Slashdot Mirror
Salty Ocean On Europa Could Mean Life
Arctic Fox writes: "Based on data from the Galileo satellite, scientists have evidence for a salty ocean under the surface of Europa.
As reported in this article from the UK Times. Who cares about water? Now if they could only find a monolith." The underpinnings for life grow tantalizingly more evident as our vicarious observations grow in detail and scope. From the article: "The probe has also detected patterns in the moon's magnetic field that could be generated by a liquid ocean underneath its surface. Because salty water conducts electricity, its presence on Europa, which is within Jupiter's magnetic field, would lead an ocean to generate a field of its own."
As reported in this article from the UK Times. Who cares about water? Now if they could only find a monolith." The underpinnings for life grow tantalizingly more evident as our vicarious observations grow in detail and scope. From the article: "The probe has also detected patterns in the moon's magnetic field that could be generated by a liquid ocean underneath its surface. Because salty water conducts electricity, its presence on Europa, which is within Jupiter's magnetic field, would lead an ocean to generate a field of its own."
NASA PRESS RELEASE: We have sucessfully spent $30,000,000,000 to pump new life into the now stagnent frozen fish market.
"retro-fitting for the unwitting"
I was watching a show on the Discovery channel a couple of weeks ago. They were doing a special on the moons of Jupiter, and they mentioned that sometime in the year 2002 (2003?), they will be launching a probe that will attempt to land on Europa, and release a heating vent of sorts that will melt through the ice to the water below, and (hopefully) see what's under all that ice. Has anyone else seen this show? Any more information on this?
How is Europa's size compared to Earth's or Luna's? With this discovery, could this be a comfortable place for people to live (with water and all)? I know it's far away, but how does it compare to Mars?
Too bad we won't be going there in my lifetime. =(
No that was an episode of IRON CHEF
"retro-fitting for the unwitting"
If I recall right, though, it takes an electric discharge, not merely a field to start life. Being under the surface, getting this discharge could be pretty hard.
Not positive about that though, correct me if I'm wrong...
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
Actually, they were Soviets. :-)
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
Hah!
What benefits has the space program brought us? Prestige against the USSR? Useless space stations? Billions of dollars of expenses? Pictures of things that are so far away that they no longer exist? Please, can you give me some real benefits? I don't want to pay taxes for useless things. I pay taxes for the tangible services, like defense, that the government provides.
Place your bets now. Will there be life found elsewhere in our solar system? Secondary bets may be placed on the following, for those who prefer to wager on human nature rather than nature itself. Will the presence of life on other planets create significant doubt amongst creationists? Will the absence of life on planets which have all the supposed necessary ingredients create significant doubt amongst evolutionists?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
HOLY SHIT!!! This could mean our astronauts could have an endless supply of
saline fluid for their contact lenses once they get out there! (:
Comparing the public's interest in space exploration now with the '60s, it seems that the public does not care. Possibly the public embraced space exploration during the '60s as a means of 'hoping for better things.' During war, corruption and the cold war, space exploration was a 'happy thing', something that people could get excited about. Now, we are busier with our lives, no cold war worries and, sure, corruption is still around. What would motivate the U.S. and other nations to have a renewed interest in space exploration? I have never heard the issue raised during the presidential-race. The public generally does not care? No mission to mars? Alpha-centauri? Am I crazy? Should I lead an isolated life and join one of Joe Firmage's funky organizations?
I still find it rather interesting that the search for life is given in terms of our own existence. Why is it that life has to involve electrical fields and/or discharges and religious beliefs?
"How can they objectively prove that an object millions and millions of miles away contains life forms."
How about "they go look and find some"? Actually, you can't prove they don't exist, but you can easily prove that they do (if they do, of course).
"If God had created any life outside of this Earth He would have written so in his word, the Bible."
Um, the Bible is a religious text, not a scientific one. The Bible doesn't say anything about electrons either, but you're reading Slashdot, aren't you?
(And yes, I have read the Bible, thank you)
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The real Captain Derivative has a Slashdot ID.
