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Keeping Alien Samples Safe For Study
Metrollica writes: "Space.com features an article describing NASA's plans to prepare the Johnson Space Center that could one day house extraterrestrial life." An excerpt from the article: "It's human nature to clean for company more thoroughly than one would for oneself, but nowhere is this truth taken to greater extremes than at the Johnson Space Center. NASA's setting new standards of cleanliness in its labs that handle samples returning from space. And their efforts are laying the groundwork for samples that might some day contain evidence of extraterrestrial life from Mars, Europa, and other points little known."
From the lost episode, or just those who are lost, like me, too poor for cable/sattelite :(
How Jaded Are You?
Id only watch that show if I were drunk
Given the results of the last poll, in which CowboyNeal lost horribly to the option of 'yes', I voted for his option this time in hopes that it will raise his possibly near-obliterated self-esteem. :_D
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I could've sworn I disabled
anyone know where to download the CowboyNeal ep? you can download "anything".. right?!?!?
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Don't Get Caught
you can always tell a poll's in trouble when he's got a 60% majority...
What is Farscape? I've got no idea what it is, perhaps a TV show? Any information?
;-)
At least now I know what my teacher meant when he told me that i'd got "a lack of education"
Life sucks.
Offtopic, but who cares?
sulli
RTFJ.
was the cute one?? I would have voted for her, but alas, I had to go with CowboyNeal option for the lack of knowing.
I've always thought Farscape and Blake's 7 were both similar in character makeup and plot arc (which is a good thing.. they're both awesome SciFi). My vote has to go to Rygel because he's such an unapologetic self centered sonofabitch, and he reminds me a lot of Avon. A refreshing change from the normal "lets help humanity (alienity???), be a nice guy/girl/amorphous blob" type of central character in your average SciFi claptrap.
Wait, I thought the poll said favorite escape characters. Never mind.
id go with Chiana, just cuz shes hot in a Natasha Yar kinda way
--rock me like a huricane? NO rock you
And yet you have the time to post your banal comment.
Bravo doofus!
I clicked on the 'results' link on the main page expecting to still see the 'marry me' poll, and momentarily thought there was a second incidence of ballot stuffing making CowboyNeal the fiance of the hour...
Chiana is about the hottest thing since Tasha Yar.
:)
(Did you see the Red Shoe Diaries with Denise Crosby? Yum!)
However, I voted Aeryn, because they asked best character not hottest character. And Aeryn is still damn hot.
I haven't seen any new episodes (if there are any) but I really hopes she gets over the one Chriton dying, and just falls for the other.
-RMB
Gods! Its been years since I've seen Blake's 7. It used to be on when I was in middle school, but public televison couldn't get the money to show it, Dr. Who, and Red Dwarf all in the same year, so they dumped Blake's 7. I really liked the show, though I have a feeling I missed quite a bit of it, due to the fact that it didn't come on until 1:00 am, Friday night.
At any rate, the comparison between Blake's 7 and Farscape is rather striking, now that you mention it. Strong, hero type leader (Blake/Chriton); manipulative, greedy sneak (Avon/Rygel); there seem to be similarities between Pilot and the Liberator's computer (and the computer the picked up later... what was that called?... damn! its been a while!). And the constant pursuit by the authorities. Really, Farscape seems to be Blake's 7 with a budget and American accents. How interesting...
Rhapsody in Numbers
The Liberator's computer (big ciruclar thing with horizontal stripes) was called "Zen".
The computer they picked up later on (funky clear box thing with blinkenlights) was called "ORAC".
I really, really, shouldn't be able to remember this.
Oh, and the they both had a mad nutter chasing after them who was part of the authoriries but slightly nuts and out for revenge above all else
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
The BBC did run Farscape for a while. I know that because I saw it.
You just made a fool of yourself.
Is it just me, or could that actually be a title of an XXX-rated movie?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Oooh YUCK!
Give me Aeryn any day, she's the hottest.
someone WILL marry CowboyNeal, and then he'll have no reason to appear in the polls anymore.
Oh wait, if that happens, the polls will never be the same again! ACK
Insert mind here.
they must have the cleaning crew from Wright-Patterson there for a weekend getaway
I was amazed when they reported that they found bacteria on equipment that was on the Moon's surface for months.!! BTW, First Post!
There was no air on the moon or in high earth orbit, so there was no reason to keep the astronauts quaranteened.
HOWEVER, it was a good idea, because they didn't know everything they were dealing with yet.
On Mars, Europa, and Io, there exists a remote possibility for life. Retreival missions should be geared to keep this life hermetically isolated from the Earth's biosphere.... Just in case.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I hope they'll organize a televised deathmatch between it and some Earth microbe, seen through a microscope. That'd be cool.
