'Life on Mars' Meteorite Rejected After 10 Years

An anonymous reader writes "Ten years ago, NASA announced that the Martian meteorite ALH84001 showed evidence of life on Mars. The announcement made headlines around the world, and even prompted President Clinton to make a statement. Ten years later, most scientists believe that everything in the meteorite can be explained by non-biological processes. "We certainly have not convinced the community, and that's been a little bit disappointing," said David McKay, a scientist behind the 'life on Mars' paper. Unfortunately, David McKay's own brother is one of his critics. "He [David] got a little testy about the results we were getting," said Gordon McKay. "What we have shown is that it is possible to form these things inorganically.""

Comments

The hard truth

[canuck57]

No one wants to admit life started out there somewhere. For all we know the meteorites seeded life on Earth... and elsewhere. Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth? The probabilities and facts dictate the earth is not the center of the universe.

I for one think it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race. At least then we can then look to exploration and not war to keep us occupied while we grow up.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

No one wants to admit life started out there somewhere. For all we know the meteorites seeded life on Earth... and elsewhere. Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth?

Just because people believe life started elsewhere doesn't mean that this rock is an example of life. Wanting life to exist elsewhere does not account for good scientific judgement. I fear that Mr. McKay has much of the former but little of the latter.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

This stuff is science, not religion. All that's being said in the article is that there are explanations for the contents of that chunk of rock other than life. That doesn't rule out the possibility that life was involved, but it does rule out the meteorite as proof that there was life. So, we're back where we were before: no one knows for sure.

Re:The hard truth

[antifoidulus]

So are you telling me that Gil Gerard DIDN'T go back in time and ejaculate into the primordial ooze?

Re:The hard truth

[Typingsux]

A superior race would be more likely to simply enslave us, eat us or kill us for sport.

See the colonization of the Americas for a good reference.

Re:The hard truth

[aiyo]

It's most likely Earth life originated on Earth and other life originated in other places.

Re:The hard truth

[Reality Master 101]

No one wants to admit life started out there somewhere. For all we know the meteorites seeded life on Earth... and elsewhere.

Er, exactly how would life begin on a meteorite? Exactly what chemistry would allow that to happen? I think it's a tad more likely that life would begin on a planet with the requisite natural resources.

The probabilities and facts dictate the earth is not the center of the universe.

We have absolutely zero evidence for life on planets other than earth. On the other hand, we have considerable evidence that we're alone in the galaxy (other galaxies are too far away to know anything about).

I for one think it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race. At least then we can then look to exploration and not war to keep us occupied while we grow up.

I for one think magic wands would be good for mankind as well. Then we could keep busy with our wands and not war. It would also eliminate resource limitations, which are fundamentally the reason for war. Magic wands are about as likely as alien life, so why not go for broke?

Re:The hard truth

[aiyo]

I think we already realized that that is a bad way to do things. A more superior race will have better habits than ours.

Re:The hard truth

[gEvil (beta)]

So are you telling me that Gil Gerard DIDN'T go back in time and ejaculate into the primordial ooze?

Bidibidibidi...Yup...Bidibidibidibidi.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds very much like Star Trek.

Re:The hard truth

[starseeker]

Science has to be skeptical about anything. For example, let's take two statements:

1. Life had its origins on Earth, and is not to be found elsewhere.
2. Life started elsewhere, and is only present on Earth by virtue of some metorite hitting the right spot.

Science will accept NEITHER of these without proof. Science (good science anyway) is always testing EVERY hypothesis. Anything in science is ALWAYS open to being challenged, revisited, updated, or thrown out if contradicted. If it isn't, it's not science.

This is a very uncomfortable thing for lots of people, who want certainties in their lives. But science is what it is - certainties last only as long as the evidence supports them. F=ma could go out the window tomorrow if conclusive experimental evidence indicates it isn't true. (Now, after a certain point, things are assumed to be correct until proven otherwise, in order to make progress possible. But EVERYTHING in science is ALWAYS subject to challenge. Your challenge had better be good for F=ma though, since there is a VERY large body of evidence suggesting that relationship is a useful description of part of the natural world.)

So I'd say that instead of it being hard for people to believe there is life beyond Earth, it is important that any evidence of such life be subject to skeptical and rigorous test. This is why you have people looking for ways something could NOT be a sign of life - to make sure we don't overlook something in our hope that there IS other life out there. Good science has no favorites, and the facts will ALWAYS overrule wishful thinking (one way or the other.) If someone gets a result they want, one of the best things for them to do is sit down and think of ways this result could NOT mean what you want it to mean.

If we have first contact with a superior race (what is superior, anyway? more advanced? more peaceful?) the consequences will likely be completely unpredictable. I doubt meaningful communication would be established for a VERY long time (if it even CAN be established) - science fiction grossly underestimates that difficulty, in my opinion. And no doubt a sizable percentage of the population wouldn't be able to handle it, particularly if it/they are really different from us. We have enough trouble handling ourselves, nevermind something REALLY alien.

Re:The hard truth

[4D6963]

For all we know the meteorites seeded life on Earth

So far the theory of panspermia is very far from proven, and the most widely accepted theory about the formation of life on earth is not panspermia but chemical reactions forming aminate acids, or somethnig of this kind.

Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth?

When it comes to science, thou shalt ban the verb 'to believe' out of thy vocabulary.

I for one think it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race

Why do people systematically consider that an extraterrestrial race would have to be superior to us in the same way that we are superior to the rest of animals? Keep us occupied while we grow up? What's making you think that we're growing up? Our nature is immuable, the only way we can give ourselves the feeling of evolving is through the evolution of our civilization, but that's not going to make us closer to any hypothetical superior extraterrestrial race, if there even can be such a thing as animals significantly superior to us. It seems that the idea of us being probably the most evolved life form possible has went through relatively few people's minds.

Back to the topic, scientists have no trouble admitting some forms of life might exist or might have existed in the universe, even inside our very own solar system. But the object of this article is about determining whether this precise piece of rock reveals the existence of any actual extraterrestrial form of life, it's not about determining whether there could or could not have been life in the Universe, nor even on Mars.

It's all about this precise rock.

Re:The hard truth

[Schemat1c]

A superior race would be more likely to simply enslave us, eat us or kill us for sport.

See the colonization of the Americas for a good reference.

Are implying that the Native Americans were an inferior race? They were the same species that the invaders were. After they were decimated by the European's small pox and other diseases they simply didn't have the numbers to defend their land.

A 'superior' race would have survived and evolved past tribal behaviour or they couldn't be called superior. And who says they would have ever even had a tribal phase at all? We evolved from an territorial, male-dominated hierarchical ape and seem to still be in that phase. Hell, we probably wouldn't even recognize a superior race if we saw one. Many could argue that whales are superior to humans. Sure they don't build cities or eat hamburgers but they do have much larger, more complex brains than us. And playing the the ocean all day sure seems superior to my life.

Re:The hard truth

[Schemat1c]

*in the ocean

Re:The hard truth

[pikakilla]

origin of life

another source

millions of sources

Life doesnt "begin" on a meteorite, but the building blocks can be found on meteorites. Meteorites have been found to contain amino acids, protiens widely considered the building blocks of life.

Re:The hard truth

[BobNET]

Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth?

Why is it so hard for people to believe life could have formed here on its own?

Re:The hard truth

[UltimateRobotLover]

The colonizers certainly considered themselves superior, and their greater technology meant that they were able to prove it to themselves.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Amino acids aren't proteins.

Re:The hard truth

[Reality Master 101]

Life doesnt "begin" on a meteorite, but the building blocks can be found on meteorites.

And why would "building blocks" be more likely to be found on meteorites rather than Earth itself? And conversely, why would Earth not have any building blocks?

And why does it matter at all what role meteorites might or might not play in abiogenesis?

Re:The hard truth

[Schemat1c]

The colonizers certainly considered themselves superior, and their greater technology meant that they were able to prove it to themselves.

What greater technology? Guns, religion, butter churners? It didn't take long for the Indians to get guns. It was the diseases from the Europeans filthy way of life that did them in, after that is was simply the vast numbers of ever increasing invaders that finished them off. It had nothing to do with superiority.

Re:The hard truth

[G3ckoG33k]

Exactly, I believe in life on other planets, but I didn't believe in this one for one second. And I'm very happy with Earth-made life. Why fabricate some silly far flung theory around a Martian rock... Beats me.

Re:The hard truth

[glowplug]

All of my bases are belong to the more mature (but well hidden) martian overlords, which I for one, welcome as such.

Re:The hard truth

[Veteran]

"But EVERYTHING in science is ALWAYS subject to challenge."

Everything EXCEPT skepticism itself that is. That is not subject to challenge now is it?

One mustn't question the process itself - since we accept as a matter of faith - of religious dogma - that skepticism is the right way to do things. Anyone who questions the process of skepticism is a BLASPHEMER in the church of science.

Exactly what is the scientific confidence level that skepticism is the correct way to do things? How did scientists reach that confidence level, through scientific investigation, or from a Stupid Wild Ass Guess? Why is that SWAG valid, but others aren't? What experiments have been run on the process itself, what are the error bars on the data? Where is the scientific proof that skepticism works correctly and is the proper way to do scientific inquiry?

Re:The hard truth

[Hognoxious]

Vast numbers is a form of superiority. As to "filthy habits", that partly stems from industrialisation and urbanisation. As indeed do those vast numbers.

Re:The hard truth

[pikakilla]

my bad, the building blocks of protiens.

Re:The hard truth

[pikakilla]

Its not the fact that meteorites are "more likely" to carry the organic chemicals nessicary to building life. Rather, it offers one explination to the question of the orgin of life. Another explanation comes from the Miller-Urey experiment. This experiment simuliated the early Earth atmosphere and created organic compounds from simple elements via continuous electrical discharge.

Re:The hard truth

[Reality Master 101]

Its not the fact that meteorites are "more likely" to carry the organic chemicals nessicary to building life. Rather, it offers one explination to the question of the orgin of life.

You're missing my point. What, exactly, do meteorites "explain" about the origin of life? In other words, what puzzle do meteorites explain that can't be explained otherwise? Or to put it still another way, what key thing would meteorites contribute that "explains" life?

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we could keep busy with our wands and not war.

I agree. But the problem would be with the haves and have nots. There's enough class system garbage in the mid-east alone (even in the non-warring countries) to say there would be problems.

And then all American college hippie protestors would march on Washington with big banners stating "Make Wands Not War." And then your kids kids would have to learn all about these protests in their junior highs. And do you really want that? Do the ends justify the wands?

Re:The hard truth

[kiracatgirl]

If you use a different process, it just isn't called science. Science IS the process, and skeptism is part of the process - that's in its definition. Taking the skeptism out of science is like taking purple and leeching the blue out of it, and then trying to claim that the red that's left is still purple. No one is saying "Science is the one and only correct way of determining the truth!" However, if you are following the scientific process, i.e. using science, then you are going to have to use scientific skepticism as an intrinsic part of said process, as the process has been defined by decades or even centuries of development. Since you seem so adamantly opposed to the scientific method, I'd assume you have a better idea? Why don't you share it with everyone so we can do things the RIGHT way?

Re:The hard truth

[x2A]

don't be so quick to anthropomorphasise

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

And why would "building blocks" be more likely to be found on meteorites rather than Earth itself? And conversely, why would Earth not have any building blocks?

Because the original poster knows little about meteorites and believes they have magical life giving properties.

Re:The hard truth

[andrewman327]

This example actually hurts your case. By throwing around such apochrypal claims as definitive "proof," it hurts the claims that life originated outside of out atmosphere. Simply because you believe that something is true is no reason to attempt to spin everything into proving that belief.

Re:The hard truth

[Veteran]

The problem with skepticism is that it elevates the turd to a respected rank in science. The correct process is for everyone to work together to arrive at the best answers possible given the amount of data available.

Instead of an adversarial system - a cooperative system is the way to do things - with errors gently pointed out instead of with scorn and ridicule as is done today.

Skepticism attempts to eliminate "false positives" from science in the process it throws in a lot of "false negatives" - it rejects things which are true - but for which some other possible explanation exists.

The question is "Are we trying to advance human knowledge, or are we after some other goal; Ego, Money, Prizes, Fame, etc?" If the answer is "Advance human knowledge" then a cooperative system is the way to do things, If the answer is "something else" then I agree that flinging turds around is the way to achieve that goal.

Re:The hard truth

[pikakilla]

In response to your first point

What, exactly, do meteorites "explain" about the origin of life? In other words, what puzzle do meteorites explain that can't be explained otherwise?

Meteorites do not explain anything that cannot be explained by other methods (such as that seen in the Urey-Miller experiment); however meteorites have been found to contain organic compounds not unlike those found on earth. This offers the possibility that our planet was seeded by a meteorite. Meteorites offer one explination as they are seen as possibily seeding the world with the organic compounds needed to make simple single protocell structures. These amino acids along with heat and time with other inorganic compounds (depending on the theroy you choose the exact method will vary) will form to create a protocell.

