Custom accessories flashing blue in-game?
Just installed the Sims 3 patch or about to?
Want to create your own clothes for the Sims 3?
| Search this Thread |
6th Mar 2011, 06:13 AM
|
 Scientist finds evidence of extraterrestrial life; no one cares
#1
|
|
unalisaa
Original Poster
Field Researcher
Join Date: Feb 2008 |
So, apparently, some guy found an alien and published his findings in a scientific journal. The next day, the media was going crazy over Charlie Sheen. I was talking to a friend about this, and the subject of why this should matter all that much came up. If is is a fossil, and the originating life form is so far away that we fail to comprehend it, does it matter? Is it reasonable to expect people to be fascinated by what looks like a sausage with strings attached; a sausage most people will never have the chance to see in person? |
|
One S, two As. |
|
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 06:24 AM
|
#2 |
|
ElementMK
|
Most people won't care. As you'll notice in the comments of that news article, people are more concerned about bashing Obama / The Tea Party and explaining that Jesus Saves / this is irrefutable proof that God is Dead. However, this is very significant. I care, and people who can stop typing vitriolic political BS for a few minutes will care. If it turns out to be true, it will give us answer to one of the greatest questions in astronomy and science: Is Earth alone? I'll put it in my collection of fantastic scientific discoveries, probably between Darwin and Garagin. Curie can come, too. |
|
Every situation has a relevant GIF. |
|
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 08:30 AM
|
#3 |
|
Oaktree
|
This is certainly significant. I always believed that there were other planets out there with life, but having strong evidence of it is a great step forward in discovering other life out there in the universe. And it is certainly important, regardless of the relative simplicity of the organism. The most mysterious part of life seems to be its means of origination, so for there to be even a simple life form means that chemical reactions were able to proceed in just the right way on some other planet. I think it would be fascinating to see if extraterrestrial organisms use the same nucleic and amino acids that life on Earth uses, though I doubt that there will be much (if any) genetic material/protein found in what is essentially fossilized bacteria. |
|
|
Last edited by Oaktree : 6th Mar 2011 at 08:47 AM.
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 10:12 AM
|
#4 |
|
Tempscire
|
It's not a confirmed finding and such claims have been made before. I'll save my excitement for further examination of the specimen. As this article notes as well, that journal has published some "shaky" articles in the past and is now going out of business. (Apropos of nothing, they also have the least professional-looking website for a scholarly journal I've ever seen.) And it has been reported by Fox News. |
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 10:36 AM
|
#5 |
|
unalisaa
Original Poster
Field Researcher
Join Date: Feb 2008 |
That is an excellent point, and I certainly did not mean to suggest that people should rejoice to death. It's still an interesting hypothetical question, though. I once read this timeline somewhere which theorised what would happen if we discovered alien life: 1. Everyone goes crazy. The media devote all their space to the new discovery. 2. A few religions pop up. 3. People get used to the idea. 4. The media lose interest. 5. The general public goes about its business as usual. 6. Only scientists, a few select nerds, and followers of the aforementioned religions care anymore until something new happens. Before we meet a species we can communicate with on a sophisticated level*, extraterrestrial life just won't affect anyone enough to make a big change in the way we think about ourselves as a species, culture, and inhabitants of anything but our own personal microcosm. *Something I consider highly unlikely. Look at the difficulty with which humans of different cultures communicate, and magnify that by several million. Even if both parties send their most flexible, well-trained individuals, it would take a while to get used to one another. On top of that, nothing guarantees that we perceive the universe in an even remotely similar way. |
|
One S, two As. |
|
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 04:16 PM
|
#6 | |
|
Tempscire
|
Quote:
I would include a phase in which a few religious adherents commit suicide for whatever reason in reaction. 