...he would have given us instructions to send in a self-addressed stamped envelope with $20 for the personal helicopter kit.
DNA just wants to be free...
What does probability have to do with it? So far, the only evidence we have that the probability of life is anything greater than zero for a given planet/-oid/moon/nebula/toroidal gas-cloud/pocket dimension/Jon Katz is the evidence of our own planet.
And don't forget that we may all be evolved from Martian bacteria, or interstellar cooties, or whatever the Space Flavor of the Week is.
Of course, this week's Space Flavor happens to be "salt water on Europa". It doesn't really change anything, except maybe our understanding of the planet. Then again, it does mean that conditions for life as we know it may in fact prevail on parts of that remote sphere.
Not that it's a sphere, natch... but while I'm here, it occurs to me that every time we learn something new about Europa, it seems to be some new condition for terrestrial life that the moon has met. It certainly helps to build the suspense, don't it? Europa will turn out to be the Al Capone's Vault of the new milennium, or else one of the greatest discoveries in human history. Personally, I can't wait.
As for it being a moon, and therefore more extreme, I'll wager 100 interplanetary megabucks (or whatever base unit of currency we and the Europans end up using) that the conditions on Venus are not only more "extreme" than the conditions on Europa, but that the conditions on Venus are more extreme than the conditions on Venus' own moons. Honestly, you make even less sense than I do.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The discovery of penicillin, of X-rays, of radio, of electricity, etc. did not happen because individuals set out to cure disease, communicate thru the air, etc. They happened because these people were poking and prodding at the universe out of pure curiousity. Following your thinking, it would have been judged a massive waste of taxpayer money to pay to build these huge, costly machines thought up by weirdo mathematicians (e.g. ENIAC), when there are more pressing practical problems to be solved.
As for the practical spinoffs spinoffs from the space program, you're making use of them each time you use a teflon pan, or fly on a hang glider, or use instant orange breakfast drink, or listen to a CD. Understanding the workings of other planets and moons helps us to understand our own planet better and to better predict the environmental consequences of our actions. Many other examples could be given.
All these worlds are yours -- except Europa.
Attempt no landings there.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How is Europa's size compared to Earth's or Luna's? With this discovery, could this be a comfortable place for people to live (with water and all)?
:)
Europa's diameter is 3,138 km (1,946 miles), just a bit smaller than Earth's moon.
The surface gravity is also slightly less than that of our moon, which is 1/6 Earth gravity. That wouldn't stop people from living there, but the fact that the entire surface is ice would make it a bit, well, slippery.
I know it's far away, but how does it compare to Mars?
Europa isn't really comparable to Mars in many ways. Mars has an atmosphere -- thin and unbreathable, but much more substantial than vaccuum. Also, being much closer to the sun, Mars would have more energy available for things like growing plants and generating power from wind and sun.
On the other hand, I suppose that Europa's oceans (assuming they exist) could be more hospitable than the surface! Anything's possible... especially when monoliths are involved.
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Is it okay to cry "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse? --Steve Martin
Actually, in the book there was a joint Soviet/American mission, as well as a Chinese mission. The Chinese got there first, landed on Europa, and started pumping water into their tanks. The lights from the ship attracted some plant-like animal which destroyed the ship. The remaining Chinese astronaut (one of two not on/near the ship at the time) then started transmitting to the Leonov even though the Chinese had been maintaining radio silence until that point. He described what had happened, and kept transmitting until they lost the signal. They never regained it.
Having just read the book (and working on 2061), I'm really disappointed by what was left out of the movie. Not that it's a poor movie, but the book is (almost always) so much better.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Really, you don't want to take the lack-of-inclusion-equals-false approach to using the Bible truth-o-meter. The bible never explicitly states that the square root of 9 is three, Bill Clinton smoked pot or my shirt is blue... but all those things are true.
there is really no way they can verify this without actually finding existing life
2 1337 4 u!
This is kind of touching on my religious turmoil right now...
Why would we have been told. What would that have done for us. Nothing really.
