NASA Finds New Life Form...

Off Topic
101

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
I used to fall for the “because it’s so big” logic and I’ve come to question it after hearing out the “intelligent design” theories, not to be confused with creationism.[/quote]

Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tux.[/quote]

that’s just stupid. “intelligent” does not mean “god” as you just illustrated the concept. cute though.[/quote]

Actually, Intelligent Design was created in an attempt to circumvent laws that prohibit the teaching of Creationism as science. While Intelligent Design doesn’t state that a deity is responsible it implies it, and when asked what force could be responsible for such a thing its proponents will most likely say the Judeo-Christian God is.

102

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]Sarev0k wrote:
LOL @ Stephen Hawking.

Note to others who want to be famous one day:

  1. Talk about nonexistent stuff, non stop.

  2. Make sure it appeals to the star trek/other neglected youths crowd.

  3. When no one cares anymore, break your legs and talk through a speak and spell. [/quote]

You are an idiot.[/quote]

ya, really. what the hell is this guys problem?

103

This all sounds like one hell of a game of starcraft.

Just wait till those micro-organisms start a zerg rush.

104

[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
If we discovered a planet that had some extremely simple life on it, like bacteria or whatever, would we really spend that much time checking it out? We’d send a crew of people, collect some samples, and leave.

People assume that if aliens discovered us theyd be fascinated and stay here to hang out. We’re probably as insignificant as bacteria, to the aliens that are capable of finding us. They could have come, collected samples, and left without anyone having any knowledge of it. [/quote]

Very true. Heck, they may have already come and “seeded” this planet with multicellular life in the first place.

At the very least, ‘exogenesis’ and ‘panspermia’ do provide some food for thought…

105

I think it’s weird that people are still fixated on cutting edge 90s science fiction, like cryogenics or wormholes, to explain why aliens can’t visit us. It’s easy.

The milky way is only 100,000 light years across. It’s 13 BILLION years old. It’s taken life on Earth two billion years to get to the point where we are at now- it’ll only legitimately take a century or few (I refuse to believe that the exploratory spirit of our race will be extinguished, ever) before we’re extrasolar. The basic point is the galaxy is well old enough for there to have been intelligent life that’s risen and fallen more than a few times. If even one of these races sends out a single von Nuemann probe out, it could very well have saturated every bloody system in the milky way by the time the Earth developed sponges.

You need an infinite amount of energy to travel at light speed. You don’t even need an infinite amount of energy to travel near light speed, you just need to be able to accelerate for an extremely long time- something this galaxy has lots of. Currently we don’t have the technology to do that as we use chemical rockets, but there’s no reason we can’t figure out how to work antimatter bottles or solar sails or whatever.

Oh, and here’s a cure for generational flight. We don’t need to make perfect cryogenics- that’s so nineties. Just store human zygotes and have robots do the entirety of the journey, and upon finding a suitable planet it warms them up, gives them an artificial womb, and bam, after a few million years we’re colonized up to our ears in humans. Coincidentally, this is how other species could’ve spread across the galaxy too. I’m not saying that other forms of life use zygotes, of course.

The better question is not ‘are there other forms of life out there’. It’s ‘why haven’t we seen any evidence of them?’

Edit: I suck at proofreading

106

[quote]Ithiel wrote:
You don’t need an infinite amount of energy to travel at light speed. You don’t even need an infinite amount of energy to travel near light speed, you just need to be able to accelerate for an extremely long time- something this galaxy has lots of. Currently we don’t have the technology to do that as we use chemical rockets, but there’s no reason we can’t figure out how to work antimatter bottles or solar sails or whatever.
[/quote]

Actually, as long as an object has mass, it does take an infinite amount of energy to travel AT the speed of light. NEAR, no, but AT, yes. This concept is an integral part of Einstein’s theory of special relativity. I could post a link, but seriously, all you have to do is look in any physics textbook on the matter written in the 20th century, or read any of the experiments from Fermi Lab or CERN…or just take a physicist at his word =)

107

[quote]jskrabac wrote:

