Do UFOs/Aliens exist, is Time Travel possible and more...

[Anorion]

Haha after watching europa report they would stay away and not fund it. This should have been posted in astronomy thread?

Compiling list of reasons proving life is very common and superabundant, will post with references, but here is short list
- genetic complexity points to origin of life before earth was formed
- space dust being same size as dormant bacteria, dormant bacteria is everywhere in universe waiting to be seeded by comets and meteors on a suitable planet
- superhabitable epoch in early universe where every planet was in goldilocks zone
- earth being only average in terms of how conducive it is to life, there may be planets which are even more hospitable
- because of common origin, we cannot distinguish between alien and local life, aliens may already be among us
- finding complex proteins, amino acids in interstellar dust, pointing to origin of life in space without a host planet

 

[doomgiver]

It's not "some" organic compound. The chemical structure of the remains on that rock are eerily similar to fossilised bacteria found in earth. It might not be taken as conclusive evidence but it's very, very intriguing.

Haha after watching europa report they would stay away and not fund it. This should have been posted in astronomy thread?

Compiling list of reasons proving life is very common and superabundant, will post with references, but here is short list
1- genetic complexity points to origin of life before earth was formed
2- space dust being same size as dormant bacteria, dormant bacteria is everywhere in universe waiting to be seeded by comets and meteors on a suitable planet
3- superhabitable epoch in early universe where every planet was in goldilocks zone
4- earth being only average in terms of how conducive it is to life, there may be planets which are even more hospitable
5- because of common origin, we cannot distinguish between alien and local life, aliens may already be among us
6- finding complex proteins, amino acids in interstellar dust, pointing to origin of life in space without a host planet

the ONE thing im scratching my head is: how the hell did protein/amino acid structures form in space anyway?
sure, randomness, but how did they survive in all those hostile conditions? just imagine how vast space is..... if you think the "air" around us is empty... then outer space is as empty compared to air as air is as empty compared to a dense block of steel.

that'd be one HELL of a discovery if different areas of space yeild similar kinds of proteins.

anorion, i'll take up a fw points :

2. thats not very logical... and space dust being so uncommon, it'd take obscene amounts of luck for this to happen.
3. again, where are those planets? also, define "early" universe. 5 billion years ago? the current main-sequence stars were gas clouds. there were only late stage type - 1 and 2 stars.
5. common origin =/= similarity. a dolphin and a shark have the same ancestors. they look kinda alike, but are radically different.
6. its not even possible. the solar wind/radiaion will kill literally everything.

 

[Flash]

6. its not even possible. the solar wind/radiaion will kill literally everything.

Even there's a bacteria (Deinococcus radiodurans) in our earth which can thrive among highly ionizing radiation that're lethal to humans - so that's possible.

 

[Anorion]

Give me a day ill post links to each of those points they are all scientific theories backed up by data but from what i can remember
2. Size matches on nanometer scale and spectographic analysis of space dust - most space dust - is indistinguishable from dormant bacteria
3. Very early in the universe when there were only a handful of supernovae
5. Virii or bacteria, if they came from space, would we recognise them as extraterrestrial in origin if they were genetically similar to known life forms. By default we assume all life is from earth.
6. Deep space, away from solar systems, there are collosal clouds of organic molecules, including amino acids... And even food. If Clouds of free floating alcohol can be considered food.

 

[doomgiver]

Even there's a bacteria (Deinococcus radiodurans) in our earth which can thrive among highly ionizing radiation that're lethal to humans - so that's possible.

inter-stellar space has high energy particles, some whose magnitude is so high, that the enegry ranges are not found naturally on earth.

also, if space life is radiation resistant, then we must be radiation resistant too... because earth was seeded by these same bacteria, right?

but we are not radiation resistant, ergo, we did not evolve from space based microbes.

