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I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

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Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#231

Post by RobertRoberts »

tudorw wrote: post #169
RobertRoberts wrote: post #167

Science 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.

The search for meaning, for answering fundamental questions and for furthering scientific progress has a value, to blame the search for aliens for the state of the world is misguided. Perhaps there are other cuts we could make that would have a bigger impact... "Total world military expenditure rose to $1822 billion in 2018" https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2019/world-militar...

I am not blaming the "state of the world" I am saying it's pure waste to spend money on researching fantasy projects.

Military spending is a strawman whataboutism.

It's not about "cuts" it's about sanity. There are no aliens, no proof of aliens, nothing. These programs should not have been started in the first place.

If these peoples lives are so devoid of meaning that they have to spend their lives researching fantasies, they should fund in themselves instead of taking tax payer money for it.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#232

Post by not_kurt_godel »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #219
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 agree with you that any progress in these areas would include breaking pretty much everything we "know." That's kind of the point though, current epistemology and computability questions basically stop with these irreducable theories. So we live with this irreducable uncertainty currently. I'm not proposing solutions or saying that there are errors with these proofs. Rather, when I finally understood them years ago…

I think you'd probably be interested in Gerard 't Hooft's latest work: https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548 It's rather, shall we say, controversial (that is: widely rejected by his peers), but it's an attempt to construct a framework through which the laws of the universe can be interpreted as deterministic which leverages the sorts of epistemological concepts you seem to be interested in.

(That being said: I personally find "is there an amoeba on Europa?" to be supremely interesting, but to each their own.)

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#233

Post by AndrewKemendo »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #232
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that any progress in these areas would include breaking pretty much everything we "know." That's kind of the point though, current epistemology and computability questions basically stop with these irreducable theories. So we live with this irreducable uncertainty currently. I'm not proposing solutions or saying that there are errors with these proofs. Rather, when I finally understood them years ago…

I think you'd probably be interested in Gerard 't Hooft's latest work: https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548 It's rather, shall we say, controversial (that is: widely rejected by his peers), but it's an attempt to construct a framework through which the laws of the universe can be interpreted as deterministic which leverages the sorts of epistemological concepts you seem to be interested in. (That being said: I personally…

Thanks for this, I'll definitely take a look. My concern always, as you point out, is falling into crackpottery territory. Hopefully being acutely aware of that serves as an inoculation to some degree.

I should also state, I certainly find the concept of life on other planets extremely fascinating. However as I said above its insufficient to give clarity to some of the more fundamentally existential questions around our existence.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#234

Post by not_kurt_godel »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #233
not_kurt_godel wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd probably be interested in Gerard 't Hooft's latest work: https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548 It's rather, shall we say, controversial (that is: widely rejected by his peers), but it's an attempt to construct a framework through which the laws of the universe can be interpreted as deterministic which leverages the sorts of epistemological concepts you seem to be interested in. (That being said: I personally…

Thanks for this, I'll definitely take a look. My concern always, as you point out, is falling into crackpottery territory. Hopefully being acutely aware of that serves as an inoculation to some degree. I should also state, I certainly find the concept of life on other planets extremely fascinating. However as I said above its insufficient to give clarity to some of the more fundamentally existential questions around…

I should also mention - there is quite a bit of discussion on 't Hooft's work on StackOverflow, including heavy participation by 't Hooft himself. I don't have any pointers handy, but they should be fairly easy to discover with a minimal amount of searching.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#235

Post by benibela »

mmazing wrote: post #202
computerex wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surface water sufficient to sustain microorganisms was found on Mars by Viking, Pathfinder, Phoenix and Curiosity; Ultraviolet (UV) activation of the Martian surface material did not, as initially proposed, cause the LR reaction: a sample taken from under a UV-shielding rock was as LR-active as surface samples; Complex organics, have been reported on Mars by Curiosity’s scientists, possibly including kerogen, which…

“Sure, but where's the evidence?”

Nowhere

This could all be explained by a weather balloon being dragged to Mars and releasing swamp gas

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#236

Post by bufferoverflow »

ianai wrote: post #208
jf- wrote: post #165

Earlier 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.