|
|
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 04:23 PM
|
#7 | |
|
Rawra
Alchemist
Join Date: Dec 2008 |
Quote:
This has made my day. | |
|
Private conversation. Go take yourself for a walk. - Regina Mills
|
||
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 04:45 PM
|
#8 |
|
kattenijin
|
I guess I'm part of the ho-hum group. We've known about fossilized bacteria in meteors for decades now; this isn't news. Wake me when an alien spaceship with a functioning stardrive is in orbit, then we'll talk. As for the NWO, its just a front for the OWO. Seriously, you think the WO is going to change without the deaths of 3% of the planet? |
|
Falling in love is a subtle process, a connection sparked by attraction, tested by compatibility, and forged by memory. |
|
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 05:05 PM
|
#9 | ||
|
meriel
Lab Assistant
Join Date: Dec 2005 |
Quote:
Sounds like half decent sci-fi movie. I'd watch it. |
||
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 05:19 PM
|
#10 | |
|
simsample
'Death, death, death' Until the sun cries morning
|
Quote:
The two are linked, I think. The image of a fossilised alien made us recognise Charlie Sheen as being something really special! But, we've been through this before- bookmakers even paid out on bets for finding alien life. And then they found out it was a mistake. | |
|
I will choose a path that's clear- I will choose free will
RUSH Headlong Flight Performing Arts Award Star Rush OC Please check out my profile policies before PMing me! Thanks. |
||
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 08:09 PM
|
#11 |
|
Phoeberg
Theorist
Join Date: Dec 2007 |
You'd think it would have been a bigger story, if only for the human interest nature of it. |
|
"Your life was a liner I voyaged in."
|
|
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 10:45 PM
|
#12 |
|
Mistermook
|
Sheen probably fossilizes bacteria in his basement and shoots it into outer space using only a pair of AA batteries and a copy of Hustler. A bigger story? Nobody's bigger than Charlie Sheen! Nobody! |
|
|
|
|
6th Mar 2011, 11:38 PM
|
#13 |
|
Sunbee
Inventor
Join Date: Apr 2009 |
Well, I was pretty excited--but I'm a scientist's kid and a science fiction buff. On the other hand, it hasn't been confirmed by anyone else yet, so this is still very, very early in the process, and there have been contamination errors with these sorts of things before. The things reported and found not to be so in the past have been bacterial-type life forms or viral-type pseudo-life. This new one's a bacterial-type. Then there's also the question of could this specimen have terrestrial origins anyway? Oh yeah, who's Charlie Sheen, and why should I care? |
|
|
|
|
7th Mar 2011, 08:30 AM
|
#14 |
|
ElementMK
|
|
|
Every situation has a relevant GIF. |
|
|
|
|
|
7th Mar 2011, 09:23 AM
|
#15 |
|
WayBack
Instructor
Join Date: Aug 2006 |
Fake or real, I'm one of those who didn't really care for the news. I'm a strong believer in extraterrestrial life so I just thought "Hmm, no big surprise." I'll be more interested once there will be a good quality photo or a video of a living creature from another planet. The idea of life in the outer space doesn't bother me, unless they would want to go through my window in the night to steal my liver 
|
|
|
|
|
7th Mar 2011, 01:11 PM
|
#16 | |
|
simsample
'Death, death, death' Until the sun cries morning
|
Quote:
Darn it! More Charlie Sheen for us, then!
| |
|
I will choose a path that's clear- I will choose free will
RUSH Headlong Flight Performing Arts Award Star Rush OC Please check out my profile policies before PMing me! Thanks. |
||
|
|
|
|
7th Mar 2011, 06:26 PM
|
#17 |
|
tizerist
Scholar
Join Date: Dec 2007 |
I think we can pretty much get used to the fact that there are alien lifeforms out there now. Every modern discovery has pointed to it. Okay these bacterium that we're searching for are not that exactly exciting to look at, but they are the answer to The Biggest Question Of All. I personally believe that life is common everywhere, given recent findings especially. How does it begin? My personal theory is simply this: the right combination of warmth and chemicals in the same place at the same time, perhaps triggered by a bolt of lightning. After all, where does fire come from? It wasn't there a minute ago! Its the same answer, a combination of elements all together, plus the spark. And viola. Its there. Same with life. |
|
TS3 NEEDS: BUSINESSES > BUSES, HELI'S, > FARMING !!! IF TS3 DOESN'T GET BUSINESSES, THEN TS3 HAS FAILED !!! |
|
|
|
|
|
7th Mar 2011, 06:50 PM
|
#18 | ||
|
Oaktree
|
Quote:
PZ Meyers is awesome. :D Thanks for linking that; I didn't really spend the time to look through the original article, so that article catches things I totally missed. Quote:
You can get rather simple molecules that way, but the structures of proteins and DNA are a little too complex to simply come into existence at the strike of lightning. Proteins require a certain type of solvent to have a functional shape and they often require post-translational modifications. It's certainly possible that the earliest proteins were very simple ones. Actually, I'm inclined to think that peptides (essentially, tiny proteins) were the earliest of the compounds involved in life, so there would be fewer post-translational modifications with the trade-off being that the functions are generally simpler. Having peptides form on their own is quite a different matter from building up DNA that codes for the production of proteins, though. It would have taken a lot of trial and error and a long stretch of time to come to a complex, self-replicating system. |
||
|
|
|
|
7th Mar 2011, 07:10 PM
|
#19 | |
|
tizerist
Scholar
Join Date: Dec 2007 |
Quote:
Perhaps not lightning exactly, maybe I should have said a trigger. I'm just using a basic example. Some sort of chemical reaction to spark it off. Warm water is a major player here also... | |
|
TS3 NEEDS: BUSINESSES > BUSES, HELI'S, > FARMING !!! IF TS3 DOESN'T GET BUSINESSES, THEN TS3 HAS FAILED !!! |
||
|
|
Last edited by tizerist : 7th Mar 2011 at 07:42 PM.