In response to your second part

Or to put it still another way, what key thing would meteorites contribute that "explains" life?

that has already been answered. Meteorites could seed the world with the organic compounds needed to create protocell structures. Once again, meteorites are only one explination to the question of the origin of life. In other words, it is possible that meteorites planted the initial seed that allowed the spawning of protocelled structures, or it is possible that the organic compounds were created on Earth.

Re:The hard truth

[kiracatgirl]

"Instead of an adversarial system - a cooperative system is the way to do things - with errors gently pointed out instead of with scorn and ridicule as is done today."

That's still skeptism, though. It's just people being nice instead of pricks, and that's more an issue of human nature than the process itself. You're still looking at things skeptically, but instead of saying "You idiot, it's OBVIOUSLY wrong because " or "Your paper is worthless because it ", people would just say "Hey, I've got some bad news, I found a problem with your hypothesis, mind reading my experimental results?"

I hate to say it, but people in general just aren't that nice. And being nice has never had much to do with a persons ability as a scientist.

Also, skeptism doesn't reject things offhand just because there's some evidence that it isn't true. It applies itself to things NOT being true, just as much as it does to things BEING true. If there is any question as to what the 'truth' is, then it doesn't state either option as being 'true' and you continue to test it.

Re:The hard truth

[inviolet]

The Europeans did not merely have better technology. The difference is that they were technological, whereas the Indians were not. Therefore, only the Europeans were capable of building a civilization, transcending religion, etc.

Re:The hard truth

[inviolet]

In other news, by referring to them as "Native Americans", you reveal yourself to be an armchair quarterback in this discussion. Surveys show that more of them prefer the term "American Indians", for interesting reasons.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that desease went both ways. Native Americans gave the Europeans siphillus (dirty buggers) ;)

Re:The hard truth

[pikakilla]

Yes mr AC nevermind the fact that the building blocks of life have been found elsewhere aside from our planet.

Re:The hard truth

[deficite]

It depends on what you call "superior". I don't believe that any lifeform is superior to any other, just different. Now intelligent lifeforms can have superior things like technology and philosophy, etc. It all depends on what their homeworld's situation is on how they'll treat us. If on their homeworld they didn't care much about philosophy and instead just developed technology and really fast rates and one or more tribes dominated everything on their planet, they'll probably take the same methods to colonization in alien worlds as well. If they were highly developed philosophically and had a very peaceful homeworld, they'd probably try to understand our languages first and then try to establish trade with us and exchange gifts. If they are a struggling people and their homeworld is stripped bare of organic resources that they can't just mine out of planets and space rocks, they might either take the route of the peaceful race I described or the warlike race I described. If they took the route of the warllike race, they'd either enslave us to produce resources for them or kill us all and then do it themselves.

Several other conditions and situations can occur as well. The ship that makes contact with us might be outcasts and even though their race is peaceful they might be warlike. They might be overcrowded in their homeworld/solar system and see Earth as cheap housing and wish to live with us or replace us by force. We might have something on Earth that they don't have on their planet and they might have something on their planet that we've never seen before, and that'd make for some good trade. They might even offer their science to us for exchange for ours or some other of our resources. Other races might even already know about us and are too scared to approach us (I wouldn't blame them).

Of course, perhaps I just play too many video games and watch too much Babylon 5 :-P

Re:The hard truth

[c_forq]

It didn't take long for the Indians to get guns.

One VERY important note: the natives couldn't MAKE guns. That is huge. Also there is no doubt the Europeans had greater technology as they were able to make large boats and had the navigational capacity to go to the Americas and back. But the most important factors were that the Europeans had steel tools, guns, and diseases (and it is also notable that the diseases pretty much all originated from domesticated animals, which the native nations were sorely lacking).

Re:The hard truth

[x2A]

"Everything EXCEPT skepticism itself that is. That is not subject to challenge now is it?"

Was that not a challenge?

Well the results of using skepticism can be addressed scientifically actually.

Theory: skepticism leads to rise in understanding of nature.

Support: Our challenging eg, newton's theories have lead to general relativity, quantum physics et al, that have increased our understanding of nature, and lead to technological advancements.

Tests: If futher analysis shows that evidance supporting newer theories over older is incorrect, this would show that skepticism has caused delays to progress. Many experiments are being carried out that test this (such as satalites measuring gravitational waves, google for it if required) by testing the newer theories. Any indication that progress would have been less delayed without skepticism would lend doubt to whether skepticism is a good route to take.

Not only is it simple enough, but tests to demonstrate failure in the method are carried out as we speak, purely as a side effect of said method!

Re:The hard truth

[Veteran]

No, there is a fundamental difference between cooperative and adversarial systems.

I wasn't aware of cooperative systems until I got into martial arts under a cooperative system - the difference is dramatic. It has nothing to do with "being nice". The rate at which you learn in a cooperative system is so great that sometimes the students literally get dizzy with how much information they get in one session. It has to do with people all heading in the same direction seeking a common goal instead of fighting with other people to keep each other from succeeding.

Adversarial systems are simply stupid ways of doing things- we do them because they are familiar - not because they are the right way to do things.

A cooperative system is like a group of people working together to lift a heavy weight with a rope - an adversarial system is like everyone pulling the rope in different directions - guess which system works better to lift the weight.

Re:The hard truth

[donscarletti]

What a useless post. The grandparent meant more powerful by "superior" and you should have been able to work that out. We are superior to whales, because we can kill a whale whenever we want and they can't stop us. We are safe from them but they are not safe from us. The native americans got killed by a bunch of people who had developed industry, wheras they had not, thus their attackers had guns and were more powerful than them, thus superior in a way that can be measured without going all existential or post modern. And IIRC, early humans lived in matriachal societies (humans closest relatives, the chimps and bonobos still do), male dominence was a later development. As for whale's brains, they are larger because they have more bits to control, Human brains scale linearly with body size, male brains are larger than female brains because the bigger you are, the more stuff you need to work, big people have big brains, but are not always smarter. If whales have big, complex brains it could be because they are superinteligent, but it also could be because they are the size of a city bus, one or the other because it isn't nearly big enough for both. A whale's brain is TINY compared to its body size with even smaller neocortex, suggesting that it undeveloped and not much good for doing anything apart from working its flippers.

Seriously, what's this post modern stuff about the meaning of supremicy (and male dominated hierachical societies for that matter) doing on slashdot? Here we love technology because it allows us to control our environment and makes our species powerful. Superior technology = superior society, superior aliens = technologically advanced aliens, otherwise they are just moving goo to me. So far I've been a really good sport listening to people complaining about how other seemingly primitive cultures have better societies than industrialised cultures, but taking it to the species level is going futher than I'm willing to tollerate. I like human society, we live easy, keep outselves feeling busy and useful with pointless work, have fun in many ways and keep the awkward bits of nature under control, if you don't like humanity, YOU CAN GEDDOUT!.

Re:The hard truth

[g4b]

well well, but think about it: why is it so hard to believe, that maybe life doesnt exist somewhere else in the universe? and: if life comes from outer space, how did it happen there?
for all those who try to escape the creation of life on the earth by saying: it was a friggin meteorite, just a thougth: where the heck did it come from, and why was there life?

if aliens created us, who created them?

Re:The hard truth

[x2A]

"When it comes to science, thou shalt ban the verb 'to believe' out of thy vocabulary"

And replace it with what?

"I guess"? Doesn't inspire much confidence, like "I guess the moon goes around the earth" sounds very uncertain.

"I know"? Well this is definitely not scientific, as it ignores that there are possibly alternatives; sounds too certain.

"I postulate"? "I hypothesize"? Well they basically are the same as "I believe", and am sure you must be complaining about the meaning of the word rather than something as empty as the sound of the word.

"I set things on fire"? Well that's just never gonna be taken seriously.

So, which am I missing, that's better?

Re:The hard truth

[WalksOnDirt]

Calling the idea that life on Earth may have originated on Mars panspermia is going a bit far. It's hard to come up with a plausible method for true panspermia, but exogenesis, which is what we are talking about here, does seem reasonable. The same methods whereby life may have developed on Earth look just as likely on Mars.

Since Mars is so much smaller than Earth, it probably cooled and formed a crust first. If life developed on Mars, it may well have done so while it was still impossible here. It appears to be possible for life to make the trip from Mars to Earth in impact ejecta and still be viable on arrival, although perhaps further study will show otherwise.

This is all just supposition, but it is a basis to think about what to look for to establish which of these is correct: There is no native life on Mars (proving a negative can be very hard, though); there is life on Mars and it developed independently (the most interesting possibility); or life developed on one and got transferred to the other. Until we find life on Mars, or do a thorough search and find none, we probably will have no good reason to believe or disbelieve any of these.

The people who thought they found evidence for life from Mars in that meteorite were probably wrong, but I'm glad they were looking.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

So, basically, life on Earth could have been "seeded" from Mars, or possibly could have contained the required ingrediants natively. Thanks. That question has haunted me for years.

Actually, I prefer the magic wand theory, as with magic wants come elfs, and I have always wanted some elvin armor. Plus, ever since seeing the "Lord of the Ring", I imagine the elvin women to be hot.

Re:The hard truth

[kiracatgirl]

I never said adversarial and cooperative systems were the same; merely that the tendency towards adversarial is a part of human nature. That, and both the adversarial and the cooperative systems you mentioned for the scientific method STILL involve skepticism, despite you vocalising so strongly against it.

I agree 100% that a cooperative system for the scientific community would work better, but I think it's not likely that the community as a whole can be mature enough to use one, and that either way, there will still be skepticism as a fundamental part of the scientific method.

Re:The hard truth

[LurkerXXX]

You may be learning stuff in martial arts, but you have no idea how science works if you consider it all an 'adversarial' system. Scientists get publications, funding, and resptect be discovering new things. No one gives you money for stopping someone else's laboratory from making an advance.

Sorry if peer-reviews and critiques seem aversarial to you. It's not at all an adversarial system. As the other poster said, some folks may be pricks about the way they point out flaws rather than very sweet, but the point is always to make sure *all of us* know the truth. That's very cooperative.

Re:The hard truth

[vidarh]

Skepticism attempts to eliminate "false positives" from science in the process it throws in a lot of "false negatives" - it rejects things which are true - but for which some other possible explanation exists.

How do you know that those things are true when some other possible explanation exists?

You know by challenging them: By considering which predictions can be made based on the theory you believe to be true, and trying to find ways to contradict those predictions. In other words, by being skeptic.

A lot of things have seemed to be "obviously true" to a lot of people throughout history and have later been shown to be blatantly wrong. A typical example is Galileo's experiments with gravity - it was "obvious" to people that objects of different mass fell at different speeds until Galileo bothered to actually test the corresponding predictions experimentally.

Being skeptic isn't about rejecting things that have alternative explanations, but to always expect theroeis to be thoroughly tested before we accept them as likely to be true, and accepting that no proof is absolute and always question whether new data supports existing theories or not.

This is necessary especially in the cases where we consider something as true because those are the cases we'd easily be tempted to ignore.

Re:The hard truth

[4D6963]

Scientists just do not believe, they are convinced.

Re:The hard truth

[ichigo 2.0]

Magic wands are about as likely as alien life, so why not go for broke?

Magic wands require breaking most physical laws, alien life does not. I think you're grossly underestimating the likelihood of alien life!

Re:The hard truth

[servognome]

Convinced = belief based on evidence.

Re:The hard truth

[ichigo 2.0]

"I think."

But in all seriousness, belief gives one the impression of having a certain view on things, and not changing ones view despite evidence to the contrary.

Re:The hard truth

[saider]

Read the book, "Guns Germs and Steel", by Jared Diamond.

Essentially...

The Europeans had the following things going for them.
1) Temperate cliamte which could sustain many non-naitive plants and animals. This allowed them to have a significant surplus of food.
2) Food surplus means that more people can do things other than farming (like figuring out how to build better weapons).
3) Fractured geology in this environment (mountians, straits, rivers, etc) helped kingdoms evolve that were difficult to conquer and keep conquered. Thus you have several cultures constantly competing (and driving the need for better weapons).
4) Close contact with a variety of non-naitive species encouraged the development of diseases and immune responses.

So it wasn't that the Europeans were better or superior. They just had a superior environment in which to develop.

Re:The hard truth

[jonathansizz]

Why do people systematically consider that an extraterrestrial race would have to be superior to us in the same way that we are superior to the rest of animals?

I think people usually mean superior in the sense of more technologically advanced. This would make sense if they come to us, or we see evidence of them colonizing planetary systems external to their own (which we do not, of course).