I used to have those Time-Life boks on UFOs and other mysteries and there was an old painting that had Jesus in a space ship.
Also there was a movie called Enemy Mine In this movie a human got stranded on a planet with a rival alien. They taught each other their language with the aliens spiritual book. When it translated it was the Bible. I just always thought that this was a neat thought.
I think that finding that life... even "non-intelligent" life would bring about lots of changes on earth. Mostly socially. We would realise that we are not really the center of the universe and might actually try to get along.
Amazing how many people fell for this. Man, you should try alt.religion.kibology for a while.
Other than the blasphemous assumption in the second paragraph, it was pretty good. But, there are Fundamentalist Christians who actually do make those kind of categorical statements about what God would or would not do, without any Scriptural support.
Oh -- one thing. You assumed Europa existed, despite the fact that it's not visible to the naked eye and isn't mentioned in the Bible. A line about how astonomy moved straight from serving Satan through astrology to serving Satan through godless science would have served well.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Also note that Genesis is written in a high literary mode; it's not the same literary style that would have been used for e.g. a history.
Chances are the language is, indeed, figurative. (Some other tip-offs, too, like the sudden appearance of cities before Adam and Eve have had that many children)
It is admittedly easy to go too far with this and simply declare the entire mess to be figurative. It's not. Couched in the symbolism, there are two elements which are, in fact, particularly important, and historical:
As for other specifics, I doubt Genesis was intended as a scientific treatise, contrary to what many extreme fundamentalists and atheists seem to insist.
DNA just wants to be free...
Emerson Willowick: Thinker, Writer, Human Being
....Troll?
Show me one insect that naturally has four legs (Leviticus 11:23)
Show me one.. just one fossil or sekeleton of a Nephilim or giant (gen 6:4)... I'll take a partial!
Hey, gen 7 tells me that the earth was covered in salt water for an entire year. You show me one species of flower that can survive a year under dozens of meters of salt water. Just one.
You show me one of those things. But remember that you've been shown thousands and thousands of dinosaur fossils (provided you bothered to look).
Let's see if you can meet the standards of proof you hold neo-darwinists to.
2 1337 4 u!
Salty? Impurities? Magnitism? Dang near any impurity in water lets it conduct electricity! Since it would be close to impossible for any body to have pure, non-conductive water, what is the big suprise?
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
(DAMNIT I FORGOT TO SIGN IN THE FIRST TIME!)
i think you are referring to the stanley miller experiment.t in 1953 he set up an electric discharge in an atmosphere of hydrogen, methane, ammonia and waer; and whadda ya know, after a week, found a bunch of amino acids floating around in the residue. the electric field they are talking about in the article (what must be a very weak one) is the supposed suspect of producing the magnetic field anomaly around europa. in other words if there is a magnetic field around europa it is almost certainly being produced by a salty ocean.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Finding life, of any sort, elsewhere, would give us a great deal more information. If it's similiar to ours it implies that there's similar processes going on elsewhere, or that we're related. If it's different then it gives us entirely new insights into how complexity evolves. Either way it's exciting stuff that could advance our understanding of biology, biochemestry, evolution, complexity, etc. immensely. It could even give us better numbers to plug into those formulas for figuring out how likely we are to have neighbors.
Nobody is expecting anything on Europa to pop up & greet us with a "Codex Universalis" - just there being anything lifelike* would be enough. Even there being nothing will tell us something
-- Michael
* We still don't know enough about life yet to come up with a really good definition anyone is particularly comfortable with.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
That's getting outside my immediate realm of knowledge.
I do recall that the copying procedures that were generally observed by the "mainline" rabbinical types through the centuries were amazingly anal, though. Munge a letter, start over. Observe certain rituals when writing "YHWH". &c... &c...
DNA just wants to be free...
If I might paraphrase your avatar's words upon his reported ascension into space,Therefore fundamentalists and trolls should expect to find some sort of "sheep" elsewhere in the universe. Your ass is covered on that account.
