NASA’s Astrobiology discovery

[topol-m]

NASA’s Astrobiology comes with a very interesting discovery, which will be the most significant revelations in history.

 

Conference at conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2 :alien::ufo:

 

More info:

http://scienceray.com/physics/nasa-sets-news-conference-on-astrobiology-discovery/

[onehitxzibit]

This will be an interesting conference. IMO it's foolish to think that we are alone in the whole universe.

[EtherealN]

Whole universe is one thing - the parts of it that we can gather sufficiently detailed data from, though...

 

Will be interesting to see what they've got, but I kinda suspect the hype might be setting us up for a "oh... well... so?" type situation. That has happened before. :P

[LordWolf]

Whole universe is one thing - the parts of it that we can gather sufficiently detailed data from, though...

 

Will be interesting to see what they've got, but I kinda suspect the hype might be setting us up for a "oh... well... so?" type situation. That has happened before. :P

oh... well... so, we found out that there are microorganisms on some planet in NGC 188, this means that we are not alone! OH my god, forget WikiLeaks already!!!11

[egorter]

Its to tell us that we will all be annihilated on january 4 2011 so that a superior race can have our land

[Pilotasso]

I was told that the discovery is likely to be yet another extremophile microbe found on earth that could possibly survive the conditions of other planets, but we will see.

 

We have been disappointed before as speculations went wild over regular NASA discoveries announcements.

[Avilator]

Its to tell us that we will all be annihilated on january 4 2011 so that a superior race can have our land

 

No, that's December 21, 2012.

[RIPTIDE]

^^ So true. NASA has a history of calling big press conferences to say very little. The last big conference was to tell us all they discovered a possible black hole at a vast distance away. If you weren't used to these practices you would have have thought they were going to announce something wild.

[EtherealN]

Aye Pilotasso, that's roughly what I'd expect as well. Most NASA exobiologists/astrobiologists actually work on earth, studying earth organisms for clues on what types of life might be found elsewhere or methods of detecting such life. The odds of this being actual life somewhere "out there" are extremely low, since there's no probles anywhere that are equipped to actually make such a detection. The best we can do right now is to make interesting detections of possible by-products and use that to raise suspicions (for example there were a few eyebrows raised at methane content in the Mars atmosphere a while back - in such an atmosphere methane should sublimate from the atmosphere very quick and something should have to deposit it; but it might either be micro-organisms or subterranean deposits venting it).

 

EDIT: But if it is indeed a statement about positively identifying alien life, it'll be because they were contacted by the galactic infrastructure authority to let us know the solar system will be dismantled for a new highway. :D

[Jinro]

I honestly could care less about what lies beyond our solar system. It's not like "hey, there's microbes billions of lightyears away" is going to change anything. I'm all for scientific advancements through experiments in orbit, but looking for ET is just stupid.

[EtherealN]

I think you meant "couldn't care less". Saying you could care less sort of means you actually do care... ;)

 

As for whether it's stupid to look for ET, if we're talking about an intelligent ET, looking for him ain't stupid at all. We all know what europeans did when they went exploring and found people with inferior technology, and it would be nice to have some warning if there's a mothership full of aliens headed our way. :P

 

On pure microbes and such - that's called "scientific advancements". Finding microbes on other worlds would be HUGE for the entire field of biology, and since we aren't silicon yet, there would be great potential for applications based on such knowledge. Huge parts of medicine, especially those parts concerning infectious diseases, rely massively on evolutionary knowledge and the more information we have on what is and what isn't possible the better we'll be off.

 

...I mean, who cares about "hey, there's galaxies billions of lightyears away" either, on that line of reasoning?

 

Though to be quite honest, there's no way to learn that there's microbes billions of light years away. Building a telescope of such resolution would require it to be bigger than our whole galaxy, and taking the measurement would take about 100k years. :P

[mvsgas]

Apparently it will be broadcast live

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_M10-167_Astrobiology.html

[Jinro]

I think you meant "couldn't care less". Saying you could care less sort of means you actually do care...

 

Sometimes my fingers type faster than my brain can process :P

[Grimes]

^^ So true. NASA has a history of calling big press conferences to say very little. The last big conference was to tell us all they discovered a possible black hole at a vast distance away. If you weren't used to these practices you would have have thought they were going to announce something wild.

 

Say it ain't so.... :D

http://www.theonion.com/video/nasa-scientists-plan-to-approach-girl-by-2018,14400/

 

This announcement hopefully should be interesting.

[topol-m]

We all know what europeans did when they went exploring and found people with inferior technology, and it would be nice to have some warning if there's a mothership full of aliens headed our way. :P

 

Cause we can do something about it? ;) Arrows vs lasers :ufo:

 

Apparently it will be broadcast live

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_M10-167_Astrobiology.html

 

Definitely going to watch it. Thanks for the link

[EtherealN]

Cause we can do something about it? ;) Arrows vs lasers :ufo:

 

We can go find Ripley. :)

 

Well, but another point would be that if we find that we have some civilization 10 ly away, this could mean that we'd want to stop a lot of our broadcasting and start doing directed comms only - to make sure we don't give them our position, so to speak. All depends on what we find. And even if the difficulty would be great, better to be prepared than to have nothing at all.

[FanBoy2006.01]

We can go find Ripley. :)

 

Well, but another point would be that if we find that we have some civilization 10 ly away, this could mean that we'd want to stop a lot of our broadcasting and start doing directed comms only - to make sure we don't give them our position, so to speak. All depends on what we find. And even if the difficulty would be great, better to be prepared than to have nothing at all.

 

EtherealN - This is not a rant at you but one at NASA.