Our nature is immuable, the only way we can give ourselves the feeling of evolving is through the evolution of our civilization

Nope. This is what genetic engineering is for. From what I said above, we can also assume that technologically superior aliens would have genetically modified themselves, since we ourselves are on the verge of this now.

All this seems very unlikely, since such aliens would only have to be a few centuries (or at most millennia) ahead of ourselves technologically to be able to colonize the whole galaxy. As there is zero evidence of this, the two most likely scenarios are

1] We are the most (technologically) advanced species in the galaxy, or
2] Any more advanced species doesn't want anything to do with us, and thus makes sure they won't be found.

Re:The hard truth

[maxpublic]

And while we're at it, what's with the absurd insistence on reducing the question to simplistic all-inclusive alternatives by both sides of this debate? It could very well be the life is common and develops independently anywhere where the conditions are favorable, without the need to wallow in silliness that life on Earth is unique (completely ignoring the pathetically small sample size available to us); or that life itself is unique and needs some sort of super-galactic magical explanation to explain its presence on Earth (panspermia). Both of these extremes require life to be 'special' in some fashion, while the most likely and rational explanation is that it almost certainly is not and that our own version of it is pedestrian by galactic standards.

It's just as likely - more likely, I'd argue - that life itself is common wherever favorable conditions prevail, but that intelligent life is not. On our own Earth (the only sample anyone, including myself, has to work with) life can be found in the most extreme conditions, and has existed even before the planet stopped being regularly bombarded by interplanetary junk. But the only provably intelligent species ever to occupy the Earth is us, despite the more than one billion years life has had to evolve on our planet. Until we have more data, i.e., we send probes to a few hundred other star systems, it flies in the face of everything we know about our own planet to claim that life is rare and special, or that intelligent life is common. Anything more is speculative fiction, at best, and completely contrary to what we do know (limited as this is) at worst.

Max

Re:The hard truth

[Lord Ender]

The europeans were not different species, but they were much better adapted (evolved) for the diseases of this planet than the american indians were. It may not be PC to say so, but that could definitely be called genetically "superior" by most metrics.

Re:The hard truth

[nwbvt]

"No one wants to admit life started out there somewhere. For all we know the meteorites seeded life on Earth... and elsewhere. Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth?"

Who is having trouble believing that life exists out there? What the topic of this debate is whether or not a particular rock (the ALH84001 meteorite) contains life. At first scientists believed they had found evidence of life in it, but in the 10 years since they havn't won over much support.

"I for one think it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race. At least then we can then look to exploration and not war to keep us occupied while we grow up."

Yeah, because there were no wars going on during the 1500s in the age of exploration...

And how exactly would discovering the existence of life outside of Earth make exploration more possible? Are you trying to say that we are not exploring space right now?

Re:The hard truth

[deathy_epl ccs]

Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth? The probabilities and facts dictate the earth is not the center of the universe.

It is possible to believe that life exists elsewhere in the universe while still having a scientific responsibility to prove that the artifacts in the Mars meteorite could have happened by inorganic processes.

Why is it that so many folks here whine about nobody following scientific process until it proves that something they want to believe in may not be true, and then suddenly their knee starts jerking.

Re:The hard truth

[Reality Master 101]

Magic wands require breaking most physical laws, alien life does not. I think you're grossly underestimating the likelihood of alien life!

Well, I might have exaggerated a tiny bit, but it was mostly in response to the original poster's silly point that seemed to imply that finding alien life was some social responsibility, as though we only had to pony up the money in order to make it a reality.

Frankly, the Fermi argument pretty much convinces me that intelligent life here is completely unique in the galaxy, though that doesn't say there might not be microbial life (or higher) elsewhere. If I had to guess, though, I'd say that's even unique here. The only reason it seems like it ought to be likely is the anthropic principle.

Re:The hard truth

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I think you chose an interesting example of the reasonableness of science wrt to changing it's hypothesis.

Discover Magazine currently has a cover article that suggests that a change to that exact formula is required: "a change to F = ma/a0 when accelerations fall below one 10-billionth of a meter per second every second".

Not surprisingly, the physicist is facing a lot of resistance to the change, a good deal of it just due to the fact that F=ma has lots of historical precedent, not strictly becuase of the merits of the theory. Even scientists, it appears, are resistant to changing their assumptions.

Re:The hard truth

[JavaLord]

Shhhhhhh, don't hurt their feelings!

The truth is the white man had superior techonolgy, and that gave them a huge edge in winning. I realize it's in vouge nowadays to pretend American Indians were some super advanced society that we ruined, but in reality they were a primitive bunch of people who lost their land to people coming from a superior culture.

If you wonder what America would be like today if it had never been colonized, take a look at Africa.

Re:The hard truth

[JavaLord]

So it wasn't that the Europeans were better or superior. They just had a superior environment in which to develop.

God forbid! Nobody could be superior to anyone else!

Lets face it, European culture was superior which led to their technical advantage. Why do people ignore the truth? Does it hurt that badly to say one culture is inferior to another?

Take a look at the middle east today, what does that shithole have on western culture?

Re:The hard truth

[evilviper]

No one wants to admit life started out there somewhere.

Quite the opposite, actually. Nobody wants to admit we may be all alone in the whole Universe.

Most everyone (you included) is looking for the Deus ex machina to come along and solve all our problems for us.

Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth?

It is equally as hard to believe life exists beyond earth, as it is to believe it does not.

The probabilities and facts dictate the earth is not the center of the universe.

The Earth is not the (literal) center of the Universe, of course. However, we have no other reference points to say whether life is common, or uncommon. With only one positive sample (Earth), you can't make any educated guess, one way or the other. You have an infinite margin of error.

I for one think it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race.

Proving my point, exactly. Most people want something better to come along and solve our problems. The whole "life on other planets" argument is always about more-advanced-than-us sentient life.

Let us assume there is life all over the universe. What is to say it will be:
A) More advanced than bacteria.
B) As advanced as plants?
C) As advanced as animals?
D) As advanced as early humans?
E) As advanced as modern humans?
F) Significantly more advanced than humans?

Even if there were microbes on Mars, you still have an infinitely long way to go to reach the deus ex machina that will come along and save us from ourselves. Even if you're right up through "D" above, that still means we'll be the ones that have to go out and find them, and solve THEIR problems, not have them solve ours.

That's not the image of the universe most people want to have. It's much easier to let the aliens do the hard work for us.

Re:The hard truth

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

On the other hand, we have considerable evidence that we're alone in the galaxy (other galaxies are too far away to know anything about).

Actually we have zero evidence either way. You link to the fermi paradox, which is not a paradox, nor is it an acceptable theory, and at the end of the day, scarcely reaches the level of idle canteen chatter. To say that the elements in the "paradox" are not the whole story would qualify as the understatement of the decade.

Heres a couple of madcap theories:

1. They aren't using radio, in much the same way as we aren't using the pony express. I mean I hear a lot of people talking about picking up radio waves from similar civilisations to our own, or aliens somehow differentiating our planet's radio emissions from that of the sun. Don't make me laugh. TERAWATT LASERS directly aimed at alien worlds would have an awfully hard time being picked up and any meaningful informtaion gleaned from them. However, maybe one day soon some scientist is going to tune in a new device to alien transmissions.

2. We already went to space. Now bear with me, not us, but an earlier intelligent race on earth. They went to space, found other alien races, fought them, and got their asses kicked back down to the level of algae. There are several mass extinctions in earth's history, none of which are adequately explained. These other alien races might likewise have been nuked out of existence. But where, you ask are the artifacts? Well what happens in an interstellar war when you get the liebenshiznit kicked out of you, maybe everything is reduced to pulp?

3. There are no aliens. For my money, this is the best possible outcome, we have the essentially unlimited resources of the entire universe to play with. This means an end to war and a golden age, yes please, I'll take two.

4. 95% of the energy and mass of the universe is missing... Dyson spheres anyone?

Re:The hard truth

[EmbeddedJanitor]

No one wants to admit life started out there somewhere

It had to start somewhere, but why did have to start "out there". That's not enough to explain the origins anyway, it just defers the question (ie. how did life start "out there").

How is a meteorite, or Mars, or whatever, a better place to kick-start life than earth?

Re:The hard truth

[Martin Blank]

It was the diseases from the Europeans filthy way of life that did them in

It may be that it was simply lucky timing on the part of the Spaniards in at least the case of the Aztecs. Discover Magazine talked about the possibility that the Aztecs already dealt with smallpox, and that a series of smallpox and other outbreaks in 1520, 1531, 1546, and 1576.

It's retrospective diagnosis, and such diagnoses are always subject to debate, but may be worth considering. Its value may be questioned insofar as it doesn't deal with the South American conquests which were handled almost as easily, and which also had a great disease toll.

Re:The hard truth

[Reality Master 101]

You link to the fermi paradox, which is not a paradox, nor is it an acceptable theory, and at the end of the day, scarcely reaches the level of idle canteen chatter.

If you think the Fermi Paradox is not strong evidence, then I suggest you haven't completely studied the ramifications.

I think the strongest argument is the "time to fill" argument. Basically, when you figure out how long it takes to fill a galaxy by a space-faring civilization, even at sublight speeds, it only takes a few million years. Given the age of the galaxy, it's exceedingly unlikely that, if the galaxy is filled with intelligent life, no civilization has ever done it in billions and billions of years.

Now, typically people will give me a list of scenerios where a civilization might not expand ("Well, they might not want to!"). Fine -- but it only takes one. I have no doubt that humans will eventually fill the galaxy. And once it happens, we're done. No more evolution-produced life.

Re:The hard truth

[evilviper]

What greater technology? Guns, religion, butter churners? It didn't take long for the Indians to get guns.

Guns, lots of guns, the ability to make guns, etc. Indians, at best, had fewer, more primitive guns than their European counterparts.

Besides that, there was technology like forts, ships, wagons, custom-bred animals, the practice of medicine (primitive, but worked much better than chanting to spirits), steel tools (saws, hammers), food preservation and preperation, etc.

Modern military strategies, the skills to organize people into a common army, etc.

The diseases you mention didn't just come along and kill off the Indians (like in War of the Worlds), the Europeans specifically used biological warfare, specifically targeting the Indians with diseases neither Europeans nor Indians had immunity to. That lack of (technical/biological) knowledge of disease is what killed them, more than the diseases themselves.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Gore was so exited then about that rock from Mars and felt so liberated.
When the election was in doubt he prayed.
Now he is still convinced that he won:
Based on facts or wishful thinking?

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

where would these chemicals and acids come from then? things don't just suddenly appear from nothing and i think that meteorite seeding is more logical.

"why do people systematically consider that an extraterrestrial race would have to be superior to us in the same way that we are superior to the rest of animals?"

people usually consider this because you have to consider how young of a species we are and in comparison to how old the universe is, if there is other life then odds are they are older and more evolved than us.

i think it would be a defining time in the human race, and i agree it would be good if we came in contact with a superior race because if there is one huge downfall that humans have, it's our massive ego and the thought that we are unique.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK Newton did NOT propose F=ma, but F=dp/dt. This approximates to F=ma at non-relativistic velocities, but is accurate as m varies with velocity as relativity becomes important. F=dp/dt might well be valid also at very low velocities too if one proposed that p was an even more complex function. I doubt that Newton was acutally considering either possibility, of course, just that he happened to couch the equation in terms of dp/dt.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Guns, Germs and Steel demonstrated that the European colonists were clearly 'superior' in the sense that they had a lot of advantages going for them when they colonized the Americas.

What Guns Germs and Steel does say however, is that the root cause of this superiority stems from pure luck (the Europeans happened to start in the spot with the right crops, right animals and right environment to promote cultural and technological advancement), and not because europeans were somehow inherently better through genetics or 'trying harder'.

Re:The hard truth

[Fordiman]

Well, think about it. Organized crystal structures form much more readily in low-gravity, and an impact event (two asteroids violently meeting in the black) could easily produced the sort of initial chaos needed to allow for a life-formation event (formation of amino acids and proteins as the rocks cool). Smash that into the earth, and you have a similar situation. I wouldn't be surprised if an impact event is the catalyst for life on those planets which can support it.

Before people start getting uppity about silicon-based life and how it could exist on a very hot planet, keep this in mind: Yes, silicon organics are possible and have been synthesized - but what would they use instead of water? In order to be as flexible as carbon organics, they have to be much hotter (> 100C), so there is a need for a liquid that handles those temperatures with similar properties (Anyone know the properties of Li2S?)

I submit that it is no accident that earth life is carbon-based. Lower energies needed to remain pliable and adaptable at the molecular level, and it just happens to be the most promiscuous atom to be found (can handle four covalent bonds and links up far more rapidly to the next-best, silicon).