But you might be in trouble in other regards:
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
apparently there IS a europa orbiter being designed at JPL [ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ice_fire/EO_Info.htm ] but it will only be able to tell wether or not there is a subsurface ocean, how thick the covering ice is and how intense europas magnetic field is. IMHO we already have more than enough circumstantial evidence supporting the existance of a liquid ocean on the moon. why not attatch a probe capable of melting thru the ice to see if there really IS life down there?! IANAAP(astrophysicist) but i think the technology exists right now to do this. the heat source for melting ice could be contained in the tip of the probe as a mass of noble metal encapsulated(to prevent contamination of the europan ocean) Plutonium 238(its natural radiation makes it hot) and the probe could power itself using the heat differential between the surrounding ice/water and the hot probe tip. radioisotopic thermoelectric generators last a VERY long time and the probe would theoretically have decades to break thru the other side of the ice layer before its thermoelectric junction fails to produce power (heck the voyager probes are STILL TRANSMITTING!! and their RTG's are over 25 yrs old). why dont we start designing this thing NOW?!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
i don't know... i get REALLY irked when ppl think the space program is useless, and even more irked when computer geeks get that way. why? simple enough- without the advances made in computing BECAUSE of the space race to the moon, this conversation wouldn't be happening. other benefits? lesse... my cousin would have died by now from her cancer if the medicine to save her life hadn't been researched, and guess where the contributions came from? oh gee - zero g crystal growth. what else? hmm. if someone had decided that the space program was a waste of money that could have been better spent on earthly projects early on, then it's pretty simple- weather forecasting, spy sats, communication sats, etc would all be a thing of science fiction. fiber optics? kiss em goodbye. pure science may be costly, but the greatest inventions and the best benefits to society ALWAYS come from pure science, either as a direct or indirect result. and space exploration is, without a doubt, pure science. 'end rant (sorry, i am a lowly and crapped upon VB programmer.:)
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Umm, Ice isn't slippery when it's billions of miles from the sun. The only time ice is slippery is when it's near the freezing/melting point.
> You have to admit, it seems very improbable that even we are here.
At the intuitive level, I'm inclined to agree with you.
But when we step back to analyze it, we should ask ourselves by what benchmark we judge the probability that we are here. Maybe it's low. Maybe it's high. It's hard to tell with a single sample.
> And the intelligence of these beings is even less likely to develop.
Again, a very hard probability to judge. If a great meteor hadn't smashed into the earth 65 million years ago, would intelligent life have evolved? (Would Lizard Men be playing D&D, imagining what it would be like to fight ugly pseudo-intelligent mammalian creatures with furry heads and short snouts?)
I doubt that we could all even agree on a definition for "intelligent life", much less identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for its arisal.
> Being on a moon, the conditions are more extreme than most in this solar system.
Arguably, the moons are more nearly the norm, and sweet Earth is an extreme case, which just happens to suit our lifestyle. We may be the freakiest of the freaks among the galaxy's life forms.
Personally, I would not be surprised by microscopic life on Europa, nor even by "weird undersea thingies". I would be surprised, by large and/or morphologically complex life forms (fish, etc.), more so by intelligent life forms, and most of all by life forms with any sort of technology more sophisticated that chimpanzees have.
But ultimately, I'm eager to see what's there. It might help us predict the probability of life elsewhere, somewhat better than the WAGs we have to resort to now.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
yea spontaneous generation was disproved a century and a half ago. but abiotic synthesis was not! these are two separate things, the latter of which having mounds of evidence supporting it as the most probable method by witch life started here. spontaneous generation says that organisms spring fully formed from the aether(false). abiotic synthesis (supported by such experiments like the stanley miller experiment)says that life started by a long chain of events inevitably initiated by the laws of physics and the interaction of matter.
by the way as long as you list divine intervention as being the only other choice for the creation of life, why dont you note leprechauns or evles? they have just as much evidence for being the Creators of life as your god.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
I know this is a troll, but I also know that there're those who really have this opinion, so I'll bite. Ummm, howbout satellites, for example? If not for the space-race with the russians, the extensive launching system for our satellites would not have been developed. They're a major contribution to our communication infrastructure, weather research, international reconnaisance (if you like military spending, hows that?), GPS for god's sake. These benefits were not apparent at the time of Sputnik, just as the benefits of Europa are not apparent now.
