Water/Complex Carbon Found In Distant Solar System
Posted by
Hemos
on from the hello-hello-hello-is-there-anybody-out-there dept.
TheHulk writes: "Complex carbon molecules and water, which are key ingredients for life, have been found in the dust and gas around distant stars. The findings boost the theory that the cosmic stew of life is common in the universe."
Components of life do not life make!
by
anomaly
·
· Score: 4
Discovery of the components of life does not imply that life is plentiful.
If I had all the components of a car (not assembled) I would not have a car until they were placed in the right order, with the right alignment, and the right torque applied to them.
Simply discovering car parts (and what has been discovered is the raw material of car parts, not the parts themselves) does not indicate that we should find 'cars' in the universe.
It's possible - and even more likely than if those parts didn't exist - BUT there's more required than what has been found.
Stanley Miller's experiments proved that having the right component materials in 'ideal' circumstances doesn't even give the building blocks of life.
(Dang chirality!)
I'm not saying that life like ours doesn't exist elsewhere in the universe, just that it this discovery doesn't mean that it does.
Life is hard. Creating life is REALLY hard.
--Anomaly
Now comes the part where I lose credibility with those of my readers who are closed-minded.
God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you want to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
-- But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Look, I'm all about remembering there is a shadow of a doubt. As an active reader of bottomquark I see the headlines outside of my own experience, and that sometimes corrections are made in theories.
But really. We are an average planet around an average star. The hubris required to think that we are along in the universe is almost unmeasurable.
Life is plentiful. The chemistry needed for life is all over the place and we have a planet that provides fantastic evidence that once a molecule is able to replicate itself then life pretty much explodes. There is no reason to believe that something unique happened here to create that initial set of circumstances.
People often point to the lack of communication from other worlds as proof (or at least evidence) that we are alone. Hogwash! We haven't heard from them because there are invariant rules in the universe. This lack of communication is much better evidence that faster than light travel is insurmountable than it is that somehow in the great sea of chemistry that is the universe *we* managed to defy the odds and not only create life, but multicellular life. And not only multicellular, but thinking. And not only thinking, but self aware and communicative. Those are long odds, eh?
Still, if this country (or planet for that matter) was scientifically litereate enough to understand all that I guess poliglut.org (shameless plug) wouldn't need to exist to straighten folks out...;-)
But really. We are an average planet around an average star. The hubris required to think that we are along in the universe is almost unmeasurable.
Well, there are certainly a few things that seem unusual about our planet. That big moon being one of them. But then again, like everything in life, i suspect that the planet that exactly fits the norm is more unusual than all the ones that don't quite.
People often point to the lack of communication from other worlds as proof (or at least evidence) that we are alone. Hogwash! We haven't heard from them because there are invariant rules in the universe. This lack of communication is much better evidence that faster than light travel is insurmountable than it is that somehow in the great sea of chemistry that is the universe *we* managed to defy the odds and not only create life, but multicellular life. And not only multicellular, but thinking. And not only thinking, but self aware and communicative. Those are long odds, eh?
People always seem to forget that if there is other life out there, that it'd most likely be *completely* different from us. Not in a looking funny kind of way, in *every* way. To the point that most likely the biggest challenge in finding other life in the universe will be recognizing it as life. Even if other beings have life, why would they think anything like us? This isn't star trek, folks, where everything has two legs and can actually mate with one another.
The fact that there's no communication means nothing. Who says that another species would *want* to communicate? Who says they would ever develop tools, much less a desire to travel across the universe? Remember, the insects are for the most part far better adapted to this planet than we are.
-- hot foreign sheep.
Substantially overblown scientific journalism.
by
RobertFisher
·
· Score: 5
I have several minor issues with this news announcement.
1. The astronomers involved failed to place their discovery in the larger picture. Molecular clouds have been observed in a wide variety of molecues (CO, CO_2, H_2O, CS, H_2CO, HCOOH, C_2H_6, CH_3CH_2OH, etc...) for about thirty years now. Every now and then a slightly more complex molecule is discovered for the first time, but given the complex gas phase chemistry, this is not at all surprising.
