NASA Scientist Finds Alien Life

Are you sure it's not just horrific? What about unconscionable? Why leave out outlandish? Do you have something against outrageous? Do I detect adjectival bias in your words? Have you reported yourself to the Ethics Review Board? And why do you want to enable God's drinking problem? Are you angry at the universe? Does the prospect of sober creation worry you?

Great reply. Very thought provoking. Keep your omnipotent and other-worldy consciousness flowing for the benefit of the rest of us.

This post is horrible, my chosen words, because it presents something as if it's a fact. When the truth is that we've still got some ways to go before anyones valid in saying "there is extraterrestrial life".

I prefer "omniscient." Stay tuned.

I'm voting that last comment up!

Don't worry, I'm not goin' anywhere, oh great universal knowledge bringer.

I voted all of your comments up as well. Nice to have other sentient beings on earth.

Nice to meet you my fellow homo sapien sapien.

I just discovered bacteria in my kitchen sink!

The whole world is releasing their files on UFO's, Pilots and Astronauts are coming forward and speaking about what they have experienced and you are worried about one little article?

I've seen a UFO...my whole family saw it......trust me, there is life beyond our planet.

I dunno, Yahoo is a highly reputable source...

I bet they're out of this world!

they'd prob. say it's Jesus' sperm

That's probably true.
I mean you can tell just from looking at it.
Praise Jesus of Mars!

also, this guy has claimed virtually the same thing, from the same meteorite-- and been debunked already.

so it'll probably be crap.

do you know how many random things had to happen for life to exist?

a few more miles farther or closer to the sun, a different orbit, a few more parts per million on one gas-- and there's nothing, just dust. maybe water, but then just mud.

why do you conclude it's 'insane' to decide that we're alone?
i don't consider myself fringe thinking, i believe i'm a fairly intelligent person, i don't hate open-minded thinking; but i don't believe in other life forms.

at the most, i'll allow for some bacterial form of life, single celled organisms that aren't constructed out of the same things we are. but i definitely don't think there's other carbon based life forms on other earth like planets.

maybe it's insane for you to assume that because something is so big and we don't know about it, then the obvious answer is that it's totally awesome. what if the rest of the universe is a cold, dangerous place like the rest of the milky way? what if nothing prospers, stars, planets, water-- nothing what if it all totally sucks and hosts nothing?

now i'm not saying you're stupid or insane or anything, i just don't appreciate the assumption that something's wrong with the way i think because i don't believe in something that there's no proof of. there's no empirical data at all that suggests there's life-- we base our whole idea on: is there water? water supports life. was there water? there could have been life! --to me that's a pretty shaky theory.

but when people dismiss my idea that we're alone it's done with the same superiority people have about evolution/creationism (which there's data to support, so it merits a right and wrong answer, whereas life in the cosmos hasn't earned that yet)

no, i'm not assuming that, and in fact i 'mocked' the notion that we are searching for life we know about.

my only gripe is there isn't one shred of evidence so far that there is other life, and what we know about life here is that it's such a crap shoot. so as of yet i don't believe in other life forms and i was just defending that idea.

i'm familiar with the arsenic lake microbes, are you familiar with the fact that a bunch of scientists said the study was crap and proves nothing? if we can't even hammer that down, controllable things found on earth, how can we imply that "there MUST be life out there... it's SO BIG"?
http://www.slate.com/id/2276919/pagenum/all/#p2

It's simply playing the odds. We don't even have the faintest clue about life on the bottom of our own ocean, let alone anything CLOSE to be able to say one way or the other about life outside of Earth. Statistically speaking though, the chances are good that there are other forms of life out there.

and that's where i disagree.
we don't even know about the bottom of our oceans because we can't map out what it takes for life to prosper-- and we don't know anything about the universe, realistically we don't, we've got pictures and theoretical physicists.

like i said, SO MANY things had to land just right for there to be life here, why do we assume that it's so easily happening elsewhere? what if EVERY other planet in the universe is just too far or close to their star to support life? what if other planets don't have any gases that are good for life?

my WHAT IFs are just as valid as your WHAT IFs, I just choose to believe something that is proven to me, even if it's just slight circumstantial evidence-- and life elsewhere hasn't been proven to me.