[quote]Ithiel wrote:
You don’t need an infinite amount of energy to travel at light speed. You don’t even need an infinite amount of energy to travel near light speed, you just need to be able to accelerate for an extremely long time- something this galaxy has lots of. Currently we don’t have the technology to do that as we use chemical rockets, but there’s no reason we can’t figure out how to work antimatter bottles or solar sails or whatever.
[/quote]

Actually, as long as an object has mass, it does take an infinite amount of energy to travel AT the speed of light. NEAR, no, but AT, yes. This concept is an integral part of Einstein’s theory of special relativity. I could post a link, but seriously, all you have to do is look in any physics textbook on the matter written in the 20th century, or read any of the experiments from Fermi Lab or CERN…or just take a physicist at his word =) [/quote]

FFFFFFFFFF that’s embarrassing. Didn’t mean to include the ‘don’t’. Should probably read what I actually write at some point.

108

[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:

[quote]biglifter wrote:

[quote]scj119 wrote:
People who believe something because it can’t be proved false drive me nuts. Mainly because, 99% of the time, the thing you are arguing AGAINST also CAN’T BE PROVED FALSE. It’s one thing to have your beliefs…but it’s another thing if your justification for those beliefs is something that could be said about your OWN argument.

I believe there’s life out there because it’s the most logical conclusion we can come to given the evidence at hand. Or at least it’s the most logical given how I interpret that evidence. I do NOT beileve in it simply because you can’t prove we are the only ones here. See the difference?

So I’ll turn your question around: why do you think that among the practically infinite number of planets out there, that we are the only one special enough to contain life?[/quote]

Well, who’s the burden of proof on? Your logic also applies to god, ghosts, cupachabra and why Jamie Eason isn’t naked in front of me. It also can’t be proved false that within the next 5 minutes I’m going to grab a knife and disembowl my neighbor. Your last question almost verbatim exactly states what I said before. Life outside our tiny rock has to exist because there’s a ton of real estate available. No causation, no correlation, no nothing. It isn’t arrogance to say were all that’s out there. At this moment in time, it’s reality.
[/quote]

Well you either believe life is out there or you don’t. If you believe in science and the constant discovery of new science then you’d automatically have to assume that life is out there until we explore ever single nook and cranny of the known (and unknown) universe and can conclusively say it doesn’t exist.
[/quote]

What…as many skeptics are on here. I’m going to have to say your statement is wrong. Because in order to believe in something you would only need to find it, however in order to disbelieve it you’d have to look to infinity.

109

[quote]scj119 wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]scj119 wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]biglifter wrote:

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]biglifter wrote:
Kinda awesome. I still don’t believe any life exists beyond our planet. [/quote]

Why?[/quote]

Because the Nat Geo channel drives me insane. I’m a junkie for anything about the planets, but it drives me nuts to hear all these scientists explain something in detail and then turn around and assert there HAS to be life out there. Why? When pressed for an answer they turn into the 12 year kid who thinks you’re on steroids because you are big. ‘Because space it just so damn big it must be so’. [/quote]

I used to fall for the “because it’s so big” logic and I’ve come to question it after hearing out the “intelligent design” theories, not to be confused with creationism. Put simply, for life to have occurred without some guiding force (e.g. some form of intelligence), it’s some astronomical number against life happening randomly. When you consider that astounding number against life randomly occurring, even under “favorable” conditions like on earth, and you compare that number to the projected numbers of planets in space, you CAN start to wrap your mind around the possibility that we are indeed alone or very rare in the universe.

I do not believe we are “alone”. I think life here was probably the result of intelligent design, that earth was seeded in some manner, and that intelligent life is probably pretty rare in the universe, with lower forms being somewhat more common. But, what the fuck do I know? lol[/quote]

It’s not an astronomically small chance if you put it in the right context. The problem here is one of assumptions: If you were to pick one star in the universe (i.e. our Sun), then YES the chances of life AT THAT PLACE is infinitesimally small. However, the assumption is wrong because you are thinking of the minute chances of life happening HERE.

The correct way to think is that there is a very high chance that life has happened at some random place in the universe. That place happened to be here but there is NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT OUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE. We are that place where everything happened to break right…but it didn’t have to happen here.