2. After failing to properly place the discovery in context, the article immediately leaps to the "origin of life" carrot.
Our educational system has failed to educate the public in basic science, mathematics, and technology. Hence, popular articles such as these
almost NEVER discuss the real scientific importance of discoveries (which would require a more thorough background than can be provided in a 1 minute soundbyte or a webpage -- not that the journalists themselves even have such a background themselves, mind you), scientific journalists continually dangles one of a handful of carrots in front of the dazzled, curious, though admittedly thoroughly ignorant populace :
I. Cure of diseas/disorder (fill in the blank -- cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's, etc.), elimination of world starvation and/or poverty
II. Faster computers, cleaner, more efficient automobiles, better toasters (or fill in favorite life-improvement gadget)
III. Life, the Universe, and Everything
In this case, carrot III was the most convenient.
GET REAL PEOPLE. These many be noble goals, but the truth of the matter is that most scientists are motivated to solve intricate little riddles which are often very involved, but infinitely fascinating. While not diminishing important secondary factors (career, prestige, etc.), in general, they pursue science for science's sake, and only pull out these lame carrots for journalists and popular explanations. (They never use them when discussing amongst themselves). The popular view of a scientist is by now completely distorted by the fact that almost no one, besides other scientists, have the slightest clue as to what scientists ACTUALLY do, and what ACTUALLY
motivates them to do what they do.
3. Lastly, I think the slashdot editors need to exercise better discretion in choosing science topics. This must be the dozenth time I've seen a relatively unimportant, superhyped scientific discovery receive a billing by./'s editors. If need be, they should put together a small volunteer board of experts in scientific disciplines to consult with before posting an article.
Bob
-- Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I hate to be the voice of the devils advocate, but we need a lot more than animo acids to show that there is life on other worlds. Simple organic chem experiments show that given the right elements, its pretty easy to get animo acids. Finding them is actually no big surprise.
The hardest part of the whole abiogenesis equation that we need is the formation of simple life from its ubiquitous amino acid building blocks. We essentially need some way for the building blocks to logically result in the creation of a castle through either random collisions or some other mechanism. This is the difficult part and some advances have been made in looking at organic chemistry in Zero-G. The problem is that we are still orders of magnitude away from getting a living and more importantly reproducing cell that natural selection requires for further evolution.
In short, don't count your eggs before their hatched because we still have a long way to go. We really don't know how abiogenesis occured on earth yet, so to start saying that its occuring all over the universe may be a bit of a stretch.
--
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong...:)
Well, a while back there was the story about ethyl alcohol being found floating free between the stars. This, combined with complex hydrocarbons, brings this classic to mind ( I wish I knew who the author was so that I give proper credit):
This week, a million fraternity brothers rushed to join NASA. The reason: scientists have discovered beer in space.
Well, not beer exactly. But they did find alcohol: ethyl alcohol,
to be precise, the active ingredient in all major alcoholic drinks
(antifreeze Jell-O shots, quite obviously, are exempted from this
category). Three British scientists, Drs. Tom Millar, Geoffrey
MacDonald and Rolf Habing, discovered this interstellar Everclear
floating in a gas cloud in the contellation of Aquila (sign of the
Eagle, the mascot of Anheuser-Busch! Hmmmmm).
Millar and his compatriots have estimated the size of this gas
cloud at approximately 1,000 times the diameter of our own solar
system; there's enough alcohol out there, they say, to make 400
trillion trillion pints of beer. These guys are British, mind you; if
you were to translate this in terms of American beer (which the
British, with some justification, regard as fermented club soda), the
amount of potential brewski just about doubles.
In human terms: remember that double-keg party you threw at the
end of your Junior year in college (the second Junior year)? Imagine
throwing that same party, every eight hours, for the next 30 billion
years. You'd STILL have beer left over. And boy, would YOUR bathroom
be a mess! Simply put, no one could ever drink 400 trillion trillion
pints of beer, except maybe Buffalo Bills fans.