I think if we're going to find life out there, we should be looking for a planet with similar heat characteristics to earth, with an asteroid belt or cometary system that would cause likley impacts every hundered thousand years or so (often enough to produce many many high-energy impact events to stir things up enough to form life, but not often enough to kill all life before it's got a chance to go multicellular)

I mean, once you're in our temperature range, water's a no brainer. Just captured solar wind over the millenia may be enough hydrogen to allow enough water to accrete on a planetoid (especially if there's enough oxygen in the planetoid's original mass-mix).

Re:The hard truth

[AstrumPreliator]

Er, exactly how would life begin on a meteorite? Exactly what chemistry would allow that to happen? I think it's a tad more likely that life would begin on a planet with the requisite natural resources.

Er, exactly what chemistry would allow life to happen PERIOD? We don't know how to create life and it's entirely possible that life can be based on a chemical make-up other than our chemical make-up. I know a lot of people have said that our form of life is the only one that could possibly work but I'll take that conclusion with a very large grain of salt until we can find another form of life.

We have absolutely zero evidence for life on planets other than earth. On the other hand, we have considerable evidence that we're alone in the galaxy (other galaxies are too far away to know anything about).

I suppose it depends on how you define "alone" There's no reason why we can't be the most advanced race in the galaxy so far. Maybe there's a few planets with amphibian creatures, and maybe a few more with primate type creatures. Just because we don't see a space probe flying by Earth doesn't mean life doesn't exist out there. A better way to phrase your sentence is, "On the other hand, we have considerable evidence to suggest that we are the most advanced life form in this galaxy." There's no conclusion you can draw about the abundance or scarcity of life in this galaxy as it's simply impossible to tell at this point.

Re:The hard truth

[rucs_hack]

why would they enslave us?

You mean they'd come all this way, potentially thousands of light years, just to collect us up and take us off somewhere?

From a logistical standpoint alone the idea is absurd.

And enslaving us on earth? Well, the earth is a big place, and there are billions of us. Again it's a logistics thing. The difficulty involved would outwiegh the benifits vastly, if there were any benifits.

Nor would they eat us. The chances of a race getting to the point where they can acheive the seemingly impossible (for us, absolutelly impossible) task of travelling the distances involved, then intend to eat the races they found, and be *able* to eat what they found would be crazy small. That they would intend this is even more ridiculous. It's no more then a fantasy that this would occur.

Killing us for sport? Well, um, I refer you to the aforementioned billions. That's a whole lotta sport, and along the way they'd be training up potentially a pissed off army of hundreds of millions. So no, not going to be a wise move. Remember Spartacus? Ok, the man was an idiot, because he got away and turned back to rome, so perhaps not a great example..

I suspect that the most likely outcome of visitors from space would be trade with the aliens. Trade is a reliable way of building up a relationship with a people without actually allying with them.

Don't even get me started on abduction. Good greif, people just don't seem to realise how hugely huge the huge distances between stars in space are. Most people I know who beleive in that crap think going to another country on holiday is a long journey. Really, they have no idea.

The idea of aliens coming here to steal people just makes me laugh. Hell, most of those people think aliens are all hairless mute goblins who strap people to dentists chairs and have simulated sex with them, and they get taken _seriously_ ffs.... /rant

Re:The hard truth

[4D6963]

Convinced = belief based on evidence.

Maybe, but you should still avoid using the verb to believe.

Re:The hard truth

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

If you think the Fermi Paradox is not strong evidence, then I suggest you haven't completely studied the ramifications.

Nope it is not evidence. Maybe there is something we don't know about stopping interstellar travel. Maybe there was a giant war in this part of the universe a few hundred thousand years ago. Maybe someone did pick up our signals and is chugging merrily towards us at .9c from a distance of 200 light years. Even if a single race did explore the galaxy, there are a myriad of reasons why they would not settle every single system, perhaps they only cherry picked the ones that would be of use to them, perhaps this system wasn't of use to them the last time they were around 10 million years ago. Maybe a hundred thousand different things. Which leaves Fermi without a solid evidential leg to stand on, and missing a large amount of potential possibilities from his conjectures. Life isn't an unthinking virus. Starfaring life would have motivations.

Re:The hard truth

[Reality Master 101]

Nope it is not evidence.

I think you're confusing the word "evidence" with "proof". I never said the Fermi Paradox proved anything, I only said it provided evidence of certain things. We can ask infinite "what if" questions. Hey, what if God created everything five minutes ago, and we only think we've been alive longer than that? I can cast doubt on anything with endless "what if" scenerios. The point is that we have zero evidence for any of your "what if" scenerios, and we have a lot of evidence of a lack of aliens.

Re:The hard truth

[NormalVisual]

the point is always to make sure *all of us* know the truth

After the patent application has been filed, that is....

Re:The hard truth

[asuffield]

On the other hand, we have considerable evidence that we're alone in the galaxy (other galaxies are too far away to know anything about).

Wikipedia misses the most obvious answer to the Fermi paradox - that aliens are out there, know we exist, and are frankly too disgusted by a race that would invent slashdot to have any desire to communicate with us. In fact, they're purposefully avoiding us because they hate the idea of getting embroiled in long purposeless debates about subjects that don't matter with people who don't know anything about them.

They have a good point. If I were an alien, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with humanity either.

Re:The hard truth

[MyLongNickName]

hy is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth? The probabilities and facts dictate the earth is not the center of the universe.

Your belief system is interesting. However, without proof, it is just that.... a belief system. Science is not to be based upon your faith, or mine. I, for one, doubt life is very common across the universe, and sincerely doubt intelligent life has more than an infintessimal chance of existing on any given planet. I believe we are damn lucky.

Nonetheless, I support the search for extra terristrial life. My opinion is no more valid than yours. If, however, after a century of hard search, we still have no evidence of otherworldly life, then the balance shifts to my way of thinking.

Re:The hard truth

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence...

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The Fermi paradox is the dumbest thing I have ever read.
The idea that we are alone in the galaxy is absurd. Its beyond absurd.
"Gee there are an assload of of stars out there exactly like ours, and
almost every one we're looked at seems to have planets, but yeah,
we're probably really really super-magical-special and theres no one
else on those 100 gazillion planets."
Theres a ton of evidence of alien contact with early civizations,
theres a ton of evidence for UFOs with technology we just dont have,
there are unexplained radio signals (that we've only just started to
look at) , I could go on and on. There is also the possiblity of the
Star Trek Prime Directive, no contact with civilzations that have not
independedly developed star travel.
Just because we live on some remote godforsaken island doesnt mean
that there arent other people out there on other islands, mybe we're
just not that interesting.

http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/scripts/w atchers.html

Genesis 6:1-4
"1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters
were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men
were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the
LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with [a] man forever, for he is
mortal [b] ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when
the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.
They were the heroes of old, men of renown. "

Re:The hard truth

[eonlabs]

I like your argument.
But to paraphrase George Carlin, the Impact IS the Event. Event is an extra word, it's not needed, and it doesn't add to your statement.

It's true, looking for carbon life is likely going to yield better results than silicon styled. You'd either need significantly higher pressures to keep water liquid at higher temperatures, or another chemical (e.g. Gallium ) that expands when frozen to allow for primordial sludge to develop in a stable, self-regulating environment. Water does this, and it prevents organisms containing large amounts of it from freezing at the bottom of a lake when the water begins to freeze at the surface.

You'd be hard pressed to find enough gallium for an environment like that, but because it has one of the largest liquid phase ranges of any element, it has a decent amount of potential.

Re:The hard truth

[LittleBigLui]

If you wonder what America would be like today if it had never been colonized, take a look at Africa.

Where do I look if I wonder what Africa would be like today if it had never been colonized?

Re:The hard truth

[jtcm]

Er, exactly how would life begin on a meteorite? Exactly what chemistry would allow that to happen? I think it's a tad more likely that life would begin on a planet with the requisite natural resources.

The theory goes that there was life on that meteorite before it ever entered space. Suppose there was life on Mars a few billion years ago ago, and suppose some violent event occured (e.g volcano eruption, meteor impact) that could send planetary material hurtling into space. Some of that planetary material could possibly travel to earth, and carry along with it proteins (or amino acids or DNA or whatever) that would then serve as templates for earth's existing base chemicals.

what key thing would meteorites contribute that "explains" life?

My guess is that the odds of basic compounds (whichever ones around which life is built...i'm not a biochemist) randomly coming into an arrangement that's a protein or amino acid (or whatever) is so impossibly slim, that it's roughly equal to the odds that life's template flew here from Mars.

Re:The hard truth

[rbarreira]

Theories don't get thrown away as you say. Relativity didn't cause classical physics to be thrown away. Classical physics are still good enough to calculate how much time a ball takes to fall to the ground, and it's a lot simpler than newer physical theories, so it's still used despite the fact that it is wrong at bigger scales such as big distances in space.

Re:The hard truth

[master_p]

The Fermi Paradox is not proof than life does not exist in other planets.

First of all, the period of time in which mankind has developed written word is very short in the cosmic scale for other civilisations to discover us, and the time we have the technology to transmit radio signals is far too short as well. The time we transmitted a radio signal to space is even shorter than that, and then we have the question of the direction of transmission: was it in the path of star systems or not?

Secondly, space might not be traversable after all. Maybe there are millions of other planets with life out there, but none travels in space like in Star Trek. We simply do not know that, do we?

We live an average of 70 years, and that is a far too short period in which one can make a conclusion about if we are alone or not...and we only recently have the technology to do any decent research. When it comes to the universe, we should stop thinking in human timeframes and start thinking in cosmic timeframes.

Finally, latest discoveries of planets prove that lots of stars other than the Sun have planets that rotate around them. We have discovered the big gaseous planets up to now, but if the big radio telescopes are installed in space, we might be able to see smaller planets, including Earth-sized ones.

Personally I think it is a matter of time before we discover life in space. If you think about it, it is absurd to think that all the universe (that's 200,000,000,000 and more galaxies out there, each one with more than 200,000,000,000 star systems, on average) has been made for us, lowly humans, who can even get past their lowly instincts. And let's not bring forward the stupid argument that "God made all this for us"...

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of ether (the medium through which electromagnetic waves was thought to have traveled) got thrown out after some rather famous experiments looking for evidence the Earth was moving relative to such a medium failed. (Michelson-Morley). Old physics text books discuss ether - it went away after that.

True, once a theory becomes solid it is more common for it to be refined than scrapped, but there are cases where it has happened.

Re:The hard truth

[Tomfrh]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence...

Yes it is.

Re:The hard truth

[Captain Hook]

I suspect that the most likely outcome of visitors from space would be trade with the aliens. Trade is a reliable way of building up a relationship with a people without actually allying with them.

While I agree with you about rubbishing the idea that aliens would come here to either hunt us for sport or food. I don't think you can rule out a whole sale irridication of us as a goal.

If they are coming all this way to trade with us then unless whats being traded for is something exclusively made by us, there is an ecomonic advantage in completely controlling that resource which means that there could be a good reason to get rid of us.

If that was the plan, I think it's likely the attack would be something indirect, environmental pollution or a bioweapon.

For that matter, they have already shown the ability to travel in space easily and therefore have some pretty good engineering, why don't they just place a shield between us and the sun and block out our light, it might take a couple of years for us to finally die off but it would be impossible for us to counter.

Re:The hard truth

[Hognoxious]

Where do I look if I wonder what Africa would be like today if it had never been colonized?

Africa. But don't focus so much on the good parts.

Re:The hard truth

[rucs_hack]

The problem with irradicating us for a resource is this. What resource? Besides hydrocarbons (oils/gas/coal) everything else is floating out in space around any star, by the multiple trillions of tons. They wouldn't even have to land, they could just scoop up smaller asteroids.

And to be frank, what would a spacefaring race need oil for? Everything made from oil can be made artificially. The only reason we don't is because we already use oil, so we use it for plastics and so on as well.

Re:The hard truth

[saider]

Both cultures had similiar beginning points (stone age man). The better environment lead to better crops which led to better technology which led to better "culture".

Had the native Americans had access to the resources that the Europeans had, they would have advanced in much the same way.

The mideast is an excellent place to look how environment shapes our society. While many of the plants and animlas that we depend on came from the mideast (wheat, goats, etc) the erratic climate means that there is less of a surplus and that people are periodically forced back to farming and sustinece culture. This interrupts development on all levels - techological social, and political.

So yes, European culture can be considered "superior" in that they are more advanced socially and politically. But this advancement has been strongly influenced by their environment.

Also, the culture did not lead the technilogical advance. It followed it. Better technology leads to better culture as the people put the technology to work.

Re:The hard truth

[mdwh2]

We have absolutely zero evidence for life on planets other than earth. On the other hand, we have considerable evidence [wikipedia.org] that we're alone in the galaxy (other galaxies are too far away to know anything about).

