Ever get the impression that NASA is doing a disservice to the scientific process with these sensational media pushes? Arsenic based life anyone?
NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
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Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#22Finding fossil microorganisms and observing that they look very similar to those found on Earth would be an indication to me that the rock may not be a meteorite after all, or that it may be a meteorite from Earth (i.e. blasted out into space by an impact, then fallen back to Earth some time later).
Second that.
Altough
"There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stump."
makes me a little curious. I'm not a biologist, so someone who is, how often do you find organisms/fossils completely different from known organisms?
Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#23In older news, the Journal of Cosmology is going out of business: http://daviddobbs.posterous.com/journal-of-cosmology-going-o... David Dobbs's Wired article on the "meteorite life" story is worth reading: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/aliens-riding-mete...
Please submit this! I'd love to read qualified commentary on many claims this blog post makes.
I submitted the Wired story:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2293947
and then realised that was probably not the link you meant, since it was not the blog post. If you are wondering about the validity of the press release, I trust David Dobbs to quote a press release correctly; I'm guessing the journal is making another go of things.
Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#24if they were sure bout that, they would post it on nasa.gov i guess
Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#25Ever get the impression that NASA is doing a disservice to the scientific process with these sensational media pushes? Arsenic based life anyone?
Second that, the so called "astrobiology" is one of those fields which we don't know if the study is at all scientific or meaningful until we meet the alien in person. I remember watching a video of the 80's featuring a Professor of "Supernatural Studies".
These are, as one may call the study of "unknown unknowns"
Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#26So, in a few centuries we will have finally opponents and maybe then we will stop to kill ourselves.
Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does say "before it is published". Presumably you would want to vet a paper with trusted colleagues before releasing it even semi-publicly.
But once it's published, it's (seemingly) most-often behind a paywall, blocking further access to those who could analyze or benefit from it.
Journal of Cosmology is open access on the internet. Given the field though, I doubt anyone that could really add to these findings is going to be held back by a subscription, I assume it's very hard to get access to these rocks and without the evidence to experiment on your just taking the authors word really.
Very different from say an algorithms paper where anyone can implement and run the code and possibly find improvements.
Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#28Full paper can be found at http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html
Did they have to make it look like a conspiracy website?
It is weird the sites design, maybe it's one of the reasons they are going out of business, people arriving there from a search engine may not find it much of a reputable journal at first glance.
Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#29I'm not impressed. The evidence backing the Martian microbe claims for meteorite ALH 84001 were far, far more robust than these seem to be and yet at the end of the day succumbed to the onslaught of criticism.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claiming that you've found life inside a rock that has sat in a stew of micro-organisms (the Earth) for thousands of years is one thing, claiming that such life must be extra-terrestrial in origin is another thing entirely and requires a higher standard of evidence.
Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
#30Finding fossil microorganisms and observing that they look very similar to those found on Earth would be an indication to me that the rock may not be a meteorite after all, or that it may be a meteorite from Earth (i.e. blasted out into space by an impact, then fallen back to Earth some time later).
... or a supervolcano right around dinosaur bedtime.