Could you imagine the medical and material science possibilities of finding another naturally-developed form of life? Look at the myriad uses of crude-oil. The massive amount of pharmaceuticals developed from esoteric wildlife. Imagine if we find something equally useful on Europa. Sure, it'd have to be pretty damned important to merit importing it across space, but if we didn't check, we'd never know at all. We won't find ET, but we could find something we can use.
I do agree that most space research is, by and large, abstract knowledge. But some of it has very real possibilities. International space station is such a possibility. If we can make a sustainable orbital platform in orbit, where else can we build one? Around Europa? In the asteroid belt for its rescources? NCC-1701-E wasn't built in a day. If you ever want it to happen, you have to give people a chance to get there.
(To the tune of My Sharona)
Ooo my little pretty moon, my pretty moon
When you gonna show me some life, Europa?
Ooo you make my mission run, my mission run
Gonna look in your brine, Europa
Never gonna stop
Gotta look
Such a purty brine
Always gotta look
For the sign of life
My my my my my
Woo!
Mm mm mm my Europa
Gonna look a little closer huh
Whatcha got?
Close enough to look in your brine, Europa
Keepin' it a mystery, gets to me
Running down the depth of your brine, Europa
Never gonna stop
Gotta look
Such a purty brine
Always gotta look
For the sign of life
My my my my my
Woo!
Mm mm mm my Europa
When you gonna show to me, show to me?
Is it just a matter of time, Europa?
Is it d-d-destiny? D-destiny?
Or is it just a game in my mind, Europa?
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Scientific American had an excellent piece about extraterrestrials and where they could be/why we can't find them in the July issue. The accompaning article about SETI and searching for ETs is here.
Life outside earth?
I hope so...
I don't see any hope of finding intelegent life on earth....
If theres no life anyplace but earth we are pritty much screwed for intelegence...
I don't actually exist.
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
exploration is hope. Having new places to explore, having a continuing challage for our best and brightest, having new resources of materials, and having a common project as a melding function of cultures and sciences are what made America great. Exploring space is our new manifest destiny. Unfortunately, like the native Americans, the fish we might discover on Europa will probably be distroyed. They would probably be simple life forms and the bacteria and viruses of our ecosystem will likely prove too much for them to survive. Nevertheless, it is our nature, our design, to engage, adapt and overcome new challanges. If we finish exploring the oceans and do not accept the challange of space we will as a species begin to decay towards death.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Don't forget that Neil Armstrong used one of those pens to hotwire the ascent stage's arming switch, after he'd broken it off trying to move around the tiny LM cabin in his spacesuit. Let's see ya try that one with a pencil!
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
There's no reason we can't do both at the same time.
Searching for the possibility of life on Europa has many more potential benefits than simply the discovery of other life forms.
Looking at the other life forms on earth is a very good goal, and can teach us much, but in the end, we're still investigating life on earth, and are therefore limited to the results of that environment.
Look at it this way: Assume we've catalogued all life forms on earth (non trivial, I know). Maybe we find one or more life forms that are radically different at the biological level than the life forms we know now. In that case, we have distinct morphological biologies that can be compared and contrasted, and we learn more than if we only find life similar to known life. And if we find only life that is similar to known life, we still only have a data set of one.
Now, assume that by some chance, we find life on Europa (of any sort). If this life is different from any we find on Earth (no matter how many different types there may be), then we have yet another distinct biology to study, providing even more insight into the mechanism of life.
But suppose that by chance we find life on Europa that is very similar in content to life on Earth. In this case we learn something that we simply CANNOT learn by limiting our study only to life on Earth, no matter how many different types of life we find.
We learn either that the mechanisms of life formation are very similar on at least two different worlds, providing substantive data to further studies of abiogenesis and other evolutionary theories. Or we learn that there may be a common source for life on at least two different worlds. Data from two worlds won't necessarily allow us to choose one or the other view with certainty, but it is invaluable knowledge nonetheless.
