Are Aliens Living Among Us?

pickens writes "In recent years scientists have begun to view the existence of life outside of our solar system as ever-more likely. If life does emerge readily under terrestrial conditions, then perhaps it formed many times on our home planet. To pursue this tantalizing possibility, scientists have begun searching deserts, lakes and caverns for evidence of earth-bound 'alien' life-forms, organisms that would differ fundamentally from all known living creatures because they arose independently. Microbes have already been found inhabiting extreme environments ranging from scalding volcanic vents to the dry valleys of Antarctica. Other so-called extremophiles can survive in salt-saturated lakes, highly acidic mine tailings contaminated with metals, and the waste pools of nuclear reactors. Although 'alien' microbes might look like ordinary bacteria, their biochemistry could involve exotic amino acids or different elemental building blocks so researchers are devising tests to identify exotic microbes. If shadow life is confined to the microbial realm, it is entirely possible that scientists have overlooked it."

Comments

ALFs?

[ackthpt]

I think we have enough problems with ourselves, to worry about aliens living among us. As a matter of fact, what sort of superiour intelligence, which could get here, would use earth as anything other than their own Botany Bay Colony?

Re:aliens amoung us

[0racle]

That's not a very good disguise.

Absolutely not

[Anonymous Coward]

What a ridiculous idea. I'm sure we humans can all agree it's completely absurd to even wonder if there are extraterrestrials living amongst us humans. I suggest that we all ignore this article, and waste as little time as possible entertaining the laughable notion of aliens living on earth. On with your lives, fellow human friends.

:)

Correction

[Eradicator2k3]

FTS: "Other so-called extremophiles can survive in salt-saturated lakes, highly acidic mine tailings contaminated with metals, and the waste pools of nuclear reactors.

Other so called extremophiles can survive in their parents' basements, the only light source emanating from an LCD screen, gorging themselves with Cheez-Its and Mountain Dew.

There...fixed that for you. No need to thank me.

Re:What about us

[empiretrade]

aliens can file federal form 485 for adjustment of status with the INS

Re:Of course aliens live among us

[FatAlb33rt]

Hey you want to know something? The rest of the world does not refer to people living in their country uninvited as Aliens, they refer to them as ....





... Americans

Oh oh...

[nick357]

So aliens may already be living in the tinfoil that I make my hats with!?!?!?!?

Re:The odds aren't as poor as you think

[russ1337]

And I counter your offer with This

Excerpt:

It is widely claimed that a common bacterium from the human mouth, Streptococcus mitis, survived for two and a half years on the Moon inside the Surveyor 3 camera, to be detected when the camera was returned to Earth on board the Apollo 12 capsule. However, this claim cannot be sustained in the light of several lines of evidence:
* Streptococcus mitis lives in the mouth; there is no evidence that it can survive for long even in terrestrial environments outside the human body.
* Streptococcus mitis, like other oral streptococci, is a mesophile; it cannot survive outside of a narrow temperature range centered on human body temperature. It is not an extremophile nor does it produce endospores. It could not survive on the moon.
* Even extremophiles are unlikely to survive the extremes of temperature on the surface of the Moon (mean surface temperature day 107C; mean surface temperature night -153). Surveyor 3 would have gone through over thirty day-night cycles on the Moon, each one provoking freeze-thawing of bacteria. Applying multiple cycles of freeze-thawing is a commonly used technique for breaking open bacterial cells.
* There is evidence to suggest ................(read the wikipedia article for the rest)

Re:What about us

[nschubach]

I say we start holding people under water. If they survive they are obviously alien and then we can burn them at the stake. I read it in a book once and it seemed like a good idea then.

Re:What about us

[niceone]

I'm not.

But they are living among us. And they have mod points.

Re:What about us

[PietjeJantje]

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty normal.

One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it's prepared to put up with living. Anywhere it can get some kind of a grip, whether it's the in toxicating seas of Santraginus V, where the fish never seem to care whatever the heck kind of direction they swim in, the fire storms of Frastra where, they say, life begins at 40,000 degrees, or just burrowing around in the lower intestine of a rat for the sheer unadulterated hell of it, life will always find a way of hanging on in somewhere.

It will even live in New York, though it's hard to know why. In the winter time the temperature falls well below the legal minimum, or rather it would do if anybody had the common sense to set a legal minimum. The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.

In the summer it's too darn hot. It's one thing to be the sort of life form that thrives on heat and finds, as the Frastrans do, that the temperature range between 40,000 and 40,004 is very equable, but it's quite another to be the sort of animal that has to wrap itself up in lots of other animals at one point in your planet's orbit, and then find, half an orbit later, that your skin's bubbling.

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