[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.
I read that the scientists took the bacteria from the bottom of the lake in question. Kept the bacteria, which were capable of USING arsenic to sustain life, in a lab in an environment of only arsenic. Over time the bacteria began to replace the phosphorus in their cell(s) with arsenic. Arsenic is one spot below phosphorus on the periodic table. Same number of valence electrons.
Its still a huge revelation in biology, but those arsenic based bacteria are not found in nature that way.
[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]
Reasonable enough. I don’t think many scientists will tell you life is DEFINITELY out there, but considering we can sit here and discuss this over the internet and the sheer size of the universe it seems likely that there will be life out there. Whether we would recognize it as such remains to be seen.
Then again, we may be alone in the universe. It is impossible to conclusively say either way.
Interesting that they use the same nucleotides along with the arsenic backbone. I would be curious to see how related their codons are to that of bacteria using the normal phosphorus backbone. [/quote]
Maybe they’ve adapted and evolved to this point?
I think the fact that something living can be made up of what we consider to be poison is crazy.
Really puts us back quite a bit IMO, because, who’s to say you need hydrogen or oxygen to have life on other planets (or where ever)?
Glad NASA has a budget again, I honestly think they can find cool shit to further life for humans.
[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
I read that the scientists took the bacteria from the bottom of the lake in question. Kept the bacteria, which were capable of USING arsenic to sustain life, in a lab in an environment of only arsenic. Over time the bacteria began to replace the phosphorus in their cell(s) with arsenic. Arsenic is one spot below phosphorus on the periodic table. Same number of valence electrons.
Its still a huge revelation in biology, but those arsenic based bacteria are not found in nature that way.
I think it’s extremely shortsighted to say that there is no life on other planets. It’s like going into a forest, finding a stump with mushrooms growing on it, and then assuming that it’s the only stump that could sustain mushrooms. And really, how many other “stumps” have we checked? Two? Really, thoroughly checked? None.
[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
Make sure it appeals to the star trek/other neglected youths crowd.
When no one cares anymore, break your legs and talk through a speak and spell. [/quote]
Whoa whoa WHOA with point number 2 there buddy! I’m a Star Trek fan and am certainly not neglected and certainly not a youth! (wait, that last one need not be said so adamantly)
Anyway…I do think Earth lucked out a bit…and that there’s not going to be life around every second star…I think it’ll be much more rare than that…but when you take into account all the stars in all the galaxies it should still be quite a few.
[quote]FlameofOsiris wrote:
I think it’s extremely shortsighted to say that there is no life on other planets. It’s like going into a forest, finding a stump with mushrooms growing on it, and then assuming that it’s the only stump that could sustain mushrooms. And really, how many other “stumps” have we checked? Two? Really, thoroughly checked? None. [/quote]
That’s a really, really bad analogy.
Basic biological and evolutionary history states that the human race and intelligent, sentient life itself is a relative anomoly and took a few strokes of luck for us to get this far.
We (people) wouldn’t likely be here had the asteroid effectively dismantling the dinosaur’s reign not hit us. I mean seriously, I couldn’t hang head-to-head with a Stegosaurus let alone anything else.
And let’s not dismiss the fact that the only reason the first lifeform ever left the water was because there was too much competition.
I’m advocating niether for the existence of aliens nor against it, but it’s also faulty thinking that “there could be aliens because there’s so many planets.” I’m fairly certain that this number may be off, but I read in article rather recently that there’s only two or three known planets wth similar compositions / distances to the sun / other compounding factors that would even have a chance for life. I feel like I may be skewing some kind of data so if anyone knows about what I’m talking about feel free to correct me.
EDIT: Okay, well fuck me. Just saw the thing on the page saying they could be harboring “hundreds” of Earths. But if it’s a dwarf star… does that mean there’s the same capacity for heat-driven life?
[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
I read that the scientists took the bacteria from the bottom of the lake in question. Kept the bacteria, which were capable of USING arsenic to sustain life, in a lab in an environment of only arsenic. Over time the bacteria began to replace the phosphorus in their cell(s) with arsenic. Arsenic is one spot below phosphorus on the periodic table. Same number of valence electrons.
Its still a huge revelation in biology, but those arsenic based bacteria are not found in nature that way.
[quote]SSC wrote:
I’m fairly certain that this number may be off, but I read in article rather recently that there’s only two or three known planets wth similar compositions / distances to the sun / other compounding factors that would even have a chance for life.[/quote]
Right…but carry this logic out. We’ve examined only stars that live in our neighborhood and ALREADY found a few… and you figure there is an unimaginable number of neighborhoods, that if you say “a few inhabitable planets per neighborhood” that gives you basically an infinite number of possible planets. Yeah, it took a lot of luck for us to evolve – but the number of trial runs is so enormous that somewhere, someone else has to have gotten as lucky.