Cliff notes: The odds of life at any one place are infinitesimally small, but the odds of life happening in random places throughout the universe are pretty high. We happened to be one of those places.
[/quote]

You’re looking at it wrong and with bad information. I’m not talking about OUR place. I’m talking about the events that had to randomly line up to CREATE life (DNA forming randomly, by chance) itself. It is ASTRONOMICAL odds against. I’m not even considering that our planet is hospitable.[/quote]

Agreed. The odds against one success are enormous. But they are easily dwarfed by the relative enormity of the NUMBER of trial runs.

No matter how unlikely something is, it WILL be repeated given enough trial runs.
[/quote]

I thought there was only one universe.

110

[quote]kilpaba wrote:
A one in a million chance isn’t that terrible of odds if you have 10 million chances.[/quote]

Yes, but the odds are worse than that. And, I’m not sure if you have ever played a game of chance, but sometimes “chance” is not on your side. Say there is 1 in 1 million for intelligent life on a planet. You have earth…and nothing so far. It could be that the other 9 chances out of the 10 million have already past, already came or just aren’t there.

111

[quote]CubanMeat32 wrote:

[quote]biglifter wrote:
Kinda awesome. I still don’t believe any life exists beyond our planet. [/quote]

as far as we know the universe is infinite, and the telescopes we have, can only look so far, the chances of another solar system existing, in a distance far away from us ,that technology will never give us the possiblility of seeing probably may exist. They even found another planet recently that is roughly just as far from its sun as earth is, that most likely has water, where there is water, there is most likely life, i think the possibility of this is to high for me to personally believe that. It doesnt have to be little green men martians it can be microbial life, to think a piece of microbial life does not exist anywhere in the unknown universe is probably a stretch to say.[/quote]

I think we’re talking about intelligent life.

112

[quote]FlameofOsiris wrote:

[quote]wushu_1984 wrote:
My $.02. Even if there is other intelligent life out there and say that they heard our first radio broadcasts 100 yrs ago and are as we type on the way over to say hello. The intelligent life is likely to be several hundred light years away. Even if they are intelligent enough to somehow travel close to the speed of light its likely to be over 100 yrs by the time they get to Earth.

Firstly all of us will prob be dead unless life expectancy rapidly increases or they perfect Cryogenic freezing and there is a significant probability that the Earth will face serious over population and threat of extinction before these aliens even get here.

So whatever about the probability or certainty of alien life out there. The probability that any of us will live to see if proven true is pretty much 0.[/quote]

Lol, thanks for depressing me. =([/quote]

Don’t worry, he’s just another “over populationist” that makes stupid claims because cities are over crowded, not the earth.

113

[quote]Ithiel wrote:
I think it’s weird that people are still fixated on cutting edge 90s science fiction, like cryogenics or wormholes, to explain why aliens can’t visit us. It’s easy.

The milky way is only 100,000 light years across. It’s 13 BILLION years old. It’s taken life on Earth two billion years to get to the point where we are at now- it’ll only legitimately take a century or few (I refuse to believe that the exploratory spirit of our race will be extinguished, ever) before we’re extrasolar. The basic point is the galaxy is well old enough for there to have been intelligent life that’s risen and fallen more than a few times. If even one of these races sends out a single von Nuemann probe out, it could very well have saturated every bloody system in the milky way by the time the Earth developed sponges.

You need an infinite amount of energy to travel at light speed. You don’t even need an infinite amount of energy to travel near light speed, you just need to be able to accelerate for an extremely long time- something this galaxy has lots of. Currently we don’t have the technology to do that as we use chemical rockets, but there’s no reason we can’t figure out how to work antimatter bottles or solar sails or whatever.

Oh, and here’s a cure for generational flight. We don’t need to make perfect cryogenics- that’s so nineties. Just store human zygotes and have robots do the entirety of the journey, and upon finding a suitable planet it warms them up, gives them an artificial womb, and bam, after a few million years we’re colonized up to our ears in humans. Coincidentally, this is how other species could’ve spread across the galaxy too. I’m not saying that other forms of life use zygotes, of course.

The better question is not ‘are there other forms of life out there’. It’s ‘why haven’t we seen any evidence of them?’