|
|
8th Mar 2011, 01:45 AM
|
#20 | |
|
Mistermook
|
Quote:
Thankfully the universe is billions of years old and there's plenty of real estate. Whatever it takes, it obviously has taken place at least once, and there's an awful lot of time and places available for it to have happened elsewhere. Also, Charlie Sheen. If there is Charlie Sheen, there must be alien life in the universe. |
|
|
|
|
|
8th Mar 2011, 02:19 AM
|
#21 | |
|
Oaktree
|
Quote:
I agree. Billions of years is a lot of time and then some. And billions of billions of solar systems is a lot of room for trial and error. Particularly if, as we are now considering, it is possible for life to appear in multiple places within a solar system, as we expect may be the case with some of Jupiter's moons in our own solar system. |
|
|
|
|
|
8th Mar 2011, 04:21 AM
|
#22 |
|
Sunbee
Inventor
Join Date: Apr 2009 |
Of course, life is one thing. Intelligent life is an entirely different. I'm fairly well convinced that there isn't any near us, or that there is no possibility of ftl, one or the other. Our radio sphere should be out past 100 ly by now, and really, if you were an alien out there, and you saw WWI and II, wouldn't you be concerned? I'd think we ought to either get a colonialism type response, or an exterminate them before they can hurt us, or something. We're not exactly the most thoughtful and kind species imaginable. Given our history, I wouldn't want us as a neighbor. Also, presumably if there were anyone at our level of advancement or greater in our region, the SETI folk would be getting some results. Alien sit-coms or soaps, at the very least! |
|
|
|
| 8th Mar 2011, 05:06 AM |
| maybesomethingdunno |
| This message has been deleted by maybesomethingdunno. |
|
8th Mar 2011, 06:49 AM
|
#23 |
|
thislookskindacool
Test Subject
Join Date: Apr 2005 |
Aliens are totally real; the idea that earth is the only planet with life on it is silly, that being said almost all evidence of extraterrestrial life has been proven to be a deliberate hoax or to have a logical explanation. For example there is a sleeping disorder where you wake up during rem sleep, your body is paralyzed and you experience hallucinations, fear and a feeling like someone is in the room with you. Almost everyone has herd an alien abduction story which creates a false memory. I don’t see why aliens would travel to earth unless it’s like one of those renaissance fair things, so they can see first hand what primitive (most likely for them if they have the ability to travel from other galaxies) life is like..... |
|
|
|
|
8th Mar 2011, 10:48 PM
|
#24 | |
|
Tempscire
|
Quote:
Who knows how an alien would feel?  Or even what modes of communication they might use-- a species that doesn't communicate with sight and sound wouldn't get much out of those broadcasts, for example. Alternately, they could be intelligent but only developed to a level of technology circa our 17th century. Maybe they know and just don't care at all.Or for all we know they're waiting for us to "grow up" a little more with our war-making to challenge us to a duel. Or their leaders, fearing a panic with the confirmation of extraplanetary life, have been keeping it on the down-low, the way some conspiracy theorists on Earth believe is being done now. My point only being that it's impossible to guess at motivations for species that stand a very real chance of being completely unlike us. All we know is we haven't knowingly communicated with any. |
|
|
|
|
|
9th Mar 2011, 02:27 AM
|
#25 |
|
Mistermook
|
"Look at those guys! That's Charlie freakin' Sheen! How in the hell are we supposed to compete with that?" "Nah, we'll come back when we stand a chance of impressing these guys." |
|
|
|
 |
Twitter
del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
Google