass densities would be higher than calculated above." which the author interprets as "a life form in our solar system that's not a puny, dumb little thing, but a huge dumb thing. Like dog-sized. Or maybe Volkswagen-sized." I'm sorry.. but a "huge by (earth sta…

Yeah with "giant" and "lurking" I was hoping for hints of a planet-sized creature existing in dark matter or some interdimensional plane or extreme wavelength or something. Title is a bit link-baity.

same here. I was thinking that it might be a "lurking" magic bit in all particles that are working together to form a super-super intelligent...

Re: Is There A Giant Life Form Lurking In Our Solar System? Possibly, Say Scientists

#18
I'm still having a hard time contemplating the fact that WE exist.

Sitting in front of our flat monitors with access to nearly all information which is stored all around planet Earth.

Phones that connect us to billions of people.

Brains large enough to hypothesize the creation of the universe.

We can create rockets that send probes to other planets and even the edge of our solar system.

We regularly travel around in amazing personal vehicles that allow us to travel at over 100 mph in about 10 seconds.

The fact that each one of us had about one quadrillionth percent chance of even being born, yet here we are.

The fact that we can even talk and communicate effectively is amazing.

We can imagine future technologies and have goals to work towards such as immortality, brain-computer interfaces, teleportation, and mining asteroids.

We have so much to be thankful for. Everything is amazing.

WTF. [0]

I have a dog that can't do anything but eat, pee, poop, and play fetch. What kind of activities do other organisms do that humans can't do? Other than telepathy, and flight, and breathing without oxygen, and energy creation through sunlight.

Yet we still make fellow humans and animals suffer daily. We eat shit food and get depressed and some people even try to kill themselves. We have concepts like good and evil and actually hate other humans just because they are not exactly like our culture or have more stuff than we do. We have enough nuclear missiles in the ocean to eradicate life on earth.

Terraforming mars will be fun. I hope that I live to see the start of that adventure. The next 100 years in general will be very fun. I'm extremely glad that I get to be a part of this awesome world at this extraordinary time in human history. Please, nobody fuck it up too bad.

My point is, regarding the article, ANYTHING is possible. God is possible, ghosts are possible, flying spaghetti monsters are possible but until I see a video with convincing explanation or accredited scientists agree that something is very likely, is there really any point of just making up stuff?

Mars having a thriving self-sustaining human-like civilization underground is possible. Aliens living among us for several years is possible. No scientist will say that either of those hypothesis are absolutely impossible, but there is no point in proposing it unless you're writing a science fiction novel/movie/comic book.

Re: Is There A Giant Life Form Lurking In Our Solar System? Possibly, Say Scientists

#20
post #18

I'm still having a hard time contemplating the fact that WE exist. Sitting in front of our flat monitors with access to nearly all information which is stored all around planet Earth. Phones that connect us to billions of people. Brains large enough to hypothesize the creation of the universe. We can create rockets that send probes to other planets and even the edge of our solar system. We regularly travel around in…

It did take us a long time to get here though. Luckily things build on each other and we're good at patterns.
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