The story went up ~5 minutes ago and I can't get anything, surly it can't have been /.ed this quickly? I would have really liked to see what kind of measures they would take to house extraterrestrial samples. How would you be able to remove all microbes from the air in a lab? Would you even use air, just keep it in a vacuum. That still leaves the problem of microbs on the equipment and and lab environment. They have experience keeping things in with viral labs but I don't think it's entirly applicable to this situation where you'd have to keep things out. All I can think of is shortly after building it roasting the entire lab to destroy every last trace of life than doing the same thing to the lab suits when coming in, which would of course have to be fire proof AND impermeable to moisture, anything come to mind? Are there any other more practical ways to effectivly destroy all cellular matter in an environment?
I stole this Sig
closest ive ever been to fp...
Oops!
OK, I'm taking bets on the first post to make a joke about a nuclear self-destruct device. Any takers?
Then why can we touch "moon rock" at the Johnson Space Center in Clearlake, Texas? For more info and pictures of moon/mars rock, go to HolyRock.com.
If all goes well the Stardust mission will be returning to Earth with cosmic dust particles from the comet WIld 2 sometime in 2006
From what is mentioned on the project webpage it seems that they plan to return the sample to Earth via a capsule to be jettisoned from the space probe when it returns.
While the chances for contamination are relatively low, it certainly can't hurt to be prepared.
More info at
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html
-- Your local friendly mad scientist-in-training
Imagine if there was once advanced, possibly even intelligent, life on Mars.
Would it be too far-fetched to speculate that perhaps that all higher life forms were wiped out by some virus or bacterial disease?
With the plant and animal life gone, the climate of the planet would change radically -- to the extent that we see today - but the cause of the catastrophy could stil be lurking in the soil.
What guarantees do we have that bringing back a sample of soil or rock from Mars wouldn't expose this planet to the same catastrophic outcome?
From what I read, scientists are still debating whether those odd fossil-like oddities discovered in meteoric fragments from Mars are actually petrified bacteria.
I think it makes a lot of sense to take every possible precaution when it comes to bringing stuff back from Mars. It might even be a good idea to do the initial analysis up in the ISS just in case it's really bad news. After all, how do we know that we could actually contain a pathogen such as that which might be returned from the red planet?
Is it really worth the risk?
Once something leaves a state, it changes. No ifs, ands, or buts. Wouldn't it make more sense to create these labs in the environments that the samples would be taken from. A sample in it's native environment would make it that more viable.
On further examination, creation of jobs, further research in foreign regions, and the fact that the proof of the existence of life in other areas besides earth Would be beneficial to this. Also, contamination of the earths population is somewhat... imaginable, but it is still possible. If there was habitation on Mars and Europa, would it be lack of certain things, or the fact that something was there that would cause their extinction.
Alternate link to story on Yahoo! News. The Yahoo site has the text of the story, but not any images of the room. I should have included that link when I submitted the story.
--Metrollica
we may as well give up now.
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Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
that have red hair.
"The truth is IN there."
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
sites is slashed or something but i couldnt read the article after trying several times, anyway, i read a good book time ago by Arthur C. Clark where humans started to live in a planet with life, but they instead of die about new virus the human body used to all our biodiversity was overdone there and could manage the primitive alien virus easly, so there where no infections at all, not even with open wonds.
;)
Off course alien virus coming to the earth could end mutating, but was a good book
Do you think aliens have storage areas for Earth things. Cuz they don't know what a cork screw is for, so they'd want to lock it away. Maybe that's why they think we won't mind the probes.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
What justification is there for intentionally housing possibly dangerous extra-terrestrial life forms? The curiosity of a few academics is surely not reason enough to put the entire human race at potential risk!
After all, no matter how carefully they may store these organisms, there is always the possibility that they may somehow escape. Once the terrestrial biosphere is contaminated with foreign organisms, who can say what the result will be? History is rife with examples of non-native species decimating populations of unprepared organisms.
I am not worried so much about macroscopic life forms as microscopic ones, such as bacteria and viruses. Having evolved for millions of years apart from terrestrial macro-organisms, these creatures could devastate our maladapted immune systems.
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Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
What if we find, and bring back, really dirty jabba the hutt-esque aliens? And why worry about microbes, if that's all we bring back. Personally I'd like 5 minutes alone in there with ms. Henstridge. Underrated movie really. (Erm... no it wasnt)
I know I've seen it and touched it. I'd personally be more worried about all the snotty-nosed kids groping the thing than any Lunar space boogies.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Although I am seriously skeptical of any actual Alien beings already in captivity (or storage) by the government, I do tend to think that they know somewhat more about the space program in general than they're letting on.
