Compounds Necessary For Life 'All Over Space'

Kupek writes: "The Washington Post is carrying a story about how simple chemicals, when in space, form structures that resemble the membranes found in all life on Earth. "This discovery implies that life could be everywhere in the universe," said Louid Allamandola of NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Instead of the life process happening entirely on a planet capable of supporting life, it is proposed that some of the process takes place in space."

Comments

Assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it assumed that life always requires the same things (water, air, etc..) to grow and adapt? Isn't it possible that there are other forms of life with entirely different requirements?

Re:Go read "Religion and Rocketry"

[Zach Frey]

Yet again, the tired old "conflict" between Christianity and (capitalized) Science(tm). A little reality checking is in order here:

1st science: Ether was believed to be the all incorporating substance between people & things as late as the nineteenth century. Science later debunked that as incorrect and now we know that air is the material we live and breathe. Maybe someday that will be debunked when a scientist becomes interested enough. This kind of questioning is accepted and tolerated.

Air was understood as being a distinct thing from "ether" for a long time before the Michaelson-Morley experiment showed that the ether theory to be untenable.

You really need to look into the history of scientific inquiry a bit more. The idea of ether was a holdover from Aristotle, who held that the Universe needed an absolute frame of reference. For a long, long time, Aristotle's viewpoints were held sacred and unchallengeable. Eventually, along came Thomas Aquinas who said that instead of holding to the tradition of Aristotle's teaching, we ought to simply look at reality and accept that what we observe is the way it is, regardless of whether it contradicts Aristotle or not.

It is not irrelevant to note that Aristotle was a pagan and Aquinas was a Christian

Go read "Religion and Rocketry"

[Zach Frey]

C. S. Lewis covered this quite well back in the '50's with his essay "Religion and Rocketry," where he discussed the (non-)implications of extraterrestrial life on Christian belief. (You didn't specify Christian, but I'm hardly qualified to comment on the implications of ET life on other religions.)

A few points to keep in mind about Christian doctrine on the subject:

• Christianity does insist that humans are a special creation, and the only "souled" or "spiritual" creatures native to this planet.
• Christianity does, however, also insist on the existance of ET intelligences, and of their presense on this planet and elsewhere. We call them "angels" (or "demons" if they are fallen). We don't know much about these creatures, although two data points are that they are non-material, and they seem to have a different "economy of salvation" than we do.
• Christianity is silent on the possiblity of extraterrestrial, material life. Therefore, our finding or not finding it is irrelevant to the truth and teaching of Christianity.

The critics of Christianity for decades now (this is documented by Lewis, and it hasn't let up since) have been enjoying the hobby of taking whatever the latest discoveries and theories on ET life and using them as a stick to beat Christianity with. "The Universe is cold and lifeless! Therefore God is dead!" "The Universe is teeming with life! Therefore God is dead!" While this may be fun for the critics, it's not terribly logical and it ignores the actual teachings of Christianity on the subject. Ecclessia delanda est, I suppose.

So, the bottom line should be "no effect, really." It's really quite a straw man that gets set up, and I've never understood why people seem to think that the possiblity of ET life sets up some sort of religious crisis.

Re:Go read "Religion and Rocketry"

[Zach Frey]

I wonder what would happen to your faith if humanity encountered a material life which said: "your Christian doctrine is bull-pucky".

No need to run the experiment; it happens all the time. Oh, you meant if an ET said it vs. some Slashdotter saying it?

Would that change the relevance of the truth and teaching of Christianity?

Not really. While contact with ETs would certainly raise some ... interesting issues of practical theology, their very existance wouldn't undermine Christianity in the slightest. As for this hypothetical religious challenge, give me a break. You and I both have no idea what religious situation any ETs would have, because we've never encountered any. For all you know, they're as likely to bolster the Faith as to challenge it. And if I'm capable of believing even though less than 100% of my fellow homo sapiens agree with me, why should it be a problem if a creature from some other world also happens to disagree?

I guess you would then just shift to the "these material beings are God's test of my faith".

You guess wrong.

Doesn't prove anything except...

[Masem]

I don't think we are necessarily any closer to proving that life exists elsewhere. All the discovery indicated was the presence of benzene in some other place besides earth.

Benzene is a rather difficult molecule to make, but once made, is extremely stable. A common chemical engineering problem is to try to make benzene from cyclohexane (C6H6 from C6H12); it's not too hard to extract 4 hydrogen atoms to leave cyclohexadiene (C6H8), but that last pair of atoms to convert to C6H8 to C6H6 is impossible to extract under the same conditions used for the first two steps; fortunately, elevating temperature and other factors gets the job done. Similarly, trying to add two hydrogen atoms back to 'saturate' the benzene is very tricky to get going, but once it's no longer benzene, it rapidly converts all the way back to cyclohexane.

In addition, we're talking about the formation of carbon-carbon bonds, nearly the most difficult and most stable bond that you can make. There is research that is trying to take carbon {mono|di}oxides and hydrogen and convert these to pure organics, thus requiring some C-C bond formation, but it is very slow even under intense conditions.

This all boils down to the fact that if the results that the astromers observed is true, then all we are seeing is that there a area in space that was sufficient in carbon content, temperature, and the like, for benzene to be formed, which is a very difficult reaction, but one necessary that would eventually lead to amino acids, and the possibility of life. All I think this would do is help to quality the possibility of life term in that one equation, the name which I forget, but goes something like "Number of stars in the universe, x fraction of stars with planets..." etc.