A hallucinogen is like a telescope.
Many users of hallucinogens report meeting "machine elves".
Maybe we should be looking there.
The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
21–30 of 102 posts
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#22I'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.
Even further - not only the development of biological life forms on other planets would totally depend on the circumstances on that planet and create unimaginably variable life forms, but also these very different life forms would develop very different cultures and as a result, very different technologies. So even when we look for radio signals, we are looking for something that totally depends on our own technology, which is the product of our own civilization that is in turn the product of our own culture, which is a product of our own biology that was created by the circumstances on our planet.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#23Question 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 keywo…
"Shadow biosphere" may be a useful search term.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#24Question 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 keywo…
"Shadow biosphere" may be a useful search term.
Searching this term I found an article with an amusingly similar title:
> Life on Earth... but not as we know it
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/14/shadow-biosp...
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#25I'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.
Counterpoint: Alien life will probably look very similar to life on earth. If you look at evolution then countless species have evolved into something crab-like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvfR3XLXPvw Turns out that their form is pretty good for survival. While biology can take on a myriad of forms, the competitive nature of life will weed out a lot of them. And since the rules for biochemistry are the same across the universe similar traits that are beneficial here will probably be beneficial there.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#26Question 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 keywo…
Very, very unlikely like astronomically so. Most microorganisms are so small they're practically transparent so we have to exploit biochemistry to "stain" them - hence why you'll often hear of bacteria classified as either Gram positive or negative, because of the Gram stain. If the biochemistry is unique or even slightly different i.e. right handed chirality, we'd basically have zero of our usual tools at our disposal.
There's already a whole world of terrestrial microbes that we expect or even know for certain to exist but can't culture, let alone stain, which means we can't really study them. We'd (theoretically) eventually notice them on electron microscopy slides though, which is how we know there's many unculturable microbes, but whether we'd recognize them as alien is a completely different matter. The microbial world is very diverse and there's nothing I can think of that'd set something apart as alien since we can analyze the chemistry with an electron microscope.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#27For 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…
There is zero consensus that there is a "non-human intelligence visiting Earth". There is, one could argue, a phenomenon of some kind, either real or imagined, but nobody seems to know what it is. And yes, I’m familiar with the subject, and I’ve been following it for decades. Also, I think "disclosure" is somewhat of a misnomer. If people don’t know what it is, there’s nothing to disclose. People have been beating th…
The novelty factor is one reason. I can’t imagine being so advanced but not interested in other life forms.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#28The issue of "if you lose your keys at night, the first place you look is under the lamppost" problem with searching for alien life has bothered me too, since I was about the age of this professor's trip to Hawaii. But unlike her my musing never resulted in anything useful.
I'm so glad someone is thinking about this and that that person sounds like a broad thinker!
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#29For 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...
Been too long since we've had a nice grainy photo of bigfoot.
Re: The search for extraterrestrial life as we don’t know it
#30I'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.
Counterpoint: Alien life will probably look very similar to life on earth. If you look at evolution then countless species have evolved into something crab-like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvfR3XLXPvw Turns out that their form is pretty good for survival. While biology can take on a myriad of forms, the competitive nature of life will weed out a lot of them. And since the rules for biochemistry are the same acro…
I agree with this but would the intelligent beings on other planets be the same size as humans? Could there be giant creatures that are just as intelligent as us?