Is it possible that some of this news could be gradually preparing the public to accept the idea that there is proof of life elsewhere in the universe? I imagine most people would not have much of a difficult time accepting this, but there are groups (I believe) that would have a difficult time dealing with the fact that life exists anywhere beyond Earth.
I just wonder if they're preparing for something they might get, or preparing us for what they've already got.
(I could also be listening to Art Bell too much...)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
from War of the Worlds, dear?
Maybe they aren't adjusted to our biosphere and will just die after decimating a few cities.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Is that a television show?
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Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
Wouldn't we really just be setting the aliens up for a letdown?
...aliens are really our genetic in-laws, in a 2001ish sense. That would make sense, seeing as I have to clean for mine whenever they come over...
Hrm, so where did they hold the stuff from them 50s? ;)
Seems Nasa expects to only find bacteria and other simple life.
How are you going to deal with intelligent life, i mean come on bacteria????????? We shouldnt worry about that stuff, we should be worried about how to deal with contact with REAL alien life, meaning stuff that we've never seen before and wont know how to deal with which is as intelligent or more intelligent than us.
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If only the government stopped covering up the existance of alien-beings would this be useful! :-P
Do we really know now if life is on mars or not? no air or water on the surface, what about under the surface?? When they drill on mars, or can get a probe to actually land on mars, we will find out.
As far as life on other planets, I'm 99 percent sure theres life on europa, that planet is like the south pole is on earth, alot off ice, and alot of water under the ice, meaning theres bound to be life under the ice, and the life could be intelligent life at that.
Europa would be the planet to check for contact with aliens, the fact that we havent even a probe planned for Europe must mean Nasa isnt trying to discover intelligent life, they wouldnt know how to handle it if they did.
bacteria, thats a life form simplee enough for us to properly handle.
Imaginee us going to Mars or Europa, and bringing back some unknown alien lifeform, will that lifeforms friends send ships to earth and attack us, who says they arent as intelligent as us, now they could be like aliens on earth but some of these other planets had life on them long before earth.
Who knows.
In my opinion i dont see why we need to bring stuff back at all, we can do all of our tests in space to make sure its safe, bring it to a space station. Let astronaughts deal with it.
IF its a live alien why tell the people about that? so they can panic? Let the astronaughts in space interview the alien or run some tests, then send it back to its friends.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Yep, I think you've been listening to too much Art Bell.
Roswell was most likely just a smokescreen to divert attention from the fact that Nazi scientists were working for the US to develop their rocketry program. They probably realized that if they produced "evidence" of a crashed saucer and then quickly backtracked and denied it (substituting a weather balloon for the saucer) that people would think there was a conspiracy to cover up the alien crash. Worked pretty damn good. Meanwhile, no one is even thinking about having the former enemy on the public payroll.
That, my friend, is the real conspiracy.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
And so is your mom.
Zoltar: "Home Planet: these earthlings had a really crappy waiting room. The Nation Geographics were ten years old, they had no dish of candies on the coffee table, and from watching "Nick at Nite" we have determined that the next season of "I Love Lucy" you all have been waiting for is really going to suck. I suggest we destroy their planet now."
Why bring it to Earth? Just bring it to the Space Station.
Specifically, you have the returning space probe enter Earth orbit. A service vehicle is then dispatched to dock with the probe. Part of the service vehicle is designed to serve as a containment module for whatever beasties the probe brought back.
Then the service vehicle navigates back to the space station and docks. The containment module remains off-limits to personnel, all observation/experiments are performed using machines preinstalled in the containment module.
If the beasties start pulling an Andromeda on us, you jettison the module and send it on its way to the Sun.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Of course, that fell in line nicely with rumors that JSC was actually a Hanger 18 site. And that's why JSC property includes lots of undeveloped land (all those underground facilities). Now days there's a major road and a magnet school along one of the borders that used to be closed off NASA territory.
Of course - its all bunk anyway. But it fit nicely with the Alien Room at the bottom of the (sometimes) locked elevator.
Check this out, a little piece at ABC news for kids. This is kindof scary.
Perhaps they are slowly making the world ready for disclosure of the truth.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
>extraterrestrial life from Mars, Europa, and >other points little known I knew you Americans do know very little about Europe. But at least you should know, that it's located on Earth. malana
>extraterrestrial life from Mars, Europa, and
>other points little known
I knew you Americans do know very little about
Europe. But at least you should know, that it's
located on Earth
malana
Maybe they should wait until there's an actual need for this before wasting my tax money on it. Unless I missed the news about the manned mission to Europa.
It's a queen. She'll breed. You'll die.