Wow dude. Way too overly certain and obnoxious! I don't know one way or the other whether there's other life out there. I tend to find it hard to believe there's not. But either way you're being ridiculous.

"Do you know how many random things had to happen for life to exist?" - Seriously, do you have any idea how big it is out there? There are 100,000,000,000 solar systems in this one tiny galaxy alone! Just think about that! Now check this out: There are 100,000,000,000 galaxies out there also made up of solar systems!! Amazing right! That means if our galaxy is anything like an average galaxy, there are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 solar systems!!!! Holy shit! And recent theories suggest this universe many be only one of many. Now what were you saying again about what's unlikely?

"what if the rest of the universe is a cold, dangerous place like the rest of the milky way? what if nothing prospers, stars, planets, water" - This is your big problem right here. The scientific community actually knows a lot about the composition of the universe. How much or little of it you've chosen to learn is irrelevant. Yes, it's mostly empty. So is an atom. The non-empty parts are full of active stars and all the chemistry they create which forms the building blocks of life. That's not making an assertion about life, but it should give you pause.

"at the most, i'll allow for some bacterial form of life, single celled organisms that aren't constructed out of the same things we are." - Haha. OK. Thanks for the allowance. It's appreciated. Here I was thinking you were an interesting voice on here and you had to go and douche all over the place.

You're right. There is absolutely no objective basis for believing that there is life outside of earth. It is purely a statistical belief with no empirical evidence to support the supposition one way or the other.

i had to go and douche all over the place?
and you're calling me obnoxious?

thanks.

what does that even mean? do you actually think that i was "allowing" in the sense that i'm giving you permission to think something, it's a fucking phrase used to express oneself, to include caveats into discussions...

you just repeated the stuff i complained about-- "it's SO BIG, there MUST be something there" isn't enough science for me to believe in. scientist don't KNOW, they have data that computers send them, and they have pictures. they have ideas, they have strong circumstantial evidence but we can't get out there yet so i choose to not believe it until people can prove it.

why is that so offensive to you?

now, with your (condescending as hell) permission i'll go ahead and keep douching it up. why didn't you end your post with 'winning!'?

Dang gravity of humans to remain vastly ignorant.

Your post was obnoxious dude. I responded in kind and took it up a notch. It's what I do. Just like bad satire is what you do. Your opinion isn't offensive, the way you put it was.

And I definitely didn't say "it's SO BIG, there MUST be something there". I'm saying it's so big that it's ridiculous to feel confident that there isn't.

"what if EVERY other planet in the universe is just too far or close to their star to support life?" - I'd suggest reexamining this theory while thinking about the nearly infinite number of stars that are out there.

well i don't "do" anything. i occasionally decide to do bad satire, i occasionally decide to douche it up apparently. but i don't come to the board to 'do my thing' or anything like that, is that what you do?

other than that, what is so offensive about my post? i think i directed two, maybe three questions at the guy, the rest of it was MY belief, MY basis for my ideas, me defending MY ideas, so if anything-- it was defensive, the opposite of offensive.

you read it differently? i'm sorry i offended you then, i generally don't mean to do that when i post my opinions...

do me a favor, next time you're offended by something i say, don't bother trying to do what you do and take it up a notch, this board has plenty of petty arguing and obnoxious posts, i don't need to be egged into adding to it.

"at the most, i'll allow for some bacterial form of life, single celled organisms that aren't constructed out of the same things we are. but i definitely don't think there's other carbon based life forms on other earth like planets.
maybe it's insane for you to assume that because something is so big and we don't know about it, then the obvious answer is that it's totally awesome. what if the rest of the universe is a cold, dangerous place like the rest of the milky way? what if nothing prospers, stars, planets, water-- nothing what if it all totally sucks and hosts nothing?"

