They should do sequencing and metagenomics on this alleged alien life.
Strands, sequences, twisting, separating, joining. Abathur would be pleased...
Honk if you played Heart of The Swarm...
British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
21–30 of 33 posts
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#22Published on the Journal of Cosmology: http://journalofcosmology.com/
Wikipedia lists no less than 6 references questioning the credibility of this journal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology#Reliabili...).
I think this discovery should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#23I wonder what it smells like. Does it get happy or sad?
Will it think our brains taste better with mustard or ketchup?
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#24"In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere, we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space" so, just because we don't KNOW of any mechanism by which large particles could be transported to the stratosphere, we conclude that the particles originated from space - even if we obviously don't KNOW of any mechanism by which life could o…
The mechanism to get these particles there would both have to be very powerful and very not obvious. The scientists don't say that these particles must be from space, it's just possible, or even very likely.
Possible, yes. Very likely... from your handle, you should know about Bayesan reasoning. Considering that we know for sure that there is life on Earth (p=1), while having free-floating life in outer space is a very remote hypothesis (0a) the sample was contaminated, or there was some other error in the experiement
b) those life forms originated from Earth
c) those life forms originated from outer space
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mechanism to get these particles there would both have to be very powerful and very not obvious. The scientists don't say that these particles must be from space, it's just possible, or even very likely.
Possible, yes. Very likely... from your handle, you should know about Bayesan reasoning. Considering that we know for sure that there is life on Earth (p=1), while having free-floating life in outer space is a very remote hypothesis (0 a) the sample was contaminated, or there was some other error in the experiement b) those life forms originated from Earth c) those life forms originated from outer space
Setting p=1 is sort of frowned upon in the bayesian methodology. Bayesian inference has nothing to do with this discussion, because the results can only be explained by speculation, and have not been externally verified etc.
Constructing priors from the knowledge of what has not been seen before seems to me like an abuse of the methodology. You might as well say "It's impossible because it's impossible."
I do tend towards a terrestrial origin, but it's certainly a good thing to investigate further how these organisms got there, what are they doing and what sequences do they have...
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possible, yes. Very likely... from your handle, you should know about Bayesan reasoning. Considering that we know for sure that there is life on Earth (p=1), while having free-floating life in outer space is a very remote hypothesis (0 a) the sample was contaminated, or there was some other error in the experiement b) those life forms originated from Earth c) those life forms originated from outer space
Setting p=1 is sort of frowned upon in the bayesian methodology. Bayesian inference has nothing to do with this discussion, because the results can only be explained by speculation, and have not been externally verified etc. Constructing priors from the knowledge of what has not been seen before seems to me like an abuse of the methodology. You might as well say "It's impossible because it's impossible." I do tend to…
Actually, to me, this seems like a perfect situation to apply Bayesian inference: we need to update the probability estimate of a hypothesis (there is life in outer space) based on new evidence (they found those particles through their experiment).
Anyway, I completely agree with your last sentence: It's certainly a good thing to investigate, I'm not saying they're charlatans. It's the "very likely" that I didn't agree with :)
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#27Life is constantly surprising us, it's well known that there is bacteria on the outside of the ISS, it could well be that life is falling down rather than up. I'd like to see a DNA sample that doesn't point to existing earth life, for me just seeing diatoms seems a little too early to reach this conclusion.
I was thinking the same thing. Of course if life is falling down to earth, it may be hard to tell apart, but there should be some hints of life optimized for earth versus optimized for elsewhere. I find the bacteria on the ISS fascinating. Can you point me to a good article?
http://rt.com/news/iss-bacteria-mir-mutation-765/
Also while looking for that I found this which shows bacteria grows larger in space.
http://www.space.com/21886-space-bacteria-grows-strange-ways...
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#28Paper: http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf The journal of Cosmology is regarded as a low-quality publication by many scientists. I can't judge the assertions in the paper but the methodology seems good.
What flags this for me is that if you have an organism in hand , it's easy to do more analysis to provide evidence that it is not terrestrial. At the moment, I'd still say that the hypotheses of "their probes was contaminated", "our model of what particles are in the stratosphere are wrong and this is fully terrestrial life", and "they're flat-out lying" remain higher odds based on this evidence than "they found extr…
I would buy the stratospheric model being wrong, but assuming good faith I think they've addressed the contamination objection - you'll note that they did a control with the same procedures except for opening the sample drawer and it came back clean. This is highly reproducible so I'm going to assume they're reporting in good faith.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#29Paper: http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf The journal of Cosmology is regarded as a low-quality publication by many scientists. I can't judge the assertions in the paper but the methodology seems good.
That is a well known crackpot article, already debunked by biologists and astronomers alike: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/16/diatomsiiiiin-...
Please read your link. That addresses deficiencies in a paper about a meteorite. This paper is about samples collected from a weather balloon. And while the criticisms in your link are well-founded, I feel sure you can find equally well-founded criticisms without all the distracting ad-hominem insults.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
For reference, here is the front page of the Journal of Cosmology: http://journalofcosmology.com The paper contains almost no detail about the methods used, and lacks involvement of a diverse group of authors. This indicates that the authors are not thinking hard enough about alternative theories to explain what they have found. For instance, the paper contains this sentence: "It is also unlikely that the fragment co…
Unless they have a completely sterile, sealed container that is open only at certain altitudes to collect material in a filter, they will have nothing to stand on. NASA had a satellite that was sent up to collect samples of debris along a particular orbital belt and worked like this. They were doing tests to see how much space junk had accumulated and would open one of the compartments for a fixed period of time, the…
Unless they have a completely sterile, sealed container that is open only at certain altitudes to collect material in a filter, they will have nothing to stand on.
That is exactly their claim (with detailed method), and they did a control as well, in which the container was not opened, to validate their anti-contamination protocols. I'm all for critiques of the paper, but I do think you might have gone to the bother of looking at it first.