The sheer volume of all this alcohol begs the question of how it
managed to get out there in the first place. Despite the simplifying
effect it has on the human brain, ethyl alcohol is a reasonably
complex
molecule: two carbon atoms, five hydrogen atoms, and a hydroxyl
radical, all cavorting together in beery camaraderie. It's not a
compund that is
going to spontaneously arise out of the cold depths of space. It can
lead to speculation: What is this cloud?
1. It's God's beer. After all, He worked for six days creating the
universe, and on the seventh day, He rested. And after you've had a
hard week at the office, don't YOU grab a beer? Since man is made in
God's image, it could be that this cloud is the remaining evidence of
the first, and best, Miller Time.
2. It's Purgatory ("400 trillion trillion bottles of beer on the
wall, 400 trillion trillion bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it
around, three hundred ninety-nine septillion, nine hundred ninety-nine
sextillion, nine hundred ninety-nine quintillion, nine hundred
ninety-nine quadrillion, nine hundred ninety-nine trillion, nine
hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine
hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine, bottles of
beer on the wall!")
3. Proof of an undeniably highly advanced but chronically
dipsomaniac alien society. This particular theory is shaky, however:
it's reasonable to assume that if the aliens were going to construct a
nebula of alcohol, they'd also have large clouds of Beer Nuts and
pretzels nearby for snacking. Advanced spectral analysis has yet to
locate them.
The truth of the matter, however, is far more prosaic. In the middle
of this gas cloud is a young and no doubt quite inebriated star. As
the star heats up and contracts, sucking the dust and gas of the cloud
into a smaller area, complex molecules form as a result of greater
interaction between the elements. Ethyl alcohol forms on small motes
of dust in the cloud, and then, as the motes angle in closer towards
the star and heat up, the alcohol is released from the motes in
gaseous form. And there you have it: an alcohol cloud. Or, as Dave
Bowman might say, "My God! It's full of booze!"
Enough with the science lesson, you say. Just tell me how to GET
there! Sorry, Chuckles. You can't get there from here. The gas cloud
(which, by the way, has the utterly romantic name of "G34.3") is
10,000 light years away: 58 quadrillion miles. Even if you hijacked
the shuttle and headed out with thrusters on full, by the time you got
there, the guy in Purgatory would be done with his tune. You'd have
had time to work up a powerful thirst, but you'd also be, in a word,
dead.
No, the Space Beer Cloud will have to wait for the far future, when
men can leap through the universe at warp speed. One can only imagine
what they will do when they get there:
A number of people have commented that these
types of molecules are only the key ingredients
for life as we currently know it. This is
fair enough.
However, here's my point of view. In our own
solar system, right here in our back yard, there
is a very wide variety of different environments:
the surface of every planet and moon is, in places
subtly, and in places completely, different from
each other.
As far as we can see (so far) only Earth has
life in our solar system. To me, this is
suggestive. If you really believe that life can
form in completely different environments, why
didn't they form in any of the completely
different environments that exist right next door?
Of course, this is not proof; it's perhaps not
even corroborating evidence. However, it's enough
to make me believe (tentatively) that Earth-like
conditions really are the only kind of conditions
in which life can form in our universe.
I'm open to the possibility that wildly
different life could form elsewhere in the
universe, and I know that there must be places in
the universe that have environments that are so
different as to be incomprehensible, but hey, we
have to base our opinions on what we know
currently. If we totally throw open the gates of
possibility, then we can never come to any
conclusion about anything.
--
-- Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Just how "distant" are they?
by
OlympicSponsor
·
· Score: 4
It could make all the difference. Ideally, they are about 3 billion years distant. That way, if we start NOW in our light-speed ships, it'll give time for these "complex carbon chains" to evolve into dinosaurs and then be killed off by an asteroid. When we arrive, ta-da! strategic oil reserves!
Hey, it's more intelligent than what we're doing NOW.... --
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Let me start by saying that I believe in life (although maybe not intelligent life) exists on other planets. BUT
Citing "hubris" as a reason to believe in life on other planets is pretty lame. Would it be hubristic to believe there was no life in the rest of the Solar System? If not, why not--it the same as your argument about the universe. How about if I believed ours was the only planet that had produced "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"? After all with all the "billions and billions" and stars out there with their "obvious" life, surely some other intelligent entity has generated these same tones. To believe otherwise would be hubristic.