Science is not merely about confirming the results of experiments and hypotheses, but attempting to do so using as many different mechanisms as possible (or at least feasible). If two (or more) different experiments investigating the same hypothesis produce equivalent results, then that hypothesis is further strengthened.
No matter how many forms of life we find on Earth alone, we are limited in what we can postulate from those results. Finding life on two or more different worlds increases the data set and allows us to strengthen (or modify) our hypotheses in a much more meaningful manner.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
"The underpinnings for life grow tantalizingly more evident as our vicarious observations grow in detail and scope."
... vicarious? Well, I guess we're not really observing these things directly -- more like we're living vicariously through the Hubble telescope. But I'm sure that's what Timothy meant. (stifled laughter)
Ahem
Reminds me of Clueless:
"You have to work out regularly, not just sporadically."
"How do you know if you're doing it sporadically?"
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
I hear ya... but I hate being misunderstood more :)
I think there's a cover-up behind the pen here.
So do I, but I think my theory about that is different than yours. What exactly do they mean by a $2M pen? Let's say we have a scientist who make $52K/yr. He spends a week on the pen. No biggie, but we could now argue that we have a $1,000 pen. Obviously, the pen needs to be manufactured and this, obviously, requires personell and equipment (we can skip raw materials, realistically). So, let's say they contract Parker to make this pen. They shutdown 10% of their plant for 1 day to re-tool to make the pen. Parker makes a million dollars profit a year so their loss is 1/3650 of a million. Now, we want to actually get the pen into space to test it (testing is part of the manufacturing process afterall). Let's say the pen takes up 1/10 of 1% of the space ship that costs $50M to put into space... hm.
It's easy to inflate the price of things if you start factoring in fixed and ambient costs. I bought some cable clamps at home depot for 45. If I factor in parking, gas, loss of time from contract work I could have been doing, vehicle depreciation and insurance for the duration of the trip yatta yatta, I've go a $75 cable clip.
I live in a province that's a hotbet of neo-populist right-wing economic theory and I am surrounded by people who use this technique to prove that the government is frittering away our tax dollars on junkets, paper clips and wallpaper for 24 Sussex.
Coca-Cola-Corp. relies completely on public complacency
Well, technically, so does the government. NASA's on the more-for-cheaper kick big time. This isn't because of some illustrious insight or attack of mental illness, it's because of public opinion that NASA spends too much and is part of "fat, inefficient" government. The result of this new faster-cheaper philosophy, or course, is a dramatic increase in litter on Mars, but that's a digression.
If anything, they would have benefited $2Million Dollars of research funding.
I wonder, really, how much we learned about zero g fluid dynamics as the result of this pen. Potentially quite a lot. Ultimately, the great breakthroughs are generated by the urges of curiosity or showing off....
Anyway, to reiterate:
1. I'm skeptical that the pen really cost $2M.
2. The public backlash against government spending (Thanks Ron!) has seriously damanged NASA (and a lot of other things...)
3. Showing-off and "poking about" generate a lot of progress as a spin off. Did the pen generate progress spin off. I suspect so.
Besides, they sell them for $40 or so each to the general public. Who knows? Maybe the pen's turned a profit?
2 1337 4 u!
In all seriousness. This bit of hodge podge has been passed off as serious science for along time
How about reading something from Richard Dawkins eg. "The Selfish Gene" he deflates the whole irrecducible complexity arguement quite easily. Plus the book does not take into account things such as Chaos, Quantum Phenomena as extended to biology etc. etc.
Do yourself a favour and read the pro-evolutionary side of the debate. I read both and come out better for it.
PS. Why does this mean there is a God by the way. Could not have Odin designed mankind, or Zeus, or Shiva etc etc for all you know it could have been
me!!!!!!!!!!!