- - - Updated - - -

Give me a day ill post links to each of those points they are all scientific theories backed up by data but from what i can remember
2. Size matches on nanometer scale and spectographic analysis of space dust - most space dust - is indistinguishable from dormant bacteria
3. Very early in the universe when there were only a handful of supernovae
5. Virii or bacteria, if they came from space, would we recognise them as extraterrestrial in origin if they were genetically similar to known life forms. By default we assume all life is from earth.
6. Deep space, away from solar systems, there are collosal clouds of organic molecules, including amino acids... And even food. If Clouds of free floating alcohol can be considered food.

3 is absolutely wrong.
you cannot have a heavy metal planet without atleast a type 2 star. that early in the universe, there simply wasnt enough "heavy" matter to make a planet, mostly stuff till carbon/magnesium.

planets just donot form overnight. you need to have stars to go nova, stars that have heavy elements, like carbon/oxygen, which then seed the 2nd generation of stars, which take it up to iron/cobalt, which in turn go nova and seed 3rd gen stars, which form the restof the elements.

our sun and earth is the result multiple sucessive star-deaths. they all died so we could live.

 

[Anorion]

ok here goes.

1. Moore's Law and the Origin of Life | MIT Technology Review

An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed.

*i.imgur.com/M81obHq.png

2. Journal of Cosmology

A wide range of spectroscopic data from the far infrared to the far ultraviolet points to the conclusion that life is a cosmic phenomenon. Although there is a lingering reluctance to accept this position, alternative explanations for the total data set are beginning to appear contrived.

more explanation from another source
Analysis of Interstellar Dust and Selected Resources. by Brig Klyce

But Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were not satisfied. In the middle 1970s, they turned their attention to an apparent anomaly in the spectrum. It had a low, broad "knee" centered at about 2.3 wavelengths per micrometer (the slight convexity on the slope at the left side of the graph above) (9). This spectral feature could be explained if the grains of dust were of a certain size, and translucent. After trying almost everything else first, in 1979, they looked at the spectrum for bacteria. Dried bacteria refract light as irregular hollow spheres, and their size range is appropriate. The match between the spectrum for dried bacteria (solid line) and the ones from the interstellar grains (dots, triangles and squares) was nearly perfect. Thinking without prejudice, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe concluded the grains probably were dried, frozen bacteria.

3. [1312.0613] The Habitable Epoch of the Early Universe

In the redshift range 100<(1+z)<137, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) had a temperature of 273-373K (0-100 degrees Celsius), allowing early rocky planets (if any existed) to have liquid water chemistry on their surface and be habitable, irrespective of their distance from a star. In the standard LCDM cosmology, the first star-forming halos within our Hubble volume started collapsing at these redshifts, allowing the chemistry of life to possibly begin when the Universe was merely 10-17 million years old. The possibility of life starting when the average matter density was a million times bigger than it is today argues against the anthropic explanation for the low value of the cosmological constant.

moar explanation
Life possible in the early Universe : Nature News & Comment

Loeb says that rocky planets could have existed at that time, in pockets of the Universe where matter was exceptionally dense, leading to the formation of massive, short-lived stars that would have enriched these pockets in the heavier elements needed to make planets. He suggests that there would have been a habitable epoch of 2 million or 3 million years during which all rocky planets would have been able to maintain liquid water, regardless of their distance from a star. “The whole Universe was once an incubator for life,” he says.

4. NASA Researchers: DNA Building Blocks Can Be Made in Space

NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a "kit" of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life.

"People have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960's, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life," said Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space."

ISRO discovers extraterrestrial life

An ISRO research balloon found the three unknown species of bacteria which could mean that there is alien life in space.
Terrestrial microbes fight to survive at heights where the three species of bacteria have been discovered as ultraviolet rays kill most of them.
So are they really alien? Scientists say they could be mutant forms of earthly bacteria. Tossed into space by exploding volcanoes, they could have evolved to survive in a hostile world.

5. Could Some Alien Worlds Be More Habitable Than Earth?

In the journal Astrobiology, however, researchers René Heller of Canada's McMaster University and John Armstrong of Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, calls that idea too Earth-focused. "From a potpourri of habitable worlds that may exist, Earth might well turn out as one that is marginally habitable, even bizarre from a biocentric standpoint," they write.