Concerns about hubris are really just the inductive principle: things around here are probably average. But note the "probably". Induction is a good way to come up with a new hypothesis, but calling the output "obvious" is a fallacy. Why don't we just go see? At the very least it can show us WHICH planets the life is living on before we go haring off in all directions.
As for intelligent life: intelligence isn't some kind of "ulimate endpoint" of evolution--evolution has no goals. Our ancestors happened to have had selection pressures that resulted in descendents that are intelligent. Elephants happened to have had pressures that result in trunks. Would it be hubristic to think that elephant trunks are unique in the universe? Who knows what conditions will obtain at another location. I sure hope there's intelligent life out there, but I don't think it's "obvious".
--
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Slashdot Mirror
Discovery of the components of life does not imply that life is plentiful.
If I had all the components of a car (not assembled) I would not have a car until they were placed in the right order, with the right alignment, and the right torque applied to them.
Simply discovering car parts (and what has been discovered is the raw material of car parts, not the parts themselves) does not indicate that we should find 'cars' in the universe.
It's possible - and even more likely than if those parts didn't exist - BUT there's more required than what has been found.
Stanley Miller's experiments proved that having the right component materials in 'ideal' circumstances doesn't even give the building blocks of life.
(Dang chirality!)
I'm not saying that life like ours doesn't exist elsewhere in the universe, just that it this discovery doesn't mean that it does.
Life is hard. Creating life is REALLY hard.
--Anomaly
Now comes the part where I lose credibility with those of my readers who are closed-minded.
God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you want to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
But really. We are an average planet around an average star. The hubris required to think that we are along in the universe is almost unmeasurable.
Life is plentiful. The chemistry needed for life is all over the place and we have a planet that provides fantastic evidence that once a molecule is able to replicate itself then life pretty much explodes. There is no reason to believe that something unique happened here to create that initial set of circumstances.
People often point to the lack of communication from other worlds as proof (or at least evidence) that we are alone. Hogwash! We haven't heard from them because there are invariant rules in the universe. This lack of communication is much better evidence that faster than light travel is insurmountable than it is that somehow in the great sea of chemistry that is the universe *we* managed to defy the odds and not only create life, but multicellular life. And not only multicellular, but thinking. And not only thinking, but self aware and communicative. Those are long odds, eh?
Still, if this country (or planet for that matter) was scientifically litereate enough to understand all that I guess poliglut.org (shameless plug) wouldn't need to exist to straighten folks out...
--
I have several minor issues with this news announcement.
./'s editors. If need be, they should put together a small volunteer board of experts in scientific disciplines to consult with before posting an article.
1. The astronomers involved failed to place their discovery in the larger picture. Molecular clouds have been observed in a wide variety of molecues (CO, CO_2, H_2O, CS, H_2CO, HCOOH, C_2H_6, CH_3CH_2OH, etc...) for about thirty years now. Every now and then a slightly more complex molecule is discovered for the first time, but given the complex gas phase chemistry, this is not at all surprising.
2. After failing to properly place the discovery in context, the article immediately leaps to the "origin of life" carrot.
Our educational system has failed to educate the public in basic science, mathematics, and technology. Hence, popular articles such as these
almost NEVER discuss the real scientific importance of discoveries (which would require a more thorough background than can be provided in a 1 minute soundbyte or a webpage -- not that the journalists themselves even have such a background themselves, mind you), scientific journalists continually dangles one of a handful of carrots in front of the dazzled, curious, though admittedly thoroughly ignorant populace :
I. Cure of diseas/disorder (fill in the blank -- cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's, etc.), elimination of world starvation and/or poverty
II. Faster computers, cleaner, more efficient automobiles, better toasters (or fill in favorite life-improvement gadget)
III. Life, the Universe, and Everything
In this case, carrot III was the most convenient.
