This afternoon, NASA will have a major announcement. Naturally people are speculating that they are going to announce evidence of alien life. Other speculation is that there are 3 times as many stars as previously thought.
I think they are going to tell us that the moon landings were a hoax, just like all the rednecks used to say and that NASA and NBC planned the hoax. Just kidding, just kidding!
Would it be good news or bad news if alien life were discovered? I am not so arrogant to think that we are the only beings out there capable of human-type thought. However, I am not so sure I want them here.
As more and more information has been released from the American vaults of secrecy, who knows what has been discovered or what will be released.
“Would it be good news or bad news if alien life were discovered?”
Yes.
Can’t make up your mind, Cargo?
I think it would be scary.
I’m going to refrain from commenting in hopes that we have one thread in which the name of a certain BOCS Chair and his doings are not mentioned.
It would be bad news and good news, depending upon your world view.
And whether or not they want to eat us…..
The Federation: Good
Borg, Klingons, Romulans, Aliens, Predators, etc.: not so much.
I, for one, support our new alien overlords. (Do you think that they know what “crossed fingers” mean?
NASA found aliens? No kidding. I see them at the 7-11 every day.
Oh, the other type of aliens. Check!
If we find teh Borg, we are so screwed.
Maybe NASA’s muslim outreach program had some success?? The moon will have it’s first colony. New Iran. 😉
The following comment was lifted from “American Pickers”. Question: Do you think there is life out there in outer space?.. Answer: Heck yes, I gotta believe there is someone, somewhere that is smarter than we are.
From http://blog.speculist.com/2010/12/new-life-form-discovered.html
Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything.
At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.
But not this one. This one is completely different. We knew that there were bacteria that processed arsenic, but this bacteria–discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California–is actually made of arsenic. The phosphorus is absent from its DNA. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don’t have to be like planet Earth.
But, again, they found it here, NOT there. Darn.
Also, finding the actual report from the links at the site is….frustrating.
I believe.
Thanks Cargo. I must say, I am somewhat disappointed, although not sure why. I had heard the arsenic not phospherous story on TV in the night and didn’t focus on it.
So what are the implications? Do we need to drag out the old lace? Oh what a bad joke.
Gizmodo tends to make it pretty easy to understand.
http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life?skyline=true&s=i
NASA’s geobiologist Pamela Conrad thinks that the discovery is huge and “phenomenal,” comparing it to the Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise crew finds Horta, a silicon-based alien life form that can’t be detected with tricorders because it wasn’t carbon-based. It’s like saying that we may be looking for new life in the wrong places with the wrong methods. Indeed, NASA tweeted that this discovery “will change how we search for life elsewhere in the Universe.”
Lately I’ve been playing Star Trek Online (yes, I’m a geek don’t judge me!) and an episode arc was dealing with the Breen in a ‘space race’ of types that is much like the TNG episode “The Chase” deals with the “Preservers”. The Preservers ‘seeded’ the galaxy with life forms and this was used to explain why humans and aliens shared so many features (klingon’s for example being biped’s but having multiple stomachs and eight-chambered hearts, for example).
So, this could be another ‘seed’ or it could just be that because our reference has always been “A” we never thought to look for “B”. Either way, it’s cool. I’ve always seen NASA (and to an extent DARPA) as the research arm of the federal government. Just sucks that they’re doing pointless work on this imagined ‘global warming’ thang.
Why is it that conservatives think they are experts on global warming and climate change?
I don’t think I know enough about it to really go around making proclamations.
I do think it would be a miracle if man and his inventions had no impact on climate. Take it from there.
I’m still trying to figure out this one. So they found some different DNA in a bacterium here on earth. I was expecting bacteria from Mars, or chlorophyll on one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn (remember Arthur C. Clark’s “2010”?) or something like that.
Could this new DNA have arrived on a meteor? How can you extrapolate that this bacterium is evidence of life elsewhere any more than any other bacterium found on earth?
@Moon-howler
We don’t consider ourselves experts on the climate. We just know that the “Man made global warming” theory was either a hoax or terribly bad science.
Climate change? Conservatives have always said that the climate changes.
We just don’t think that the current AGW theory has any validity and that most of the supporters were in it for gov’t money or had an agenda beyond actual science.
Then again, this IS the gov’t……how do we KNOW that they found it in a lake….
They just SAY that it was found on Earth…. We must find out the truth!
The Truth is out there! The Truth is out there! The Tru
NTK, I sort of feel the same way you do. I am guessing that it has something to do with all that stuff we are told about being star children and being made out of the same thing stars are.
If life is arsenic based then there must be something out there ….or made it was here….
Cargo, and I am disagreeing with you that man made global warming is a hoax or ‘terribly bad science.’ The point is, you don’t KNOW and more than I KNOW it is.
Logic tells us that you can’t dump the amount of crap in the atmosphere that we dump and it have no impact whatsoever. I am guessing it probably isn’t a good impact.
The arguement then becomes one of degrees. At what level does the amount of crap in atmo become an issue and exceed the ability for mama Gia to self-heal?
Basically, if I put a drop of sugar and tea solution into a gallon of water that doth not make sweet tea.
BTW, these new life forms would make outstanding chem/bio warfare agents! 🙂
@marin
At what point does dumping chemicals into a river poison the earth around it? How about run off fertilizer making it down to the bay? What is happening to the oyster beds and the crab populations? The fish?
Maybe it would be better not to do those things? If we have to second guess what is too much, then perhaps it is just better not to do it.
We can measure the river. We can determine the actual level of toxicity. We can say 5ppm is bad and 4ppm is still safe.
What have the elite biased scientests come up with for a level of ‘global warming’ that is acceptable? ……the “idea” exists but concrete numbers, facts, and repeatable experiments that can be evaluated by other impartial researchers — not so much.
Science is based on facts, would you agree? So, whats the level that’s considered toxic and exceeds the ability for the Earth to self-heal at?
If the science can support it I’ll start recycling my Coke Zero cans.. Until that point I wanna pick out SMART cars out of the grill of my Hummer.
(fwiw, I don’t have a Hummer. I have an Envoy. I have Hummer envy. *sad face*)
This bacteria will serve as House Minority Leader during the next Congress.
Hello again….
NASA is telling the truth. EVERYTHING that the NASA and the government tells you is the truth. They found a strange, alien-like life-form in a lake. The nice men that just left in a nice black car told me. At least, I think they told me. The last few minutes are a blur. But everything is fine now……President Obama has everything under control. There are no aliens. Aliens do not exist. They’ve never existed. The government is NOT investigating the UFO sightings over the Fan in Richmond. Our government listens to the people.
Here’s a column with earlier info about the arsenic bacteria:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/01/nasas-extraterrestrial-buzz/
@Moon-howler
Moon, I have a reply in the food thread, since the global warming idea came up there. Conserving the earths resources, and stopping or reducing pollution are not the same thing as the “climate change” or “global warming” fight.
CO2 is not a pollutant. See my other thread, please.
Hey, guess what! Our “alien” is green. The science fiction writers were right!
See the pic at the WattsUpWithThat link above.
It’s little too! They were right about little green men!