You're arguing against the existence of intelligent space-travelling civilizations. This is no evidence whatsoever against the possibility of life in general elsewhere.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing the words "considerable evidence" with "conjecture". Fermi's Paradox is mostly conjecture, with a shred of evidence. The shred of evidence is the fact that so far we haven't detected an alien civilization, the rest is pure guesswork.

We simply do not know enough about the galaxy to reliably predict how many potentially life-bearing worlds exist. Nor do we know enough about the evolutionary process to predict how many life-bearing worlds will eventually produce intelligent life. The problem is that we only have a single example to work with, which is statistically insignificant when compared to the size of the galaxy. So, any calculations that pretend to predict the probability and/or density of intelligent life in the galaxy rest almost entirely on a veritable mountain of assumptions; they are conjectures. Thus, any statements derived from such predictions are conjectures as well.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing the words "proof" and "evidence". Proof is certain, evidence is subject to change.

Re:The hard truth

[monsted]

Bah, you darn evolutionists should just accept the fact that the sun revolves around our flat planet that god created!

Re:The hard truth

[trcooper]

People who are so ferverent in their belief that there must be life outside earth, do so on the same principles that people who believe that life was created by a god do so. There are no facts to support either, so that person relies on faith, or what he sees as evidence that points to his desired conclusion.

The person who believes that life exists elsewhere without proof will without a doubt, be sure that his belief is more rational, but is that the case? Neither idea is supported by evidence, and to believe without a doubt that either is truth, takes a leap of faith.

I don't fault either person for their beliefs. I do fault both when they scoff at each other for having equally fantastic beliefs, or for being assured that either idea rules out the other. Being so closed minded that you are willing to dismiss any possibility no matter how likely or unlikely does no good when the answer is still unknown.

I have to think that it is a likely possibility that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Whether there is intelligent life out there, seems to be less likely, that it's a superior civilization able to travel across space yet less likely. Adding in the idea that somehow that this alien race has evolved above all the evils that plague mankind, you've created a utopia... A christian might call this Heaven.

If a person is willing to take all these leaps, how can they look at someone who believes that there is an extraordiary being that exists somehow outside the observed laws of our universe, and call that person crazy?

I'm not willing to eliminate any possibility, when we truely know so little. Just as confusing as to how there could be a 'god', is how the material to create the universe got to be. It's just as perplexing that there was inanimate material that just 'was' as there is a being who 'was'.

Re:The hard truth

[Reality Master 101]

You're arguing against the existence of intelligent space-travelling civilizations. This is no evidence whatsoever against the possibility of life in general elsewhere.

Not strictly true. It's also an argument against "inevitability of intelligence". If intelligence is inevitable once you get to a certain level of life, then it argues that life in general is rare. Of course, intelligence may not be inevitable, and there may be tons of simple bacteria or plant life out there. You're correct that it doesn't tell us anything about that either way.

Re:The hard truth

[torvince]

'I for one think it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race. At least then we can then look to exploration and not war to keep us occupied while we grow up.' Man, its time for you to watch 'War of the Worlds'

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, its time for you to watch 'War of the Worlds'

War of the Worlds is BS... pure and simple. The reason for this is that any sufficiently advanced race to travel the stars quickly is likely peaceful or they would have destroyed themselves along time ago.

As for fighting any who came to earth for a visit, the war would be over when they made the first shot. Say a solid round chunk of iron about 3 tons, pelt it at the earth near the speed of light and we wouldn't even know what hit us. The reality of any such war is we would loose quickly.

Our best defense is likely biological. Our "germs" and other environmental issues would make contact with us a mere curiosity stop. Our very planets biology interchanging with other planets would upset the ecosystems. It might be said by visitors, "This is how we were some 35,000 eons ago, internal wars preached by religious intolerance and bad politics."

But the movie industry makes for some good "entertainment" as we ponder the thought of first contact - a good movie.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Admitting life started out somewhere other than on Earth and believing that this meteorite contains ancient Martian fossils are two entirely different things. Just because the majority of scientists (who know a whole lot more about geological processes than you do) believe there are alternate explanations to the formations within the meteorites, does not imply that they don't believe in the possibility that life exits, or even began beyond Earth. They probably would agree that it didn't even originate on Mars.

I, for one, welcome our new article-comprehending overlords!

Re:The hard truth

[Damvan]

Given the vast size of the Universe and the vast number of planets out there, even with an infintessimal chance of life existing on any given planet, there is likely at least a few other planets with life.

But I agree that it is unlikely that life is "very common." But there is a big difference between very common and none.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Odds similar to this glass of water on my desk spontaneously turning into gold.

Re:The hard truth

[Anonymous Coward]

people usually consider this because you have to consider how young of a species we are and in comparison to how old the universe is, if there is other life then odds are they are older and more evolved than us.

Actually, considering how old the universe is and especially, how it evolved, it's very well possible that we're one of the first, if not the first, lifeforms in the universe. Search google for "stellar population" if you'd like to know more about that.

In short: There are three "generations" (AKA populations) of stars, the current one, which the Sun belongs to, is called population I. The first population (AKA population III) had only helium and hydrogen which it could fuse to some heavier elements. Population II then produced even heavyier elements using the products of population III. And population I is the first population that's able to use the products of population II for producing elements like carbon or silicon, the building blocks of any possible life form.

The universe may be old, but it takes a LOT of time to produce life, so we're not that young of a life form ...

Only now?

[Pao|o]

Curious that this statement was made during the Bush administration

Re:Only now?

[Zen Punk]

no, not really

Re:Only now?

[shawnce]

I think the tin foil hat is a little tight... it appears to be cutting off blood supply to your brain affecting your reasoning abilities. =P

Basically from the word go their has been many many scientist that questioned the theory presented for the origin of the features in the meteorite. A handful of those scientist did experiments over the _years_ since (research takes time) to see if any non-organic processes could have produced similar structures and they have found ones that can.

Re:Only now?

[AusIV]

Hardly. Scientists were very skeptical when it happened. I was ten and remember being really excited by the idea that life may have existed on mars at one point, and being disappointed about a year later when they decided that probably wasn't the case. I'm not even sure why this is in the news now.

Re:Only now?

[nwbvt]

What statement? That its been 10 years since that announcement (the only 'news' here)? How is that curious? The inital announcement was in 1996, 1996 + 10 = 2006, Bush was inaugurated for his second term in 2005, and since most presidencies last 4 years, it makes absolute sense that he will be president on the 10 year anniversary.

Re:Only now?

[rob1980]

Exactly what the hell does that have to do with anything?

No overlords after all

[cheesygrapes]

Well, this reporter was...possibly a little hasty earlier and would like to...reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. May not be perfect, but it's still the best government we have. For now.

burden of proof

[Bartmoss]

Just because these things can be formed inorganically doesn't mean they were. Still the burden of proof definitely rests on those who says it is organic in origin. Especially now.

Luckily, just because the meteor may not have signs of former life, doesn't mean mars never had any. It would be really sad if our solar system turned out to be sterile.

Re:burden of proof

[mark-t]

It would be really sad if our solar system turned out to be sterile.

I assume you mean the REST of our solar system... Otherwise, yes, it'd be not only sad, but devastating.

But grammar nitpicking aside, why would it be sad if the other planets were sterile, exactly? What difference would that _actually_ make to us, here on Earth?

Re:burden of proof

[Prof.Phreak]

Just because these things can be formed inorganically doesn't mean they were.

What is life anyway? Does it have to be organic?

Maybe the problem is that we're looking for life that's similar to us---possibly breathing oxygen existing in our gravity/temperature range, and fond of water. Such life is unlikely to be present anywhere but on an identical twin planet.

That still leaves the possibility of life evolving in ways that we would consider impossible (or would not consider life at all). Maybe `they' have already found us, but consider our planet dead, since all they see are carbon blobs and no `life'.

Re:burden of proof

[Lord Ender]

"burden of proof" is a legal, not scientific, concept. It does not apply.

Re:burden of proof

[evilviper]

It would be really sad if our solar system turned out to be sterile.

Yes, it would be very sad if we all found out we aren't actually alive.

Re:burden of proof

[MikTheUser]

But grammar nitpicking aside, why would it be sad if the other planets were sterile, exactly? What difference would that _actually_ make to us, here on Earth?

It would mean that the question "Is there life anywhere other than Earth?" will not have found a positive answer within our reach. Because it's possible there is none, finding life will be the only way to get ourselves a definitive answer. And if we don't find any in the Solar System... Well, than this possibility of a definitve answer will be a lot further away from us.

Re:burden of proof

[R3d M3rcury]

What difference would that _actually_ make to us, here on Earth?

Well, personally, it wouldn't make one whit of difference.

Reasons that it would be sad is that it would speak to the "prevalence" of life in the universe. If our little backwater of a solar system can have two or three or four bodies that support life, it might be common. Since we believe that more complex life (eg animals, worms, etc.) evolves from simpler life (eg, bacteria), the more simple life we find means that, statistically, we have a better chance of finding more complex life and, possibly, "intelligent" life.

There's also the obvious religious issues for the philosophers. If God created Man on Earth, did he create Amoebas on Mars? If we discover that life on Earth is similar to life on Mars, does that mean that God created both and just didn't bother to tell us or does it show similar processes? If the life is dissimilar, does that mean that God created life on Earth and something else created life on Mars? Does Amoebas on Mars and People on Earth imply that nature cannot build anything so complex as a human being and that building human beings requires some sort of "Intelligent Design"? And if the life is dissimilar, is it really life?

Re:burden of proof

[mark-t]

But let's say that Earth is the only planet that ever had life in our solar system...

So that means that if our solar system is an average one (and we have no reason to believe that it isn't), then life is probably very rare in the universe... possibly so rare that we will never discover for certain if we are alone in the cosmos or if there are others like us elsewhere.

But why is that so sad? Why is being so rare a bad thing? Aren't rare things valuable? Science tends to humble humanity as we realize and re-realize just how insignificant we are in this vast cosmos, but if life is shown to be rare, shouldn't we rightly revel in how special that would make us?

I'll leave the I.D. issues you brought up for someone else to tackle if they so choose.

Re:burden of proof

[rohan972]

I think that if animal or plant life is found on other planets will not cause a problem for long to religious/philosophers. If we did find life beyond earth:

Possible evolutionary view: That's not surprising, if it could happen here, it's logical to think it might happen on other planets.

Possible creationist view: That's not surprising, God created life here, there was no death originally. As the population grew, people were probably intended to advance technology and spread to other planets. Some of those planets were prepared by God with plant/animal life.

If we don't find life beyond earth:
Possible evolutionary view: That's not surprising, the conditions required for the generation of life are quite specific. The probability of us actually finding life beyond earth is quite small, although possible.

Possible creationist view: That's not surprising, the bible never mentions life on other planets (if heaven's not included as a planet)

Finding intelligent (above animal) life would definitly cause issues though.

cool science

[fermion]

This is the kind of subtlety that people seem to miss in science. Just because something could be true, does not mean it is true. In this case the samples in question could have been formed by an organic process, but they did not have to be. And since the overwhelming evidence is that there is no life on mars, and in fact we have no real process as yet that would have developed life on mars, the reasonable person still concludes that life probably does not exist. Now some people just are going to believe for personal reasons, and that is cool. Those people need to look for evidence in an attempt to prove their case. But this particular piece of evidence appears to have been taken out of contention.

Re:cool science

[LiquidCoooled]

I tend to take the opposite view to life on Mars (and other planets/moons).
I assume there will be "life" in most places.
Just look around this great varied Earth of ours. In the furthest reaches, in the darkest depths and the most impossible places we find that it flourishes.

We have barely begun to look around on Mars and we certainly haven't dug far below the surface, give it time and I think we will find it.

Why is it so difficult to believe we are alone?

Re:cool science

[LiquidCoooled]

*Not

Re:cool science

[lawpoop]

I take a somewhat different tack.

It is true that we do find life in some rather inhospitable places, like highly radioactive nuclear reactor cores, inside solid rock, in boiling steam vents, metabolizing sulfur -- but does that mean life can arise in such places, or does it require particular conditions to arise, and then it is capable of evolving to adapt to such harsh environments? The basic amino acids that constitute life do not survive in such environments. The living organisms which live in such environments have special mechanisms to protect and repair their delicate parts.

But the places where we find the most diversity of life is in the oceans and the tropical rain forests. That tells me there are a few elements that life really wants -- a relatively small temperature window, light, and most importantly water. The oceans are water, and the tropical rain forests are almost always at 100% humidity. I would even say that the temperature range that life wants is the range of liquid water. Taking this a step further, I would say that anywhere we find liquid water, we will find life.

Re:cool science

[BiggerIsBetter]

Taking what you said a step further... Would you say that anywhere that once had liquid water for a significant period of time, once had life?