GET REAL PEOPLE. These many be noble goals, but the truth of the matter is that most scientists are motivated to solve intricate little riddles which are often very involved, but infinitely fascinating. While not diminishing important secondary factors (career, prestige, etc.), in general, they pursue science for science's sake, and only pull out these lame carrots for journalists and popular explanations. (They never use them when discussing amongst themselves). The popular view of a scientist is by now completely distorted by the fact that almost no one, besides other scientists, have the slightest clue as to what scientists ACTUALLY do, and what ACTUALLY
motivates them to do what they do.
3. Lastly, I think the slashdot editors need to exercise better discretion in choosing science topics. This must be the dozenth time I've seen a relatively unimportant, superhyped scientific discovery receive a billing by
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I hate to be the voice of the devils advocate, but we need a lot more than animo acids to show that there is life on other worlds. Simple organic chem experiments show that given the right elements, its pretty easy to get animo acids. Finding them is actually no big surprise.
The hardest part of the whole abiogenesis equation that we need is the formation of simple life from its ubiquitous amino acid building blocks. We essentially need some way for the building blocks to logically result in the creation of a castle through either random collisions or some other mechanism. This is the difficult part and some advances have been made in looking at organic chemistry in Zero-G. The problem is that we are still orders of magnitude away from getting a living and more importantly reproducing cell that natural selection requires for further evolution.
In short, don't count your eggs before their hatched because we still have a long way to go. We really don't know how abiogenesis occured on earth yet, so to start saying that its occuring all over the universe may be a bit of a stretch.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
This week, a million fraternity brothers rushed to join NASA. The reason: scientists have discovered beer in space.
Well, not beer exactly. But they did find alcohol: ethyl alcohol, to be precise, the active ingredient in all major alcoholic drinks (antifreeze Jell-O shots, quite obviously, are exempted from this category). Three British scientists, Drs. Tom Millar, Geoffrey MacDonald and Rolf Habing, discovered this interstellar Everclear floating in a gas cloud in the contellation of Aquila (sign of the Eagle, the mascot of Anheuser-Busch! Hmmmmm).
Millar and his compatriots have estimated the size of this gas cloud at approximately 1,000 times the diameter of our own solar system; there's enough alcohol out there, they say, to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer. These guys are British, mind you; if you were to translate this in terms of American beer (which the British, with some justification, regard as fermented club soda), the amount of potential brewski just about doubles.
In human terms: remember that double-keg party you threw at the end of your Junior year in college (the second Junior year)? Imagine throwing that same party, every eight hours, for the next 30 billion years. You'd STILL have beer left over. And boy, would YOUR bathroom be a mess! Simply put, no one could ever drink 400 trillion trillion pints of beer, except maybe Buffalo Bills fans.
The sheer volume of all this alcohol begs the question of how it managed to get out there in the first place. Despite the simplifying effect it has on the human brain, ethyl alcohol is a reasonably complex molecule: two carbon atoms, five hydrogen atoms, and a hydroxyl radical, all cavorting together in beery camaraderie. It's not a compund that is going to spontaneously arise out of the cold depths of space. It can lead to speculation: What is this cloud?
1. It's God's beer. After all, He worked for six days creating the universe, and on the seventh day, He rested. And after you've had a hard week at the office, don't YOU grab a beer? Since man is made in God's image, it could be that this cloud is the remaining evidence of the first, and best, Miller Time.
2. It's Purgatory ("400 trillion trillion bottles of beer on the wall, 400 trillion trillion bottles of beer! Take one down, pass it around, three hundred ninety-nine septillion, nine hundred ninety-nine sextillion, nine hundred ninety-nine quintillion, nine hundred ninety-nine quadrillion, nine hundred ninety-nine trillion, nine hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine, bottles of beer on the wall!")
3. Proof of an undeniably highly advanced but chronically dipsomaniac alien society. This particular theory is shaky, however: it's reasonable to assume that if the aliens were going to construct a nebula of alcohol, they'd also have large clouds of Beer Nuts and pretzels nearby for snacking. Advanced spectral analysis has yet to locate them.