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
Emerson,
The Bible is a grand, beautiful book, and I think that Christ was one of the greatest teachers and thinkers that ever lived (despite my being agnostic). However, to take the word of the Bible literally (or to "literally imply") is to fall into that same trap as so many others have fallen into i.e. people who have used the word of the Bible to justify all sorts of less-than-cool stuff.
It's one thing to subscribe to a belief system, especially one with as many good things about it as Christianity. But these systems must adapt to the times -- the Christian of today doesn't believe many of the things that a Christian of 1000 years ago believed. Does that make today's Christian more or less of a Christian as judged by the standards that existed then?
Creationists all too often see science as trying to 'disprove' the existence of a divine being. I think that this is a negative way of looking at it. I like to think of science as trying to find out more about the universe that God (if there is a God) made.
Regards,
John
Falling You - beautiful
- "There could be life on Europa" doesn't mean there is.
- We would have to get there (long, expensive).
- Bringing alien beings to Earth:
- Could be dangerous for us (epidemies, invasion, etc. - just watch both Alien and Outbreak again - )
- could also be dangerous for these beings (the shuttle would need whatever to keep it alive)
- Would be long and expensive (several years)
- Would require sophisticated hibernation technologies
If there appears to be no life on Europa, we could anyway settle some terrestrial life forms there, like micro-organisms aimed at bio-chemical experiments or whatever. We are still far from settling there but it may be easier for our Martian-born descendents.--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
the american government, traditionally, provides offense/offence, not defence.
Love's like playing "Marvel Vs. Capcom" with the default Dreamcast controller: Lots of fun but it hurts like hell
Love's like playing "Marvel Vs. Capcom" with the default Dreamcast controller: Lots of fun but it hurts l
Creationists can always argue that anyone who created life in one place probably had a reason to create it in other places, as well (experiment, fallback solution, ..., reasons could be endless).
Similarily, the absence of life on other planets just means the beginning conditions weren't right there. (And there are so many planets that there won't ever be a point at which we can claim there's absolutely certainly no other life). I don't think anyone would claim a plain rock would eventually evolve into life.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
> the square root of 9 is three
But the Bible says pi is 3. And if you square pi you get about 9.87, not 9. Either you're wrong or the Bible's wrong. C'mon Frymaster, fess up. And you shirt is aqua, not blue.
I refer naysayers to Kings 7:23. Identical wording is present in Chronicles 4:2.
Ryan
> As cute as Jurassic Park was, it hardly qualifies as a historical reference.
Well, sure. The movie was just a movie. You know how Hollywood can get carried away and distort the truth. HOWEVER, _Jurassic_Park_ was also published as a BOOK. A real, authentic, authoritative book. Just like the Bible.
Ryan
Okay, I will buy your creationist story if you're willing to stand up to the same level of proof that you subject neo-darwinists to. To whit:
Show me one insect that naturally has four legs (Leviticus 11:23)
I even have a photo!
Show me one.. just one fossil or sekeleton of a Nephilim or giant (gen 6:4)... I'll take a partial!
Unfortunately the Nephilim were drowned in the salt sea you mention below. Their bones turned to limestone along with the shellfish.
Hey, gen 7 tells me that the earth was covered in salt water for an entire year. You show me one species of flower that can survive a year under dozens of meters of salt water. Just one.
European flowers, for one. Also, Noah was commanded to take every kind of food with him on the ark, presumably this includes nuts and seeds.
Ryan
at night when they don't get sunlight for photosynthesis they have to perform respiration just like everyone else. That's why algae can take over a pond and kill fish, at night it eats up all the oxygen and the fish die.
Oxygen and Water are required for carbon based life. Those phototropic plants have simply figured out how to get oxygen in a different way, haven't they?
Moller
If aliens from Mars would be Martians, then would aliens from Europa would be Europeans? .. "Bonjour, J'appel ZeBlobbityPlinkkelPloffen, j'habit l'Europa" (Apologies for my appalling grasp of French).
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Seriously how do you find out about them? I love becoming members of whacky groups like this. Tried to join the Flat Earther's but they could see I was not being serious so they refused :(
The link can be found here:
http://www.pervenio.com/paa
Have you ever seen God? How then can you be so sure of his existance?