Superhabitable Worlds

To be habitable, a world (planet or moon) does not need to be located in the stellar habitable zone (HZ), and worlds in the HZ are not necessarily habitable. Here, we illustrate how tidal heating can render terrestrial or icy worlds habitable beyond the stellar HZ. Scientists have developed a language that neglects the possible existence of worlds that offer more benign environments to life than Earth does. We call these objects "superhabitable" and discuss in which contexts this term could be used, that is to say, which worlds tend to be more habitable than Earth. In an appendix, we show why the principle of mediocracy cannot be used to logically explain why Earth should be a particularly habitable planet or why other inhabited worlds should be Earth-like.

6. Super-complex organic molecules found in interstellar space | Astronomy.com

'We have detected the presence of anthracene molecules in a dense cloud in the direction of the star Cernis 52 in Perseus, about 700 light years from the Sun,' explains Susana Iglesias Groth, the IAC researcher heading the study.

In her opinion, the next step is to investigate the presence of amino acids. Molecules like anthracene are prebiotic, so when they are subjected to ultraviolet radiation and combined with water and ammonia, they could produce amino acids and other compounds essential for the development of life

'Two years ago,' says Iglesias, 'we found proof of the existence of another organic molecule, naphthalene, in the same place, so everything indicates that we have discovered a star formation region rich in prebiotic chemistry.' Until now, anthracene had been detected only in meteorites and never in the interstellar medium. Oxidized forms of this molecule are common in living systems and are biochemically active. On our planet, oxidized anthracene is a basic component of aloe and has anti-inflammatory properties.

The new finding suggests that a good part of the key components in terrestrial prebiotic chemistry could be present in interstellar matter.

Sugar Found In Space: A Sign of Life?

Astronomers have made a sweet discovery: simple sugar molecules floating in the gas around a star some 400 light-years away, suggesting the possibility of life on other planets.

The discovery doesn't prove that life has developed elsewhere in the universe—but it implies that there is no reason it could not. It shows that the carbon-rich molecules that are the building blocks of life can be present even before planets have begun forming.

any more findings like this? even if a few of them are true, it could mean some interesting things

 

[doomgiver]

lets address some your points one by one :

------------------------
1. there is NO evidence that evolution behaves in "moore's law". do you see the "jumps" in the graph? well, a proper mathematician can twist them into literally anything.

unless the early stars had incredibly short lifespans, there simply wasnt enough heavy matter for life to form out of.

evolution basically happens in two ways :
1. gradual change : slowly evolove into new/different forms
2. rapid mutation : multiple "branches", most of which die out

the major diffrentiatin is the amount of different variations and the timescale.

1. is the "default" evolutionalrt path, its the usual "species evolve due to survival of fittest"
2. is when something calamitious happens, like an asteroid strike, or a volcano eruption. it just so totally changes the ecosystem/environment, that species are forced to undergo "rapid" mutations in order to succeed.

the most famous case was the moths in britain.

when britain was jsut getting into the industrial revolution, the moths in the countryside near london used to be light brown in color, matching the tree trunk color.
when the machines produced smoke, some of it clung to the tree trunks, making them blacker and blacker. as a result, the now light color moths showed up against the now dark bakground wnd were eatn by predators.
a small population of black moths began to emerge, which were able to hide on the black trunks.

now, this is an accurate portrayal of genetic history of earth :

> something evolves > more similar things evolve > some accident happens (meteor/volcano, etc) > many species wiped out > new species come out > new species overtake old species > old species dies > more stuff like new species keeps evolving > back to start.

this cycle of gradual change then doom then sudden evolution is quite common in earth's histroy.
hell, mammals were helped along in evolution by the asteroid strike that devastated the dinosaur ecosystem (they couldnt regulate temprature, unlike mammals) so the tiny puny rats who were hunted became the hunters.


---------------------
2. the entire argument depends on the fact that the size of the particles is similar to the size of microbes. other than that, the data is very interesting. really liked the comet vs culture curves.