Life on our planet does. Doesn't mean that's the case everywhere else. Or even anywhere else, for that matter.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#237

Post by mturmon »

noetic_techy wrote: post #72
amingilani wrote: post #62

> Inexplicably, over the 43 years since Viking, none of NASA’s subsequent Mars landers has carried a life detection instrument to follow up on these exciting results I'm very surprised by that. Especially since, as the article says, "NASA maintains the search for alien life among its highest priorities". I thought that would obviously translate to sending life-detection instruments to B̶a̶r̶s̶o̶o̶m̶ Mars.

This fact often catches people by surprise when I tell them also. The more conspiratorial theory is that JPL prefers not to include life detection equipment because it would mean the end of robotic missions and more of an emphasis to get humans there to do real biology, which is more the domain of Houston Mission Control. Follow the money...

Uh, no, this is nuts. I work there and personally know the PI of the below-linked instrument which is designed to “search for organics and minerals that have been altered by watery environments and may be signs of past microbial life.” Some of the best engineers at JPL have worked to get this ready for Mars2020.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/sherloc/

There is a standard and open pipeline to getting an instrument on these missions. Scientific American is not part of it. It’s more like AGU, LPSC, Icarus, and the National Academies decadal survey — writing actual instrument proposals with hypotheses and trace back to hardware that can make the measurements needed to test the hypothesis.

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#238

Post by lazyjones »

wongarsu wrote: post #190
rightbyte wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would extra terrestrial bacteria have any chance versus generation after generation of earth specific bacteria in life forms on earth? I mean, wouldn't it be like a baseball team showing up for cricket or maybe slalom?

Whatever bacteria might live on Mars had millennia of evolutionary pressure to adapt to an environment with no lifeforms larger than an inch. It seems very unlikely that they will interact with human physiology in a meaningful way. That doesn't mean they can't be harmful though. Bacteria that quickly eats through concrete for example would be just as bad to bring back.

> It seems very unlikely that they will interact with human physiology in a meaningful way.

Human physiology depends very much on various bacteria. Supposedly, there are 10 times as many bacterial cells than human cells in our bodies. Perhaps you should reconsider your attitude if you take into account that bacteria from Mars might wreak havoc on these bacteria?

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#239

Post by Symmetry »

jayalpha wrote: post #175

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary data. We don't have this data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_exper... It is "inconclusive" at best.

Generally I think people tend to underestimate how quickly life arose on Earth but underestimate how quickly it took for life to turn into complex life. Just judging from how things went on Earth we should expect cemosynthetic life to be relatively common but photosynthesis to rarely arise, much less eukaryotic cells or multi-cellular animals. I drew out a timeline comparing how long it took various stages of life to arise on Earth versus how long it took Mars to lose all its surface water. Even on Earth we humans didn't arise until relatively close to when the expanding Sun will render the surface uninhabitable.

http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-likely-i...

Re: I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

#240

Post by bogusButtlord » 

  because they will freak out
Of all the limp-dick, imaginary bugaboos you could hope to trot out, while showing your ass in another comments section, this one is supremely corny.

So pathetic is the idea, that it's like saying: "gas stations don't sell their gasoline in 12 ounce bottles, because they're afraid of getting stuck with all the gas that looks bad, so they make you pump it, to hide all the sludge and impurities." and then making up a wives tale like: "gas stations only TELL us that they on't sell bottled gas, because drunks used to buy the wrong bottles and spontaneously combust. The TRUTH is that they're slipping us all batches of sludge at the pump."

That's what you sound like. You sound like a moron.

That's not why gas doesn't come in bottles. There are a hundred reasons why gas isn't sold by the bottle. It's not because there's some cover up.

No one would freak out if space aliens were discovered. No one.

We talk about space aliens all the time. It's plainly obvious that people are comfortable with the hypothesis. It would be one more animal, and no one would go crazy.

We have talking parrots and giant squids. We have killer bees and messenger pigeons.

Space aliens aren't even that strange.

A talking dog would be more impressive.

Get a fucking clue.

SETI really, probably just wasn't the best use of a giant high maintenance radio telescope.

And if you're looking for bald assumptions to adopt as you try to read between the lines of your own cloak and dagger pulp novel, please note the SETI died right alongside the cold war. If anything, it was probably cover for experimental anti-soviet nuclear weapons defense that got deprioritized when threat models changes in the 1990's. It may have been part of a doomsday counterstrike hair trigger early warning network, happily retired once diplomatic channels improved. What, if not a giant covert anti-nuke radar network, hiding in plain sight, would make more sense?

Ah, yes, of course. Space aliens. How stupid of me.

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