Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whats the common origin of organic life again?
That it originated on one planet and was sent to the other by ejecta, as mentioned in the article.
That's a hypothesis... It's still totally speculative
I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
221–230 of 268 posts
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cmon folks, let’s be realistic. If someone at NASA had indeed reason to believe life exist(s/ed) on Mars it would 200% have leaked by now. No funding discussion would inhibit someone from leaking this information. It’s the biggest discovery in human history and you think someone’s sitting on it for funding reasons?! Especially since the immediate reaction would be to pour billions into them following up? A big discov…
I don't think that microscopical life in Mars is the biggest discovery in human history. It's more like an interesting trivia. But it doesn't change people's lives any more than the discovery of water on Mars.
I think one of the biggest questions about our universe is whether life is unique to Earth. It's pretty silly and self centered to assume that we're unique, but we don't really have any real way to confirm or deny the question outside of the ability to find signs of life within our solar system. So yes, finding signs of life on Mars is basically answering one of the most fundamental questions about our existence.
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may not change people's lives directly (unless you're an astrobiologist), but it would absolutely change our lives indirectly-- the effects on the future of space exploration and the ongoing human conversation would be dramatic. Ultimately no one's mind is likely to be changed about much of import - such as religious beliefs - but at the very least it will mean we approach Mars missions differently.
It'd surely have impact in the related fields. However, I'd save the "biggest discovery" title to findings that debunk and completely change our assumptions, rather than more evidence for assumptions we already hold. Perhaps, having another life origin to study will lead us to new understandings. But the mere discovery of alien life is not that disruptive. Given all theories and evidences we've observed thus far it's…
Solid point, if you're academically inclined. For the majority of the world's population, though, it's hard not to think "ALIEN LIFE CONFIRMED" headlines in every major news outlet might lead to some other shifts in public opinion.
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the "swapping spit" scenario, we the aliens and they are us. If genetic material did travel in either direction, it would be easily verified.
There is life on Mars -- JPL just doesn't want to tell us. Follow this logic: 1) two planets in habitable zone - both spontaneously cause life; 2) then many or most habitable zone planets have life; 3) Of the trillions of stars in our galaxy, there must be multitudes that have hosted intelligent life; 4) we don't hear SETI signals; 5) that means SETI must have snuffed themselves out with some super-technology; 6) erg…
Here's what I think:
1. ET life formed and vanished so quickly that they didn't even get to the stage where they generate electromagnetic signals.
2. ET life formed and got to generate EM waves, but:
- they're either too far from us that we haven't detected those waves yet;
- they only recently got to this stage and the signals they produce have not reached us yet;
- or both.
3. ET life formed way sooner than we did; figured out how to generate EM waves, and then vanished entirely. So, any signals of their civilization they must have sent out there have already reached earth, but before we began listening for such signals.
4. Then again, since there are practically infinite number of planets with habitable conditions for ET life, statistically speaking, we must have already received a signal from at least one of them.
Which leads me to this:
5. ET life doesn't exist, because the universe as we know it is most probably a simulation inside a computer and the computational resources can only render so many different objects at a time. (This is serious stuff, researchers have already proposed methods for verifying this: https://www.washington.edu/news/2012/12/10/do-we-live-in-a-c...).
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biological plausible explanation is that there simply has not been enough time for other civilizations to form up. It took us 4 billion years to reach civilization from primordial goo. Apparently not many planets remain habitable that long. It does not matter if you have a trillion planets if they don't remain stable long enough.
In all the vastness of the universe, “we were the first” is a stupendously implausible hypothesis compared to “we were the only”.
I did not imply at any point that we were the first, or only. Perhaps in our galaxy. I don't know if we could ever find out about civilizations in other galaxies.
There are a 100 billion galaxies. I'm ready to guess each has at least a few planets theoretically capable to sustain life for long enough.
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fastest way isn’t to eliminate the other possibilities, it’s to find a unique test for a that can’t be met by any of the others. Bear in mind that your list of alternative causes may be very long and each require large amounts of work to eliminate. I too find it strange that multiple landers have been sent to mars since Viking, ostensibly looking for evidence of present or past life, and have yet have carried no…
The authors suggest testing for chiraliry in an LR test. Life creates certain “handed” organic molecules while purely chemical reactions do not. They said there’s already designs for flight ready tests. NASA just needs to include it in a mars mission. But they have no plans to do so. This significantly increased my frustration with NASA.
I thought life on earth favoring a particular chirality was supposed to be primarily because of like common ancestors and stuff. If you flipped the chiralities of everything, would stuff no longer work?
Or, I guess really my question is, would it be nearly impossible for life on another planet to use the opposite chirality instead?
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure: Is the concept of objective meaning valid in any possible universe? Is it possible for the universe to be a fully observed deterministic system? Is there a universal objective function motivating what we consider reality? Is it possible to determine with certainty the origins of what we can conceptualize as reality? Is it possible to forecast with mathematical certainty events in future time steps. Basically ju…
> is godels incompleteness theorem disprovable Do you actually understand its proof? On what basis would it be disproven? It's really difficult for me to even conceive of what disproving it would even "mean" - you seem to think that it's somehow tied to whether the universe is deterministic, but it's not. A "disproof" would essentially break the very logical tools used to construct itself (since it is the nature of t…
I don’t accept non-constructive proofs that require “constructions” as being valid. (Diagonalization is another invalid technique in my book.)
So there’s at least one of us.
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#228Science becomes corrupted when the research focuses on finding proof of and ideal instead disproving it. There are no aliens. With the money wasted on looking for aliens we could have saved millions of lives with clean water, shelter, food and education. Scientists need to stop deluding themselves and tricking congress into funding pet projects that are so far fetched they border on fraud.
"Ancient explorers should never have ventured on ships to find new lands, for the cost of that could have been used in their countries to better serve the poor" /s
They had _real_ water to follow. Proof was right there, just go a little further.
Aliens is 100% pure fantasy.
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#229Science becomes corrupted when the research focuses on finding proof of and ideal instead disproving it. There are no aliens. With the money wasted on looking for aliens we could have saved millions of lives with clean water, shelter, food and education. Scientists need to stop deluding themselves and tricking congress into funding pet projects that are so far fetched they border on fraud.
What is your evidence that there are no aliens, then? Proving a negative in a virtually infinite universe looks like an uphill struggle, don't you think?
Exactly. You can't prove a negative, so there are no aliens.
There is not a single shred of evidence _ever_ found to support one iota of research funding. It's science fiction run amok.
Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
#230Science becomes corrupted when the research focuses on finding proof of and ideal instead disproving it. There are no aliens. With the money wasted on looking for aliens we could have saved millions of lives with clean water, shelter, food and education. Scientists need to stop deluding themselves and tricking congress into funding pet projects that are so far fetched they border on fraud.
Total world expenditure on science projects of any kind at all is downright negligible compared to biggest expenses, such as military, as pointed out...Life conditions, solutions to pollution, most harming diseases etc, could all be fairly easily solved in rather short timespans of 5-20 years probably. The thing that's missing is not the money, it's the humanity's collective consciousness, maturity and responsibility…
I agree, we shouldn't be in any of the wars we are in today. But that is like saying we shouldn't try to reign in pork barrel politics because there is so much spent on war. Or we shouldn't try to save on maintenance, software, labor, etc... you name it "because we spend so much on war".
Alien research is faith based, not fact based.