So finally earth will become a harbor for aliens without a home as in Men in Black?
So, I checked out the ABC News for Kids link... interesting news site for kids. The alien "story" raised an eyebrow or two...
But what was really depressing to me were the 4 headlines for kids...
Alien Secrets
America Attacked!
Anthrax!
Happy Holidays!
Sort of makes me yearn for the good old days when I was growing up. Nothing to worry about back then... except for the 'nukes. Ahhh, the good old nukes...
BR
Sigh...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
They have alien species captured and contained in your facilities, but must preparing civils step-by-step, because the cultural,religious and social impact will be unprecedent in human history.
Tha lab is marketing to something that already exists for a long time...Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
Johnson Space Center is just south of Clear Lake City, between the city of Houston and the Gulf of Mexico. The land it is on is already sinking. Every year, local roads disappear for days at a time under high water after heavy rains.
Houston locals, including the people at NASA-JSC, entertain themselves by betting on where the hurricanes are going to hit. Locals track them on maps--and everybody has maps with latitude and longitude, because they are distributed by local businesses printed on placemats, grocery bags, and such.
Clear Lake has a straight section running directly from the Gulf of Mexico to the south side of Johnson Space Center. Topo map A big hurricane, hitting at the right point in the tidal cycle, could create a storm surge that would flood everything at JSC up to, maybe including, the second floor.
When I worked there (a long time ago) high-water preparedness consisted of putting the equipment up on tables and desks.
It seems to me that a place which could be sloshing with seawater is not the best location for this lab.
I remember as a kid going to the Smithsonian Air & Space museum, and they had an Apollo exhibit with a slice of a moon rock exposed for anyone to touch.
Well, I did what kids normally do, I touched it and I turned out ok, except for that X-Files episode they based on my life. Dirty bastards...
Anyone ever played HALO?
This is sorta of a continuation of discussion started the other day. ( see here) Basically the premise is that if intellignet life exists out there then there is a high probability that it's millions of years more advanced than us and that they would probably be engaged in massive civil engineering projects (such as arranging stars for pratical benefit) that would be observable from earth. The question is what would we look for that would be out of the ordinary?
When I worked there, there was a rumor of an "underground vault" where they kept everything that had ever been in orbit (small objects, that is--old space suits, etc.), in order to prevent a black market developing. Have no idea what the truth of this is. Probably there is a vault somewhere, but underground in Houston is a neat trick. Sometimes, when I'd walk across the lush JSC lawns, I'd see water squish up around my feet. As the other reply says, the water table is at roughly 0 inches underground.
There is an underground tunnel complex in Houston, with shopping, movies, and parking, so it's possible, using a lot of pumps going all the time I suppose. Last year the entire city got horribly flooded, including those tunnels. Flood maps. Think about floodwater deluging a clean room full of alien samples and then surging out across the Texas countryside--which does not drain very well either, and is plenty moist and warm for growing any sort of microbe you want. Heck, they had 2 cases of cholera in Houston when I lived there. Supposedly it arrived in bilge.
Also, the entire region is saturated with noxious chemicals from the petroleum industry. With this witches' brew already in place, I'd rather have the samples go to Iowa or some such high-and-dry location.
If we are gods children why do christians also believe god only had one son.
religion lol
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You think there's a witches brew from the Petroleum industry. Just think about all the chemicals and biological agents dumped in to Houston's bayous from flooded university labs last year.
In any case - JSC does have some degree of underground structures. I'll have to dig up some info on that room and find out exactly how deep it goes. But otherwise, JSC has a somewhat extensive network of underground utility tunnels (although they don't got THAT deep, but I understand they're very wet).
Having said all that - The Alien Room is labled as such because of our sense of humor. Not because of its actual use.
Sheesh. Europa is a moon of Jupiter. Europe is a continenton, as you put it, "the other side of the pond." Sounds like the "European" can't tell the difference.
What is your Slash Rating?
Okay. Here is my 2 cents worth. Every article here focuses on the following: alien hoax/gov. conspiracy(old hat), microbial death, and extra-terrestrial intelligence. Point 1: There are still plenty of aliens on this planet. Point 2: Microbe handling is dangerous but who cares...we are going to wipe ourselves out first. Point 3: When do I get to come across some intelligent life FROM this planet???? If there is sentient life out there, we would be too inane for them to even care. We are the worst version of a virus on this planet( the self destroying type). NASA's ability to come up with anything beyond rocks, dust, and rather uninteresting petrified crap is remote at best. And heaven forbid that we did find intelligent life else where in the universe because that would send every modern religion scrammbling to rewrite their indoctrinations to include such a slight oversight as divine providence placing life elsewhere. Peace and well being to all!