Re:cool science

[aadvancedGIR]

"I would say that anywhere we find liquid water, we will find life."

No, the only logical conclusion to your post is "anywhere we find life, we are very likely to find abundant liquid water". To be honest, it doesn't help that much...

Re:cool science

[lawpoop]

Yeah, that is a logical corrolary... of course the trick is, how long of a time?

Re:cool science

[Anonymous Coward]

"And since the overwhelming evidence is that there is no life on mars,"

Not quite - there are vast areas of underground ice that diurnally produce organic gases similar to what would be expected to be produced by bacteria. Not proof, but all the more reason to go looking.

Also, mysterious 'bacteria' similar in size and shape to the alleged fossils in the meteorite have been discovered alive and well on Earth. They do not have a known biochemistry that responds to any standard tests, they live miles underground, grow very slowly, eat rock and take thousands of years to reproduce. However, once in a laboratory they eat plastic petri dishes like crazy - which could make them very useful. But it seems all indications are that they are a previously unknown form of life, though from here or there is pure speculation at this time.

Then there is the red rain that fell recently - nothing to do with Mars, necessarily, but again something that looks hopeful and worth investigating as it appears to be alive and not like anything ever before seen.

I would also think it is a good bet that the dwarf homo erectus from Java will be discovered alive and well in the near future in some unexplored jungle - and that will be almost as good as discovering an alien intelligence. After all, there are rumours of it being sighted as recently as the 1930's, there is evidence that sailors saw it a few centuries back, there are recent encounters (within a few centuries) recorded in the local folklore, it fits the description of the areas legendary dwarf 'yeti' perfectly (so the National Geographic reconstruction is not hairy enough by a long shot as they probably will have orange hair with long manes if the stories are true), and the bones that have been found are recent (almost, but not quite, within recorded history).

And these would be almost as good as an alien, why? They diverged from us way back before we even looked human. Obviously, even gorillas have similar though processes, so they won't be entirely alien, but all the same it is exciting.

Am I hopeful? Yes. Would I jump at the opportunity to go looking for them? Yes. Is it certain? No. But it is just as foolish to believe it can't be true as it is to believe it must be at this stage of the game.

Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[iguana]

1. Unexplained evidence.
   
2. Testable hypothesis.
   
3. Testing of the hypothesis.
   
4. Alternative explanation for the evidence.
   
5. Revision or rejection of the hypothesis.
   
6. Goto step 3.
   

Compare to Creationism. *Cough* excuse me, "Intelligent Design".

1. Unexplained evidence.
   
2. God did it.
   
3. End of discussion. Or else.
   

If I may inject a personal note, I do believe in God. But I don't believe He created an existance so simple that anything we don't understand must have His hand directly involved.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible for an irreducible complexity to exist?

Yeah, ever met a woman? :-p

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I may inject a personal note, I do believe in God. But I don't believe He created an existance so simple that anything we don't understand must have His hand directly involved.

Then you must know that you're going to burn in hell.

Seriously.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, I was hoping we could get vaguely topical religion bashing thread in here somehow. You're not quite there, but this looks like a promising start.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[Anonymous Coward]

# Unexplained evidence.
# Testable hypothesis.
# Testing of the hypothesis.
# Alternative explanation for the evidence.
# Revision or rejection of the hypothesis.
# Goto step 3.

I see a goto statement in there. This isn't BASIC, dammit!

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[Phroggy]

That may be true for Intelligent Design, but for actual Creation Science it really does work more like this:

1. God did it
2. Unexplained evidence (how did God do it?)
3. Testable hypothesis
4. Testing of the hypothesis
5. Alternative explanation for the evidence
6. Revision or rejection of the hypothesis
7. Go to step 4, while still keeping step 1 in mind

Forgive me for referencing a Jim Carrey movie in a science/theology discussion, but do you remember the scene in "Bruce Almighty" where Carrey pulls the moon closer, because he wants the view to appear more romantic, and the following morning he hears news reports about all the damage that was caused as a result of severe tidal activity or whatever? You can't just mess with stuff, without having unintended consequences all around you... so, if God wanted to do something like, say, cover the whole planet in water, without destroying the universe, the easiest way to do it would be to use natural processes. Remember that God is timeless, so if he wanted a global flood in 2,000 BC, he could set natural processes in motion beginning at the time of Creation that would result in a global flood at the appropriate time. What were those processes? How did God do it? What can this teach us about the physical world we live in?

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[Yvanhoe]

Terry Pratchett said in His Scriptures that one burn in hell only if he believes he deserverse it. I'd like to see a christian prove Him wrong.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[martyros]

The problem is that many scientists insert an unspoken step 0:

0. Assume that everything that has ever happened in the universe is attributable exclusively to natural causes.

That may be a reasonable thing to assume for repeatable experiments that you are doing in your laboratory. And it's probably a good idea to generally look for and favor naturalistic solutions to events that happen in general. But to go from "Anything we don't understand msut have His hand directly involved" to "God's hand is absolutely never involved and never has been" is an unwarranted philosophical assumption.

Now, evolution may be the best explanation of the facts, even if you believe in the existence of a God who is not above meddling in the course of Nature once in awhile. But it is certainly true that many scientists begin from philosophical assumptions that would preclude them ever attributing anything to God, no matter how evident it were. And really, isn't "We refuse to consider any propisition that includes God" just as bad as "We refuse to consider any propisition that doesn't (explicitly) include God"?

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[MadAhab]

If I may inject a personal note, I do believe in God. But I don't believe He created an existance so simple that anything we don't understand must have His hand directly involved.

A fair and underrated point. After all, this is what the people who created modern science believed. In fact they thought, very seriously, than understanding the details of God's creation brought them closer to God.

I also find this to be a convincing approach, within a Christian, science-neutral viewpoint, to be a convicing reason that Christians should believe in evolution.

Which god is more powerful, more awesome, more amazing? The one who just made some animals the way they are (and oddly put bones of some other non-existent creatures in the earth just to "test our faith"), or the one who made a unviverse with rules that made animals make themselves and make themselves ever more complex until they became us? Clearly, it's the latter. The former is OK if you still believe in Santa Claus, and rather pathetic otherwise. The latter is pretty amazing by any measure. I find it indistinguishable from science, assuming both views are filled with wonder that our world is as it is... and when you consider that science concerns itself with the how, and not the why.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[Anonymous Coward]

Terry Pratchett said in His Scriptures that one burn in hell only if he believes he deserverse it. I'd like to see a christian prove Him wrong.

Ohhhh, dear. Scriptures? You mean his Discworld fantasy novels?

Now that we've gotten it out of the way, let me interject with Discworld nerdery of my own. You go where you believe you go after you die in the Discworld- if you believe in reincarnation, you get reincarnated. If you believe in Valhalla, you see the Valkyries coming. If you believe in the whole Judgement thing, guess what? You get judged.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[rohan972]

If I may inject a personal note, I do believe in God. But I don't believe He created an existance so simple that anything we don't understand must have His hand directly involved.

Actually, creationists believe that both everything we don't understand and everything we do understand is attributable to God. In the bible, the are lots of examples of things that have natural explanations that are still attributed to God, eg: rain, breathing, crops growing, David killing Goliath etc all have natural explanations. To a creationist, knowing how something happened on a physical level in no way indicates that God didn't do it.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[LittleBigLui]

0. Assume that everything that has ever happened in the universe is attributable exclusively to natural causes.

"God's hand is absolutely never involved and never has been"

Those two staements aren't equivalent. If "God's hand" influences this universe, it (or its effects) is part of this universe, and therefore are natural causes.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[rohan972]

Which god is more powerful, more awesome, more amazing?

I find it more useful to ask "what is true?", rather than "what do I prefer?" which is what your question amounts to. But if you want to ask that, then:

Which god would you prefer to follow? The one who lied about the way he made the earth and everything in it, therefore casting doubt on the reliability of everything else he said, or the one whose word is truth, who is the essence of integrity, whose word can be relied on above all else?

To think that God couldn't have explained to Moses (or whoever wrote genesis) "God took aeons to create the earth, and caused plants and animals to arise, which gradually developed and became humans." doesn't really need discussion. If you accept that evolution is true, on what basis could you believe in the resurrection of Christ, since dead people rising up is clearly against science. If evolution is true, the bible is not a revelation from god.

Creationists and atheist evolutionists agree on one thing: if evolution is true, Christianity isn't.

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[Yvanhoe]

Ohhhh, dear. Scriptures? You mean his Discworld fantasy novels?

No, I mean His Discworld Fantasy Novels !

I would also add that in this theology theory, going after someone trying to convince him he'll go to hell should be punished as severely as actual physical torture. Ahhhh, that gives me a legal angle to attack these Jehovah's witnesses

Re:Let's hear it for the scientific process!

[halber_mensch]

Now, evolution may be the best explanation of the facts, even if you believe in the existence of a God who is not above meddling in the course of Nature once in awhile. But it is certainly true that many scientists begin from philosophical assumptions that would preclude them ever attributing anything to God, no matter how evident it were. And really, isn't "We refuse to consider any propisition that includes God" just as bad as "We refuse to consider any propisition that doesn't (explicitly) include God"?

The assumption is not "bad" because the goal of science is simply to describe to whatever extent possible the mechanics of the universe and the systems within it in a particular language. If you describe a process as "God did it" you won't take your free Nobel decoder ring from your box of Corn Pops because you haven't described that hypothesis in a language applicable to science. You could be 100% correct, and God did in fact "do it" - but if you cannot describe what God is and how God "did it" with data, math, or experiments, then it isn't expressable in science. Note that this doesn't mean that in reality God does or does not exist, nor that God did or did not "do it", it just isn't an idea that can be expressed in the language of science as it is expressed in the language of religion. We must remember that science, like religion, is a self-describing system that seeks to define the universe in a particular dialect, and neither can capture reality to precision.

IMHO, of course.

Tough Day to be a Martian

[DumbSwede]

Coming in the wake of this recent news about atmospheric hydrogen-peroxide possibly scouring Mars's surface of microbial life it looks like the odds of finding life easily on Mars are dwindling. Subsurface drilling still holds out hope.

Regardless of current life conditions I still hold out hope for past life fossil discoveries, multi-cellular past life. Several of the Mars rover pictures look to show fossils, but NASA is being very cautious in it assessments. Not sure what the ID camp or Creationists will make of bring back criniod like fossils from Mars estimated to be 1-2 billion years old. Actually I already pretty much do know, so consider the question rhetorical.

Re:Tough Day to be a Martian

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone proposed a mission to Mars that would test the way objects decay or degrade away in that environment?

Perhaps send up a human skeleton, or full body if they prefer I am sure many would volunteer their corpse, and other items from earth. Some that would decay, some that would degrade. Perhaps a styrofoam cup, the corpse of a beaver, some plastics, you get the idea.

Send these over to Mars. Upon landing, have a small robot move them out into the environment in front of a camera or other monitoring devices. Observe these items over several years. See how items fade away. See how the area affects these items. If over a few years time these things are buried or just completely fade away, we may learn what happens to items on Mars and how to look for other items of similar elemental makeup.

its belief that keeps it going

[karupa]

so what if some scientists have created the structures inorganically...its belief that keeps us going. Who knows for sure that man landed on the moon? And that the rover actually got back rock from the mars? If some scientists believe there is life on mars, why try hard to disprove them? Is it too hard to believe that we may not be alone? or do you really think this vaste universe holds nothing more than the spec of dust that we are?

Re:its belief that keeps it going

[123abc]

"Is it too hard to believe that we may not be alone?

Yes, because mathematically, we shouldn't even be here.

Re:its belief that keeps it going

[Dilpo]

And that the rover actually got back rock from the mars?
the rock in question is actually a metiorite(sp?) that fell in antartica, I dont believe we(humans) have ever brought anything back from mars, its a one way trip.
If some scientists believe there is life on mars, why try hard to disprove them?
Its part of the scientific process, nothing is considered fact even so called "Laws" its just not disproven yet. One of the other posts on here outlined the scienfic process in a really simplistic way, maybe look at that or google the scienfic process so you understand why its so important to attempt to disprove things. If you are to lazy for that or want the easy quick answer it basically comes down to this. If you never attempt to disprove something then you'd never know if it was really true or not. Lets say I have some evidence that supports my hypothesis that (just making stuff up dont flame for this) I am somehow genetically surperior to you, if you never attempt to disprove me how will you know if I am right? my evidence could very well suport that hypothesis but I could miss something that points in a totally different direction. This post is a lot longer than I originally intended so the end.

Re:its belief that keeps it going

[Pancake Bandit]

The very basis of the scientific method is continuously questioning what we believe. Otherwise, we'd still think that the world was flat.

Re:its belief that keeps it going

[servognome]

The very basis of the scientific method is continuously questioning what we believe. Otherwise, we'd still think that the world was flat.