Edit: I suck at proofreading[/quote]

You suck at coming up with ethical plans, too.

114

[quote]Ithiel wrote:

[quote]jskrabac wrote:

[quote]Ithiel wrote:
You don’t need an infinite amount of energy to travel at light speed. You don’t even need an infinite amount of energy to travel near light speed, you just need to be able to accelerate for an extremely long time- something this galaxy has lots of. Currently we don’t have the technology to do that as we use chemical rockets, but there’s no reason we can’t figure out how to work antimatter bottles or solar sails or whatever.
[/quote]

Actually, as long as an object has mass, it does take an infinite amount of energy to travel AT the speed of light. NEAR, no, but AT, yes. This concept is an integral part of Einstein’s theory of special relativity. I could post a link, but seriously, all you have to do is look in any physics textbook on the matter written in the 20th century, or read any of the experiments from Fermi Lab or CERN…or just take a physicist at his word =) [/quote]

FFFFFFFFFF that’s embarrassing. Didn’t mean to include the ‘don’t’. Should probably read what I actually write at some point.[/quote]

I might be the only one on this site that would actually pick that out…hahah…no worries.

115

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

You suck at coming up with ethical plans, too.[/quote]

I’ll also assume you’d not be too keen on the more logical step, which would be to just upload human consciousness into machinery, as it’d take out the middle man and is the next logical evolutionary step.

116

[quote]Ithiel wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

You suck at coming up with ethical plans, too.[/quote]

I’ll also assume you’d not be too keen on the more logical step, which would be to just upload human consciousness into machinery, as it’d take out the middle man and is the next logical evolutionary step.
[/quote]

ethics are relative anyway. Give humanity a couple centuries, I’m sure the rules will change considerably.

117

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
I used to fall for the “because it’s so big” logic and I’ve come to question it after hearing out the “intelligent design” theories, not to be confused with creationism.[/quote]

Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tux.[/quote]

that’s just stupid. “intelligent” does not mean “god” as you just illustrated the concept. cute though.[/quote]

Except that it does.

118

[quote]Ithiel wrote:
I think it’s weird that people are still fixated on cutting edge 90s science fiction, like cryogenics or wormholes, to explain why aliens can’t visit us. It’s easy.

The milky way is only 100,000 light years across. It’s 13 BILLION years old. It’s taken life on Earth two billion years to get to the point where we are at now- it’ll only legitimately take a century or few (I refuse to believe that the exploratory spirit of our race will be extinguished, ever) before we’re extrasolar. The basic point is the galaxy is well old enough for there to have been intelligent life that’s risen and fallen more than a few times. If even one of these races sends out a single von Nuemann probe out, it could very well have saturated every bloody system in the milky way by the time the Earth developed sponges.

You need an infinite amount of energy to travel at light speed. You don’t even need an infinite amount of energy to travel near light speed, you just need to be able to accelerate for an extremely long time- something this galaxy has lots of. Currently we don’t have the technology to do that as we use chemical rockets, but there’s no reason we can’t figure out how to work antimatter bottles or solar sails or whatever.

Oh, and here’s a cure for generational flight. We don’t need to make perfect cryogenics- that’s so nineties. Just store human zygotes and have robots do the entirety of the journey, and upon finding a suitable planet it warms them up, gives them an artificial womb, and bam, after a few million years we’re colonized up to our ears in humans. Coincidentally, this is how other species could’ve spread across the galaxy too. I’m not saying that other forms of life use zygotes, of course.

The better question is not ‘are there other forms of life out there’. It’s ‘why haven’t we seen any evidence of them?’

Edit: I suck at proofreading[/quote]

It’s taken 2 billion years for life to get to our stage? You mean it’s taken the entirety of time as we know it (13 billion years) for life to get to where we are. Aliens aren’t guaranteed to be even at our stage of development. As depressing as it sounds, we might be the pinnacle of technological advancement.

119

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
I thought there was only one universe.[/quote]

Who knows? But for the purposes of life and encountering it in extraterrestrial form (this thread), only one universe is needed (barring cross universe travel).

120

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
I think we’re talking about intelligent life. [/quote]

We are talking about life.