It was mostly those 2 paragraphs that I found all sorts of wrong. Starting with the allow, which I may have overreacted to, but proceeding through the "obviously totally awesome" straw man to what ifs that are actually demonstrably false. There ARE prospering stars in other galaxies. And in what way can you call "the rest of the Milky Way" "cold and dangerous"? The Milky Way is bursting with stars and planets.

alright.
what i meant by the 'what ifs' was dangerous as a threat to life-- as in, we can't live there, so it's too cold and too dangerous for us. it piggy backed what i said about the train of thought about water breeding life.

i know that the milky way isn't actually empty black space, and i know there's a ton of awesome strange stuff i can't even wrap my head around-- i just put those in there as a response to how i feel people who disagree with me tend to act towards me. "don't you know how big it is/ don't you know how many stars there are/ how small minded of you to think..." --which you did-- when all i'm asking for is for you to extend the open-minded-ness that there HAS to be life over to my notion that it hasn't been proven to me yet.

now see, i think these last two posts are much more productive than you calling me obnoxious and me sarcastically talking about all my douching about, thanks.

You're right. I apologize for the douche comment.

I still think you're overstepping big time with things like: "I definitely don't think there's other carbon based life forms on other earth like planets" or "I don't believe in other life forms"

You can't get around facts like the existence of 10 SEXTILLION solar systems by saying things like: "What if EVERY other planet in the universe is just too far or close to their star to support life? what if other planets don't have any gases that are good for life?"

It's statistical nonsense.

Doug, I was about to jot down the same thought.

"So many random things having to come together." High odds if considered on Earth scale. But when you extend those odds over billions and trillions and -- to use a precise scientific term -- bazillions of other planetary bodies, the odds come a lot closer to something like, say, beating grandma at Bingo.

I know what everyone is saying, "She's ruthless." And you're all correct. But that bitch can be taken down. All it takes is diligence, hot coffee, and few reruns of Merv Griffin to distract her.

But back to the point. I would bet good money that DougChristian knows what postlapsaria doesn't: The mindset in the scientific community has changed since the 60s and the 70s. More astrophysicists entering the field today fully expect to find life--most likely intelligent life--out there in their lifetimes. That's a pretty exciting expectation when you consider that their careers are based on gathering empirical evidence. Pardon me for stealing this line: "Life here began out there."

Oh, and on a humanitarian aid tangent, somebody put a plug in postlapsaria's douche-nozzle!!! He's leaking!!!

Ha. Look out postlapsaria. Tim is like my evil twin (no relation).

It's an interesting point though about the view of the astro-community. The question of us actually finding intelligent life in our lifetimes is an entirely different question. But the idea that it's not unreasonable goes a ways toward showing how unreasonable the idea that there likely is nothing out there at all really is.

For the "us finding" part we probably have to eliminate the 100 BILLION galaxies that aren't the Milky Way and we have to limit the search to the here and now (fossils don't count). That's a HUGE constraint. Just imagine how much life must be out there or have been out there or will be out there if we were actually able to find more nearby right now.

The "intelligent" part also puts a huge time constraint on things. Even if you go with the theory that any life, if allowed to develop for long enough with enough resources, will eventually produce intelligent life (which is debatable, but not entirely unreasonable), and depending on what you choose to call intelligent life (fish? mammals? humans? are we even there yet?), you've got to consider that it took about 2 BILLION years of years of life on Earth for complex life to develop, hundreds of millions more for us to emerge, and only a few thousand years and a few really bad ideas to bring us near the brink of destroying ourselves. The odds of finding life like ours at the same point in development really do get quite long. The best case would be finding some stupid, but awesome alien dinosaurs. Worst case they'd be hyper-advanced and could disintegrate us with their minds.

I go more with the Stephen Hawking line of reasoning: (paraphrased) "Alien life almost certainly exists, but we probably wouldn't want to meet them."

Oh, like hyper-space drive motherships that swallow planets for fuel? Why do I find the Idea of unidentifyable bacteria more likely and more horrifying?

Yeah I definitely agree with that.