The irony is that science still maintains the possibility that it is.

Assume - Ass out of U and Me

[123abc]

The panspermia folks soooo want this rock to contain evidence of life.

They should have followed the scientific process _first_, which they preach about so much, before jumping to conclusions and puting the public in a tizzy.

Re:Assume - Ass out of U and Me

[nwbvt]

Umm, part of the scientific process is to put out your theories for peer review. The scientists who did this did nothing wrong, in fact they were absolutely correct. And for the record, they still have not been proven wrong, just much of their evidence has been given alternate explanations.

3... 2... 1...

[Anonymous Coward]

and even prompted President Clinton to make a statement

What would GWB have done?

McKays

[FuturePastNow]

David....Gordon

Their third brother, Rodney, was unfortunately too far away to comment on the possibility of life on other worlds.

Re:McKays

[bruno.fatia]

Actually it's been reported him to be spotted somewhere in the North America.

Re:McKays

[Anonymous Coward]

At least we know what Gordon McKay did after Porridge now.

Any non 30+ or non brits brits probably don't understand that.

Not recent

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this study is recent, the news that most geologists, biologists, planetary scientists and even scanning electron microscope technicians do not find the evidence compelleing is not new news. The alan hills rock created a big stir at first, but it was shown rather quickly that the evidence could not support the claim. There are many things that could explain the images of the purported "nanobacteria," and these types of non-biological artifacts have been seen on Earth objects.

So...

[CiXeL]

Can we start trying to put it there now?

Re:So...

[bluebox_rob]

Absolutely not! All this means is that nothing has changed - we still don't know whether anything lives on Mars or not. If we try to introduce life there we run the risk of A) making it much harder to prove that any life subsequently discovered there is actually indigenous and B) wiping out, or irreversably changing, anything that does live there. Even if we had the means, we should hold back a good long while yet...

Re:So...

[solitas]

Absolutely not! All this means ... a good long while yet.

What's more important in this collective fetish to colonize Mars (manned bases, mining, etc.) - to determine that some kind of life was ONCE there? Or to prove that, whatever the circumstances, we can introduce sustainable life to aid in colonization? (And, yes: I've read K.S.Robinson's 'Red/Green/Blue Mars' trilogy.)

I can't see where it matters at all, in the grand scheme of extraterrestrial colonization, whether or not bugs (cells, bacteria, etc.) once existed there whereas I _can_ see the benefit(s) in determining what may be there _now_ - primarily to determine if the dirt there can support plant life or in any way contribute to nitrogen/oxygen/hydrogen/carbon production, along with the use of planetary ice(s).

All that dirt & ice are already there, and _they're_ going to be the determining factor in whether or not the planet can support a colony - _not_ whether bugs once lived there and are all dead now.

Re:So...

[nwbvt]

Except there may well be a good reason for why there appears to be no life on Mars, it is not a very habitable planet.

Unnecessary Evidence.

[crhylove]

Whether that little rock had evidence or not, I agree with Einstein: There is no logical number between 0 and infiniti. Therefore if there is life HERE, there is and has been life all over the damned place. One little rock doesn't change the statistical likelihood of that.

rhY

Re:Unnecessary Evidence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, that's absolutely true. It's more likely that life is throughout the universe than that Earth is unique. The universe is roughly isotropic - it's the same everywhere when you look at the very largest scales.
However, it could well be that there's only a handful of life-forming planets in each group of galaxies, and that intelligent species are so far apart that sending a message back and forth would take millions of years. We probably aren't alone, but we might be effectively so.

No big deal, anyway. I predict that by the year 3006 Disney will have bought Europa, dumped a bunch of genetically engineered "aliens" on it and be selling tickets. :)

Re:Unnecessary Evidence.

[evilviper]

Therefore if there is life HERE, there is and has been life all over the damned place. One little rock doesn't change the statistical likelihood of that.

You cannot give any statistical analysis with only one (positive) sample. That is a statistic with an infinite margin of error.

If you ask 100 people a yes/no question, and only one person says "yes", does that mean 60 million people in the world would also say "yes", or does that mean in a freak of chance, you just happen to get the one single person of all 6 billion? Until you get at least one more positive, you can't even begin to GUESS what the statics really are.

Re:Unnecessary Evidence.

[crhylove]

How is public opinion any validation or devaluation of my original claim based on statistics? That's a straw man.

I'm all for gathering more results and determining how accurate our knowledge is over all, however. I also agree with infinite margin of error bit, which is why I recommend more NASA funding, and completely eliminating the NSA as part of the way to support that.

Actually, given the constitutional criminality of pretty much the entire government, including the CIA, the NSA, and most of the executive and legislative branches, I can think of a LOT of places to gather funds for NASA, and several other worthy projects as well.

One I'm a particular fan of would be OLPC for all americans, and in conjunction improving our electoral system. Which is why my idea of implementation goes farther, and would really be OLPP (person).

rhY

Re:Unnecessary Evidence.

[evilviper]

How is public opinion any validation or devaluation of my original claim based on statistics? That's a straw man.

No, it's an analogy. You were talking statistics, with absolutely no basis in reality.

I also agree with infinite margin of error bit,

You didn't a couple days ago:

"Therefore if there is life HERE, there is and has been life all over the damned place."

The rest of your post is a completely off-topic troll/rant.

Forward thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there is a constructive, forward thinking. Why argue if there was life there or not? Let's just stick some up there and be done with that.

Superior races

[mangu]

it would be good for mankind to have a significant first contact with a superior race

Yet, even assuming such races exist, the probability for our meeting them is exceedingly small. Consider that it took about ten thousand years for us to go from the stone age to space exploration. Viable planets for developing life had existed for several billion years before life arose in the Earth.

Therefore, for us to meet a race that's more advanced than us, but not so advanced for that contact to become completely irrelevant, we would have to meet a race that developed just a tiny bit of time, percentage wise, before we did.

If and when we find life outside the Earth, it will most probably be either very primitive or very advanced relative to us. Baring extreme coincidence, any more advanced race we are likely to meet will have as much to teach us as we have to teach to a garden slug.

Re:Superior races

[Lord Ender]

Your argument assumes technological advancement increases at a certain speed, and has no limit (or a limit far beyond our current level). You should state that so that you don't beg the question.

It is possible that we are near the limits of technological advancement. It is also possible that we are near a point of advancement beyond wich progress is extremely slow. I doubt this is the case, but I won't consider it proven as you seem to do.

Terrible

[bigmauler]

I feel a great disturbance in the net. As if millions of slashdoters cried out and were suddenly smacked with a cold reality they couldn't accept.

I can't help but think of using this for religion

[deft]

NOT getting the results that most of the scientific community would REALLY want as such a cool discovery that could advance thinking is a great example to show religious types.

This is what it looks like when the process beats an idea with logic and testing and eventually disproves what they really wanted to be true. In things like "intelligent design" it could never ever come out with such a neutral result agreed upon by people who may have been very much for the idea the entire time. No lying, not falsifying, no BS logic.... just the truth through science.

I applaud their dilligence, and wonder if that guy in Vegas who one the "when will life on other planets be dicovered" jackpot gets to keep his $$$ :)

Trust the Scotts

[lancelotlink]

One would think that the brother of the head of Medical sciences in the Pegasus galaxy would have a little more credibility regarding alien life.

Re:Trust the Scotts

[ichigo 2.0]

One would think that the person trying to make a post about a scifi series would have a little more credibility if he didn't confuse two different characters in said series.

Much ado about nothing?

[hunterx11]

Perhaps the disappointment is just that it turned out to be a godawful small affair.

Re:Much ado about nothing?

[hachete]

the girl with the mousy hair? Or the sailors fighting in the dancehalls?

Why?

[bussdriver]

Why is it so hard for people to believe life exists beyond earth?
Fear and tradition.

There is no proof on either side so one can't take a position without a belief or hypothesis.
The hypothesis that there is other life is the better approach because it makes you look for it. The other side likely would not be looking as hard and pushing for a narrow definition for life.

Once we find signs of life, then we can make loose estimates on how much there is.

Re:Why?

[rohan972]

The hypothesis that there is other life is the better approach because it makes you look for it.

Isn't this only better if it turns out that there actually are other life forms beyond earth? Or at least, that if they are never found, that the searching for them yields incidental but beneficial discoveries (quite likely to happen)? Otherwise it's a hypothesis that leads to a great waste of time and effort isn't it?

Once we find signs of life...

If we find signs of life...

Then who dug the canals

[okshaw]

If there was no life on Mars, then who dug the canals?

Meanwhile, at the McKay family dinner table

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, at the McKay family dinner table...

David: Hey Mom! Guess what? I just discovered life on Mars!

Gordon: Did not!

David: Did too!

Gordon: Did not!

David: Did too!

Mom: (Sigh.)

Re:Meanwhile, at the McKay family dinner table

[WilliamSChips]

Rodney: I just discovered a method that will detect whether you actually found life in that rock...

From a programming perspective

[Millenniumman]

char* explainEvidence (char* evidence, char* method)
{
char* explanation;
if (method == "scientificMethod")
{
while( 1 ) explanation = test((hypothesis)evidence);
}

if (method == "intelligentdesign") explanation = "God";

return explanation;
}

Sorry, but your scientific method gives us an infinite loop. Revise it.

You can't handle the truth...

[Anonymous Coward]

The probabilities and facts dictate the earth is not the center of the universe.

Believe it or not, your definition of center directly correlates to the early flat earth principalists and their observations. Oh, the irony. *There are many such examples (in nature alone) where the center of mass is no where near your flat earth notion of a tiny dot drawn in the middle of a circle. The center of mass of any given rock is no where near that fictitious dot in the middle, and neither does all the static mass about it revolve around it as part of that requiem. The same applies in more complex dynamic system models such as the Universe, having to factor in the motion of an inifinite number of particles (or more practicle, a body of infinite systems) and gravity. So, good luck in your mathematical model!

It is very plausible, if not possible, that the Earth is the center of the Universe.

Until such time you can model the entire universe and account for all of the hidden mass (finding M, much less finding all the other governing dynamic variables), you're still casting philosophical anchors somewhere near the Strait of Gibraltar. :.

Re:Decay

[DumbSwede]

For now NASA and other Space Agencies would be far more concerned about keeping the Martian Environment free of Earthly contamination. Your experiment might inform in the short run, but make detecting native biota much harder in the long run.

Just determining the exact chemical composition of the soil and air is almost certainly more useful now and runs far less risk than what you propose.

Re:I can't help but think of using this for religi

[ichigo 2.0]

The problem is that religion is untestable. Or how would you conduct a scientific experiment to detect the presence of a omnipotent, eternal being that transcends time, and manipulates physical laws at will? As far as science is considered, a God is irrelevant, because it is outside the framework of science i.e. the physical realm.

Huh?

[lucienshand]

I thought they found bacteria there in the polar reigons. Yes? No? Just sci-fi gossip?

Re:Huh?

[godless dave]

First I've heard of it. I imagine that would have been big news.

Come on editors...

[nwbvt]

Let's see if you can try to do a decent job for once. This is the second article I've seen today with a title that is very badly worded. The title here appears to say that scientists have now, after 10 years of study, rejected the claim of the NASA scientists that there is life on this rock. When in reality, the story is more about the 10 year anniversary of the controversial announcement. No, I'm not asking for an involved fact checking assignment, just for you to do a quick glance at the article and make sure what the submitter wrote is accurate.

Likeliness

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is: is it likely that the substance was formed by an inorganic process, or is it more likely that is formed by an organic process after all?

How certain are we one way or the other?

It's always been BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked in Antarctica off and on, for 12 years.

I'll never forget the very intelligent and very adament scientist who told me the "Mars life Rock" was total BS. He went on to say that it was geology, not biology.

Mind you, he also told me that NASA would ride it to the end to make sure that they could send missions to Mars.

The woman that found it was a minor celebrity and ran the lab for several years.

Re:Decay

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point.

what is superior

[Anonymous Coward]

what is superior, anyway? more advanced? more peaceful?

obviously longer legs and bigger breasts

So how much did this rock cost me?

[patio11]

As I remember, "life on Mars, wow!" was used to justify a NASA budget increase. So, does anyone know how much we paid for a garden-variety rock?

It's "assume everything is understandable"

[Namarrgon]

Thing is, "God did it" just isn't a helpful answer, if you're trying to advance your technology.

First off, it's unprovable & untestable (at least without help from Him), and second, what now? It's an explanation, but it doesn't increase your understanding. You can't build on it - you can't use it to increase your engineering ability, or to predict natural events, or to provide more food for the hungry. So scientists start out with the assumption that "everything is understandable", whether God did it or not, and proceed to try and understand it.

