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Life on Pluto?
EccentricAnomaly writes "The BBC is reporting that new models of icy moons in the outer solar system predict that oceans (as in liquid water oceans) may be much more common than previously thought. Even Pluto and Neptune's moon Triton now appear to be good candidates for a liquid ocean under their ice. This is exciting because life has been found on Earth in environments similar to these icy oceans at Antarctica's Lake Vostok."
Mickey better get the flea powder.
Aren't they coming out with one of these stories every week or so? Pretty soon they're going to just throw their arms in the air and say there's bacteria everywhere. (Isn't there, anyway?)
Please wake me up and let me know when 1. Someone discovers some exotic alien species of fish, and 2. When I can buy said fish as an entrée at Red Lobster. (Mmm...cheese biscuits...)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Yeah, just wait until we wake up one of the Elder Gods imprisoned in a block of ice on Pluto. I bet those stupid scientists won't be so happy to find life on Pluto when they're being eaten alive by Cthulhu.
Real (productive) life doesn't need water.
Real (productive) life needs Mountain Dew.
Pluto is a dog that ownes another dog....
What is this world coming to?
They got by the earth is flat thing fairly unscathed (A few of them still believe the earth is flat, but we'll ignore them.) They got by the earth not being the center of the universe and the Apollo moon landing not finding angels (A few of them believe that was faked, I think it's the same ones who still think the earth is flat.) Some of them even claimed for a time that the other races they ran across were mere animals in the eyes of God. Er some of them still do actually. Ok... A lot of them still do... But given all that, do you seriously believe that they'll have any problem adapting to life on other planets? Most of them will quietly adapt and move on. The Zen Buddhists would be a fine example; they'll simply claim that extraterresterial life is also an illusion and if any ever comes around they'll whack it with a stick.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
1d6 investigators die.
(per turn, about a minute)
Even Cthulhu couldn't stop us.
It would take a year and a half just to kill all the slashdot readers, and given the rate of growth for new users, Cthulhu could never kill us all.
Nyarlathotep, now that would be a different story. It is not just a mindless beast like Cthulhu. Nyarlathotep has cunning, and would figure out a way to put Itaniums on all our desktops, causeing the insidious heat death of the entire planet.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Seriously, why does it have to be the butt of so many jokes?
I think we'll be amazed at life's ability to develop and thrive in highly "adverse" environments--even a dark, frigid sea beneath 100 miles of ice.
For instance, the supposed inhabitants of Triton may not have evolved into multicellular life forms, but I bet they have one hell of a hockey team.
Why? Is there oil on Pluto?
Yeah. We saw how that Evolution thing fared when it went up against Creationism.
> "What we need is a mad scientist with a gi-ant 'la-ser' cannon!"
Do you have any idea how hard it is for mad scientists to get funding today?
With uncertainty over the economy many mad R&D labs are slicing budgets and indefinitely delaying all but the most mundane of projects. Just how do these people think they're going to conquer the world with an ebola vaccine?
The situation in government funded labs is little better, as public opinion of all science, and particularly mad science, is at an all-time low. This of course is due primarily to scares over GM foods, cloning and climatic catastrophe: all areas in which mad scientists typically excel.
In addition studies suggest the intake of mad PhD students is in decline as gifted sociopaths are incresingly drawn towards fields with more immediate financial rewards, most notably, law.
So please don't point to the mad scientists for the lack of planet destroying lasers. It's the people holding the purse strings who are holding us all back.
Damn, someone beat me to theHPL reference =)
If they find a Shoggoth I'm gonna laugh.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Actually, you are all wrong. Life does not exist in the Universe.
From Douglas Adams:
4 POPULATION: None It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
Now where's my towel?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Man created God. He created God to not be alone on Earth. The rest of the Universe is a scary place for us humans to think about. As time progresses, religion can only fall to contradict itself [sic] and people will see the fact that we are alone and eat a bowl of risin bran cereal.
US Lawyers might be able to handle Cthulhu, but they'd be more likely to find a shoggoth underneath this frozen wasteland. Let's see them deal with that!
Uh, wait a minute...
US Lawyers have more in common with shoggoths than anything else I've ever heard of. They'd probably get along great. Hell, they'd probably start mating. EEEEEWW.
Shoggoth lawyers from Pluto? The entire universe is doomed...