The truth of the matter, however, is far more prosaic. In the middle of this gas cloud is a young and no doubt quite inebriated star. As the star heats up and contracts, sucking the dust and gas of the cloud into a smaller area, complex molecules form as a result of greater interaction between the elements. Ethyl alcohol forms on small motes of dust in the cloud, and then, as the motes angle in closer towards the star and heat up, the alcohol is released from the motes in gaseous form. And there you have it: an alcohol cloud. Or, as Dave Bowman might say, "My God! It's full of booze!"
Enough with the science lesson, you say. Just tell me how to GET there! Sorry, Chuckles. You can't get there from here. The gas cloud (which, by the way, has the utterly romantic name of "G34.3") is 10,000 light years away: 58 quadrillion miles. Even if you hijacked the shuttle and headed out with thrusters on full, by the time you got there, the guy in Purgatory would be done with his tune. You'd have had time to work up a powerful thirst, but you'd also be, in a word, dead.
No, the Space Beer Cloud will have to wait for the far future, when men can leap through the universe at warp speed. One can only imagine what they will do when they get there:
Captain Kirk: My....GOD! Sulu! What....is....THAT?
Sulu: It's a free floating cloud of alcohol, sir.
Kirk: And we've just run out of Romulan Ale! Could it be a trap, Bones?
Bones: Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a distiller of fine spirits!
Kirk: We need that booze! But if we fly through that cloud, we'll be too drunk to drive!
Spock: May I remind you, Captain, that I am a Vulcan. We are a race of designated drivers.
Kirk: Well, all righty, then. Spock, drive us through! Bones and I will be out on the hull. With our mouths... open!
To boldly drink what no man has drunk before.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
A number of people have commented that these types of molecules are only the key ingredients for life as we currently know it. This is fair enough.
However, here's my point of view. In our own solar system, right here in our back yard, there is a very wide variety of different environments: the surface of every planet and moon is, in places subtly, and in places completely, different from each other.
As far as we can see (so far) only Earth has life in our solar system. To me, this is suggestive. If you really believe that life can form in completely different environments, why didn't they form in any of the completely different environments that exist right next door?
Of course, this is not proof; it's perhaps not even corroborating evidence. However, it's enough to make me believe (tentatively) that Earth-like conditions really are the only kind of conditions in which life can form in our universe.
I'm open to the possibility that wildly different life could form elsewhere in the universe, and I know that there must be places in the universe that have environments that are so different as to be incomprehensible, but hey, we have to base our opinions on what we know currently. If we totally throw open the gates of possibility, then we can never come to any conclusion about anything.
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
It could make all the difference. Ideally, they are about 3 billion years distant. That way, if we start NOW in our light-speed ships, it'll give time for these "complex carbon chains" to evolve into dinosaurs and then be killed off by an asteroid. When we arrive, ta-da! strategic oil reserves!
Hey, it's more intelligent than what we're doing NOW....
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Let me start by saying that I believe in life (although maybe not intelligent life) exists on other planets. BUT
Citing "hubris" as a reason to believe in life on other planets is pretty lame. Would it be hubristic to believe there was no life in the rest of the Solar System? If not, why not--it the same as your argument about the universe. How about if I believed ours was the only planet that had produced "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"? After all with all the "billions and billions" and stars out there with their "obvious" life, surely some other intelligent entity has generated these same tones. To believe otherwise would be hubristic.
Concerns about hubris are really just the inductive principle: things around here are probably average. But note the "probably". Induction is a good way to come up with a new hypothesis, but calling the output "obvious" is a fallacy. Why don't we just go see? At the very least it can show us WHICH planets the life is living on before we go haring off in all directions.
As for intelligent life: intelligence isn't some kind of "ulimate endpoint" of evolution--evolution has no goals. Our ancestors happened to have had selection pressures that resulted in descendents that are intelligent. Elephants happened to have had pressures that result in trunks. Would it be hubristic to think that elephant trunks are unique in the universe? Who knows what conditions will obtain at another location. I sure hope there's intelligent life out there, but I don't think it's "obvious".
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Bill Waterson said it best...
The only evidence that there is intelligent life else where in the universe is the fact they have never come here.
______
jeff13