Now, "God did it" is more useful as a philosophical answer. It can make you happy with your life, make you feel more secure and confident. It may not directly improve your lot in life, but greater confidence will likely help you make better decisions, leading you to help yourself (and maybe others), with or without help from Him.

Re:It's "assume everything is understandable"

[martyros]

There seems to be a lot of unstated argument here. To begin with, technology advances by

1. understanding more about the laws of Nature, and
2. developing techniques to exploit those laws.

Secondly, when we observe an unusual phenomenon, that is not predicted by our current understanding of the laws of Nature, a fuller investigation will frequently lead to a more complete understanding of Nature's laws. Thirdly, if, when we saw something unusual, we were content to say, "Well, it must be a miracle," we would never investigate; thus, we would lose the opportunity to get a better understanding of the laws of nature, and thus also lose the opportunity, potentially, to develop techniques that exploit the better-understood laws ("technology").

I agree with you so far. :-)

As for "untestable" -- what does it mean for a hypothesis for a single event to be "testable"? Are the following statements "testable"?

• O.J. Simpson killed Nicole
• George (whose nick is martyros) posted to Slashdot August 6th
• The meteor discussed in this article contained biological life from Mars

These questions aren't about scientific knowledge, but about individual events; and (as I understand the word), can't be tested in the rigorous, scientific sense. Scientific knowledge can be tested, and used as evidence, but the events themselves cannot. For instance, concerning the meteor, the original author had as evidence:

1. This meteor contains a certain type of crystal formation.
2. We have only seen this crystal formed by biological processes.
3. Therefore, this meteor probably contained life.

Not being able to test #3 directly, he tested #1 and referred to contemporary scientific knowledge for #2 in order to show that #3 was true. Subsequent authors, investigating #2, discovered that this crystal can be formed by non-biological processes as well. So, where does that leave us? "Well, maybe it had life, maybe not. We don't know." You can try to find more evidence, and use more clever arguments, but at some point, there may just not be enough there to know.

Even if #2 were true, it would not make the original hypothesis, "This meteor contained biological life" testable. The lack of testing doesn't mean that something can't be proven in the "court of law" sense -- either with the "preponderance of evidence" or the "beyond a reasonable doubt" measure, depending on how important the conclusion is. But it does mean that we may have to be satisfied with a "reasoned" answer rather than a "tested" answer.

Now, "God did it" is more useful as a philosophical answer. It can make you happy with your life, make you feel more secure and confident. It may not directly improve your lot in life, but greater confidence will likely help you make better decisions, leading you to help yourself (and maybe others), with or without help from Him.

Here you expose your unstated assumption: God did not do it. This paragraph essentially says, "God did not do it, but there's no harm in believing He did if it helps you psychologically."

Temporarily consider a hypothetical universe, in which God does interfere. Suppose God did do something by contravening the laws of nature. Then looking for a naturalistic explanation would be unfruitful and a waste of your time; and if the miracle was directed at you, it would probably be a waste of God's time. You'd learn nothing about the laws of Nature from studying one of its exceptions, and gain no spiritual benefit from it.

Let me emphasize, I think that we should look for a naturalistic explanation when confronted with some unusual phenomenon, unless there is good reason to do otherwise. But refusing to ever consider the possibility of divine interference in the course of Nature is based on belief in Naturalism, not an open-minded rational approach to the universe.

Re:It's "assume everything is understandable"

[Namarrgon]

Now that's a real answer :-)

what does it mean for a hypothesis for a single event to be "testable"?

I use the word "testable" in the strict mathematical sense, not the "can we test it today" sense. In other words, something is testable if there can exist evidence to prove or disprove an assertion. For your three example statements, all are theoretically testable since the evidence is (or was) there if we just knew how to look for it. The existance or non-existance of an omnipotent being is not testable, unless that being chooses to allow the evidence of itself to exist.

With natural phenomenon, scientists work on the assumption (until proven otherwise) that there is enough evidence somewhere to explain everything we see, because if you assume otherwise, you might as well give up. Deductive reasoning is an important tool for that; we have excellent reason to believe that 2 + 2 = 4 and always will, so based on that, we can consider many other conclusions equally valid. Other base assumptions may not be as firm, and are (generally) treated as such. As far as the meteorite goes, new evidence came to light (those compounds can be formed by non-organic processes too), so the earlier hypothesis was revised (we can no longer say with reasonable certainty that the meteorite once contained life). So long as we keep perspective on what is unassailable and what is assumed, I have no problem with this.

Suppose God did do something by contravening the laws of nature... You'd learn nothing about the laws of Nature from studying one of its exceptions, and gain no spiritual benefit from it.

I guess that depends how obvious it was :-) If a huge anthropomorphic being appeared in the clouds and boomed, "Behold, the dead shall rise, gravity shall be 20% stronger, and Lake Superior shall be a rather nice Merlot", then I don't imagine many people would waste much time on looking for a naturalistic explanation. I think that would fit your definition of "good reason to do otherwise". OTOH, the assumption that life was created on this planet only by divine intervention, simply because it all looks bloody complex to us, is in my books unwarranted. Further study is justified; hence, science.

Dunno how *likely*, but it's certainly *possible*

[Namarrgon]

Thing is, it doesn't really matter what the statistics are. If one person in a hundred says yes, chances are a few more in that 6 billion will agree. In a universe this size, with hundreds of billions of galaxies and uncounted quadrillions of planets, if life can exist in one place, it's an excellent bet that it also exists in many many other places. The chances of us being the only biosphere in the entire universe are ridiculously small, to put it mildly.

Finding it next door on Mars is another matter. We can't statistically predict that from one sample, as you say, any more than we could predict the answer of any given individual.

Re:Dunno how *likely*, but it's certainly *possibl

[evilviper]

If one person in a hundred says yes, chances are a few more in that 6 billion will agree.

No, that's the whole point. You don't know if 60 million others will agree, or if absolutely no-one else will agree. At the absolute least, you need more than one sample to make an educated guess.

if life can exist in one place, it's an excellent bet that it also exists in many many other places.

No, it's not a good bet at all. You don't have any way of knowing that what we have here is common, or an utter freak occurance.

The chances of us being the only biosphere in the entire universe are ridiculously small, to put it mildly.

Prove it. To even claim that, you would have to know EXACTLY what it takes to create life (good luck with that). And, you have to know exactly what percentage of planets have conducive conditions to life. With the Earth being the only example we know of, we don't have any way of telling how likely that is that a similarly developed environment could exist elsewhere.

There are too many variables, that are utterly unknown, to even make a rational guess at the problem. It's entirely a question of beliefs.

sweet lies

[don_oles]

People are so naive. They are being told that there's life on Mars and millions of dollars are being spent on useless fly to Mars (but someone surely kept a bit of the pie). Then they are told about Al-Qaeda conspiracy theory and we know what happened later. It was so surprisingly easy, people want to be told sweet lies. Life on Mars! We are not alone! (=== we are so alone on this 6-bln people planet).

Absence of evidence...

[Narcogen]

... is not evidence of absence.

Fermi's Paradox only asks why, if life is so common, no proof has yet been found.

Perhaps no proof will ever be found in the entire life cycle of our solar system, but the absence of such proof is not proof that life exists nowhere else.

The real "hard truth" here is that it's likely that even if such life exists, we will likely never contact or know of it in any way.

Re:Absence of evidence...

[Reality Master 101]

Absence of evidence... ... is not evidence of absence. Fermi's Paradox only asks why, if life is so common, no proof has yet been found.

Almost. Fermi's Paradox is a set of datapoints -- it IS evidence. The lack of a sun at night is evidence of either the sun going around the earth, or the earth going around the sun. The lack of any signs of alien life has certain implications.

As I said in another post, I think the strongest argument is the fact that it doesn't take that long in the great scheme of things to fill a galaxy, even at sublight speeds (on the order of a few million years). Compared to the age of the galaxy, it's nothing. If the galaxy was filled with intelligent life, the odds that not a single one would desire to seed itself on other stars in pretty small. And as I said, it only takes ONE.

Sure, there are lots of scenerios we can imagine that might preclude that happening. But I think the simplest explanation is that intelligent life is just really, really, really, really, really rare. Which is not that surprising, when you start thinking about it. The one argument creationists have going for them is that human beings really are astoundingly complex. My personal opinion is that universes are cyclical, and we may have to through billions of universe cycles before intelligent life shows up. Of course, we have no sense of the passage of "objective time" (whatever that means), so we simply don't know how probable or improbable it is.

Oh, and here's something that doesn't help at ALL:

[The_REAL_DZA]

It doesn't help his case at all that he's got the same name as that guy on Stargate Atlantis; I bet everyone he tells the rock is just a rock walks away thinking "Well of COURSE that's what HE'D say!"

Life on Mars?

[the dark hero]

It's a God-awful small affair

Re:Life on Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Life On Mars

solar system infection?

[peter303]

Theses a decent chance if live arose on solar system body first, it would probaly have infected the rest of life-supporting bodies over the eons. There have been thosands or more meteors from Mars and the Moon on Earth, most not yet discovered. The physics of reverse Earth to outer solar system isnt as good, but still possible .

It is starting to look like the 500 million years of the solar system history Mars could have more hospitable to life than earth. We all may be ultimately Martians!

If they found a footprint on Mars, they'd argue it

[tjstork]

All that the new paper does is provide a non-life based explanation for the "fossils" on the meteorite. At some point, the complexity of crafting ever more clever and obtuse explanations for an inorganic origins of a system outweighs the obvious conclusion that one is looking at a fossil. The logic being used here is ultimately circular. That, life doesn't exist elsewhere off of earth, so therefor, this non-life based explanation must be more valid.

This is not science, this is religion.

If someone found a footprint and a bone next to it with some sort of a bow and arrow on Mars, you would have scientists trying to argue against it, simply because they don't want to believe in the unsettling notion of life on other worlds. There would be papers explaining how peculiar air currents and dust devils and landslides conspired to produce a foot print, the bone is really a certain kind of deposit, and the bow and arrow the result of some sudden unfreezing of carbon dioxide on some random day.

You can't call a paper scientific when it tries to arrange facts ever so obtusely against the obvious.

Occam's razor applies. Sometimes a fossil, is just that, a fossil!

Re:Dunno how *likely*, but it's certainly *possibl

[Namarrgon]

You don't know if 60 million others will agree, or if absolutely no-one else will agree

It's true you don't know, but you can make a slightly-educated guess on even one sample. You can already reliably state that not everyone will say no. Your guess just gets more educated with more samples. With 100 samples, the best educated guess you can make is "1 in 100 will say yes". Your margin of error is high, but you're still better off than a pure random guess.

You don't have any way of knowing that what we have here is common, or an utter freak occurance.

I don't know anything other than "life is possible", certainly I can't say if it's common. I meant that, even if it's a freak occurance, a one in a trillion chance; when you have uncounted trillions of chances, that still means I'd be willing to bet there was at least a couple dozen other planets containing life in this universe :-) It is also equally possible at this stage that it's only a one in a hundred chance, so the assumption holds there too, at least until we learn more. We might be wrong, but we're slightly more likely to be right. Statistically, all we can say at this time is that the odds of us being the only life in the universe are one in uncounted trillions against.

I can't prove anything, of course. I certainly can't estimate the odds of there being life around Alpha Centauri, or any specific system - as you say, that would require lots more knowledge than we possess. I can only talk about overall odds, relating to the entire set of samples.

If we are on the only biosphere in the entire universe, with its truly vast numbers and variety of conditions, then "freak occurrence" doesn't begin to describe it. The odds are against us being completely alone, to put it mildly. The odds of us actually finding extra-terrestrial life on the planet next door are another matter entirely.

Re:Dunno how *likely*, but it's certainly *possibl

[evilviper]

You can already reliably state that not everyone will say no.

Exactly. You can also state there is life on earth.

Your margin of error is high,

Ridiculously, insanely high.

Statistically, all we can say at this time is that the odds of us being the only life in the universe are one in uncounted trillions against.

Not at all. If it takes billions and billions of very specific circumstances, all occuring in just the right time-frame, the odds may be very, very small.

That's not to say it's necessarily the case, it's just that you can't possibly assign statistics to something we are so completely ignorant of, and have NO statistical data to base the decision on.

ITYM religious nutcases

[JoshuaLawrence]

> NOT getting the results that most of the scientific community would REALLY want as such a cool discovery that could advance thinking is a great example to show religious types.

As a deeply religious type with a couple of degrees in science, I can tell you that I saw examples of this kind all the time in my own research when I was a postgraduate at university. Things I hoped would work out frequently didn't when I analysed the data. Not all religious types are nutcases, you know, plenty of us understand and accept, for example, the scientific method, or evolution by natural selection. I can work out the age of the Universe from Hubble's constant just as easily as anyone else (if I found my astronomy text book, it's a while ago now).