Faith? Based upon what? Some priest/minister/pastor's say so?
Or based upon evidence from your life experiences?
Why is your belief any more valid that someone else's? The beliefs of the Dogon people specificly include visitors from another part of the universe, they knew of Sirius B thousands of years before any human eye had ever caught sight of it. One could make a much better case for the validity of their religion over that of MANY others.
Keep your religious arguments confined to your bible school class.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"Never before has a species that's evolved on this planet been able to leave the world that it was created from"
I'm gonna have to disagree here. Nobody can figure on what really happened to them dinosaurs. Hell, they might living in it up on a solar system close by watching us through big binocs.
I subscribe to the theory that we are the product of an interferring race that came down and genetically engineered us from apes way back when. They needed creatures smart enough to follow orders but dumn enough to not get any bright ideas. They took away our strength so we couldn't revolt effectively. Then they had us mine precious metals and left us to fend for ourselves when they got what they wanted. Hey it explains the missing link and wouldn't we do the same if we could?
-- New findging: Early paste eaters 42% less likely to divorce.
Christ didn't start appearing in any sort of texts until centuries after he supposedly died.
There not a single mention of him in any text, record, or any document whatsoever during the time he allegedly lived.
Wildly incorrect. His existence was very well known at the time. The reason that existing records don't bear it out is because of their systematic destruction by the Catholic church over the centuries, the most notorious of which is the destruction of the library in Alexandria.
In recent years archaelogy has unearthed things like the Gnostic Gospels which have allowed us to put together a more well balanced picture of contemporary religious thought, which also explain a whole lot of stuff in the canon which makes no sense otherwise.
The first reference which can be unambiguously identified as Jesus Christ of the Gospels is a piece written by the Roman military governor in AD 48 referring to "the followers of the Egyptian magician." This explains why Jesus was persecuted by the rabbinical establishment; Judaism has always been extremely tolerant of differing interpretations of its scriptures, but has resisted fiercely attempts to merge beliefs from different cultures. And the winemaking, walking on water, raising the dead, all that stuff -- those weren't anything particularly special at the time, they were well known tricks of the initiates of the Egyptian mystery schools. Note, for instance, in Acts where they go up against Simon Magus doing the exact same tricks that the Jesus worshippers were pulling. And that bit with the feet anointing that freaked all the watchers out? Ritual straight out of Isis worship.
So that's why the Establishment did away with him -- nothing to do with claiming to be the Messiah, they were actually expecting said Messiah to show up somewhere around that time, and dozens of cult leaders were claiming that They Were The One, not just Jesus -- it's because he was an Egyptian assimilationist mofo!
As an aside, it seems that Coptic Christianity is the extant flavor that bears the greatest resemblance to what Jesus actually preached. But I digress.
Keep in mind that the following conditions are required for "life":
An energy gradient (i.e. "an organized", dense energy source near an "energy sink" so living things can grab that energy and use it)
The ability to reproduce (share traits with the next "generation")
Responds to stimulus
In addition to this, in order to be a "carbon-based" life form, using DNA for storage of genetic material, the only other items you need are:
Water
Carbon
Nitrogen (Can be ammonia or NH3)
Everything else can be manipulated or created with basic protiens around these items to create a DNA based life form. On the Earth, living things have been found in such inhospitable places as the bottom of a gyser, Antartica, Marianas Trench, thermal vents, Surveyor 4 (a lunar probe recovered by Apollo 14) etc.
It is precisely because of some of the harsh environments that living things have been found (even from the moon, although it was clearly of Earth origin) that make people suspect that life should be fairly easy to find on Europa. Martian life may already be there, but perhaps brought there courtesy of the governments of the USSR (pre-breakup) and the United States.
BTW, there is an office at NASA that is responsible for certifying space probes that go to other worlds. Places like Venus and the Moon are given a blank check, where as Europa and Mars are given "clean room" treatment. I can't find the division right off from the NASA web site (I looked) but I do know that it exists.