 

WTF!!!! So we have to hide from aliens that are 10 light years away if they have the technology to travel that distance!!!! Yet we can detect them before they detect us with our technology???????? :lol:

 

One of the reasons for the failure of SETI sited was that EMF comms dissipated much faster than previously calculated. Certain scientists claim that we would not be even able to detect EMF from intelligent life if they were in Proxima Centauri sytem! Now I must stop using wireless?

 

If they are willing, able and intend to travel great distances to snuff out other life they sure as hell will allready be looking for said other life.:doh:

 

Man me thinks these NASA geeks are overpaid. If we think that extra terrestrials are really a threat we should stop spending money on looking for the f@#%ers and start spending more money on the defense industry.

 

Or maybe we should send them a long message (Simple Hi, decription and question.) and ask them how we can produce clean energy. And wait twenty years (For the suckers that are 10 ly away.)........

 

We are in danger of destroing our planet, we need relatively slow rockets to travel through space. Now we assume other life have to play by the same rules? NASA are being blinded by the paradigms they live in.

 

Then there are the educated fools that say our thoughts will be transfered to computers and then we will life forever through them! No you idiot! If I have two identical knifes in a drawer in my kitchen it does not make make them both the same knife!

 

If it was not enough that we have the possibility of aliens somewhere out there that are hostile to us and that we are destroying the ability of earth to sustain us, we have idiots that want to make machines that are self aware. Now what if their best interest is not ours?

 

Let me predict the future for all. We will not be sailing across the universe in search of other life. The population of mankind will have crashed mainly because of unsustained food production. We would then revert back to a simple agrarian existance. Most of our technology would be lost.

 

The reason for this is not because it is inevitable but because governments are doing next to nothing to solve our problems in regard to fossil fuels.:mad:

[EtherealN]

Fanboy, why are you ranting at NASA about things NASA doesn't touch? NASA is not involved in searching for an intelligent ET, they're only dealing in researching the possibilities of life. SETI are looking for an intelligent ET, but they're actually NOT funded by NASA, they're not part of NASA, they're not part of any government agency. They aren't even relying on government grants to do their stuff - they're privately funded and are using/building their very own instruments (funded in part by a well-known billionaire named Allen).

 

No-one's actually said to really hide either, but many scientists (Hawking amongst them, actually) are of the opinion that we should not actively try to contact them either. Your wireless isn't a problem since that signal attenuates to practical insignificance even within our atmosphere. But we might want to re-think a bit of how we do other types of communication, and the people that want to send focused signals at candidate stars might be having a bad idea. And interestingly enough, a lot of that appears to be practical to do anyhow, irrespective of the ET question. Communication is just a lot faster and cheaper to do over fiberoptics than sattelites.

 

But don't for one second think that NASA has anything to do with any of that.

 

On clean energy - we already know how to do that. If we had the will we would have been at a zero-emission economy in the 60's, it's just that the technology to do that is sort of impopular. ;)

 

But seriously, there's just so much wrong in your post I should leave it at that. You are attacking the wrong people, and then you go rampage all over the place. Suddenly we are talking about transfer of counsciousness? How did that relate to anything? Well, if that's "educated fools" then perhaps you can educate them on what counsciousness is. Is it linked solely to the matter in your brain? Then you have actually not lived for very long - assuming you are an adult there's very very little, if anything, left in you of the matter that constituted you and your brain when you were born. So are you the same person as who was born, except grown up? If you are, then you must by necessity accept counsciousness as an emergent phenomenon existing as a continuum - think of it like this:

 

1) I purchase an axe.

2) I use it a lot

3) I replace the blade

4) Is it the same axe? For all intents and purposes, it is.

5) I use it a lot

6) I replace the blade again

7) I use it a lot yet again

8) I replace the shaft

9) Is it still the same axe? At which specific point did it stop being the same axe?

 

Also, if you have two exactly identical knives, does it matter which one you bring to scout camp? Nope. They'll both do exactly the same thing.

So if you have two exactly identical minds, does it matter which one you say is you and which one isn't?

 

If you want to discuss the nature of cousnciousness, feel free to start a thread (or PM me, since it is fairly OT) on it and I'll humor you, but please do so in a calm and considered manner, not this haphazard string of loosely connected rage.

Edited December 2, 2010 by EtherealN

[hassata]

but it might either be micro-organisms or subterranean deposits venting it)

 

Just come out and say farting aliens, why don't you :D.

[EtherealN]

Farting aliens FTW. :D

[Shaman]

LOL @ SETI

they have had an obvious reply already and ignored it!

 

Edited December 2, 2010 by Shaman

[Succellus]

oH RLY ?

 

Whats the possibility and likeliness of alien coming and stamping the planet then go away without notice without anything.

 

As 100% of those other stuff their just a pranckster.

 

NASA will probably reveal nice pictures os something irrelevent in the short term.

 

As for clean energy since the 60ties, enlight-me please. AFAIK the only clean propulsion we have is compressed air. Hard to make a plane fly with that....

Unless you think of collecting every life form fart and burn it. But i don t see my rear end linked to a reservoir, althought many wouls like the probe, i m not one of those.

[159th_Viper]

No Aliens...........yet :D

 

NASA will announce the finding of Arsenic-based Bacteria, found in Mono lake, California.

 

Why is this so special? All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur......This critter is different - made of arsenic!

 

Batton down the hatches, hide the girlfriends and stockpile the supplies and sacrifice the Kittens......It's about to blow :P

[Succellus]

You kidding right ? Arsenic based lifeform are already know from biologist. Its been what ? 3 years i heard of them.

[159th_Viper]

Let's wait and see.