3. it seems logical, i cant say much about this.


4. oh god, you HAD to post this. 40 klicks is NOT outer space. "space" begins around 130-200 klicks high. i want to find the bloody journalist who did this and wring his neck dry.

i agree, these findings are interesting, but keep in mind, most of this is conjecture and hypothesis.
i only contest your 1st and 4th point. rest of them are interesting.

 

[Faun]

Evolution looks intelligent but actually just a trial and error thing.

 

[Inceptionist]

Evolution looks intelligent but actually just a trial and error thing.

We are not special. Life on Earth is just one probability.

 

[Anorion]

dont agree with the space dust being bacteria thing. it seems a little fringe because of the language used.

 

[arnabbiswasalsodeep]

Wow, at last found a thread of my type

Well I would like you to subscribe channels like vsauce, 1vertasium, minute physics and many more
Lot more info can be obtained from there

 

[Anorion]

[YOUTUBE]TMeoG9ScQ1o[/YOUTUBE]

 

[beingGamer]

There is of curse possibility of alien life, just look at this video. You will get some idea how tiny we are..

 

[Raziel]

cool topic. The universe is so huge, so there could be life somewhere out there I think.

 

[Raaabo]

so, if i found a microchip in my garden, then it must mean that there is a supercomputer in my garden??

Nope it means there's a microchip in your garden, and thus there may be more microchips.

Life is life, they don't have to wave to you when you get there to prove that they're living things.

A few billion years from now after humanity and all "life" (as you describe it) dies out (for whatever reason) and nature reclaims everything and makes Earth look like Mars, explorers would also only find bacterial fossils on the surface of Earth. You'd need to dig and scan thousands of sq-km of surface to find a large fossil that survived a planetary change of that magnitude.

Just microchips in a garden, again.

 

[Minion]

Unsealed in History channel showing around 11 PM MON-FRI those who are interested can watch it.

 

[Anorion]

While various types of molecules have been detected in space, the kind of hydrogen-rich, carbon-bearing (organic) molecules that are most closely related to the ones necessary for life on Earth appear to be most plentiful in the gas clouds from which new stars are being formed. "Understanding the production of organic material at the early stages of star formation is critical to piecing together the gradual progression from simple molecules to potentially life-bearing chemistry," says Arnaud Belloche from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, the lead author of the paper.

Read more at: Interstellar molecules are branching out: Detection of iso-propyl cyanide with ALMA

one more piece of evidence that the chemistry required for life formation could be much more wide spread than previously thought

previous news articles in this line

(comets got the life creating molecules to earth) Deep Space Capable of Creating Linked Pairs of Amino Acids --Essential Building Blocks of Life
(amino acids found in interstellar medium) Amino acid found in deep space - 18 July 2002 - New Scientist
(Sugar molecules, and precursors for RNA in interstellar medium) Sugar Molecules Discovered Around Sun-Like Star | Search for Life & Alien Planets

 

[doomgiver]

Just microchips in a garden, again.

The problem is, nutcases and wackos interpret these findings in their own retarded way. They'll hail it as if aliens themselves have landed on the planet. :/

And you'll see this in tomorrow's news : "Definitive evidence of Jadoo found!!! Rudimentary carbon-nitrogen polymer chains discovered in outerspace."

Problem is, its quite easy to make similar compounds, hell, they did that in the 50's and were successful. Miller–Urey experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You could make your own "Jadoos" too, its that simple.

EDIT : whenever i see news like "amino acids found in space!! basic building blocks of life exist in cold emptiness", i wanna slam my face against the wall in frustration. imho, cutting edge science should not be reported by mainstream media. hell, normal people shouldnt be exposed to cutting edge science. that stuff is too dangerous for regular folks to handle. the only source of science news should be scientific journals. if you cant comprehend that, then you;re prolly nor qualified to talk/comment about that stuff anyway.

 

[Anorion]

^another one
Comet landing: Organic molecules detected by Philae

 

[Ronnie012]

Yep they exist. Take me for example