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Super-Sensitive Motion Sensor Could Be Used To Hunt For Extraterrestrial Life
Zothecula writes: People often state that certain planets are too hot, cold or toxic to support life. The catch, however, is that those people are really just talking about life as we know it here on Earth. By that same token, when rovers exploring other planets seek out chemical signatures associated with life forms, they're only able to identify chemicals that we know to look for. That's why Swiss scientists from the EPFL research center have created a device that identifies microscopic life based on nanoscale movements instead of chemistry (abstract).
Life: Grow, Reproduce, Consume Energy.
Virus cannot reproduce on their own.
Crystals seem to show many properties of life.
Fire can Grow, Spread and it consumes energy.
What about individual cells that are part of a larger organism...
It still kinda comes down to Ill know if it I see it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Micro changes in air density, my ass."
-- Ripley
-kgj
They’re made out of meat.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
A super sensitive detector. And the first thing that comes to mind is hunt for extraterrestrial life? Not smuggling people in shipping containers or improving earthquake monitoring or something?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Barring utterly unknown chemistry, other atoms offer limited chemistry, bonds too strong, bonds too weak, limited atoms to which they can bond. That's why we concentrate on carbon based chemistry, with Oxygen or sulfure. Sure we could be missing something, but is it likely ? We have to concentrate on what we know we CAN find, as we can't send too many intruments out there like on the mars rover.
If the approach followed here allows for a good detection of KNOWN organic life with p0.05, then it sounds a good approach.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Data proving prior art on this type of scan
Operator: Sir, we found them.
The President: Send the nukes. They hate us for our freedom!
Slashdot is slowly but surely turning into 4chan. *sigh*
BTW, GP, I'd vote +1 Funny if I had mod points.
>Assuming it's sarcasm
A motion sensor would find the motion that matches the motion of life on earth. Isn't that the same trap?
...mostly...
beep beep boop boop i am robot i come to study you and assimilate your culture beep boop
Slashdot is slowly but surely turning into 4chan. *sigh*
which is funny because 4chan is slowly turning to junk and all the cool kids are going to 8chan or infinitychan.
The Disclosure Project: disclosureproject.org
We're going about this all wrong. Develop laser pistols before motion scanners. Doesn't help to know where the aliens are if you're shooting lead at them. I suppose you could load up on grenades... And don't bother with medkits until you get power armor.
beep beep boop boop i am robot i come to study you and assimilate your culture beep boop
~ hold perfectly still, they can only detect movement...
Much like the scientific community screwed up the re-define of the planets, they screwed up the description of life. In this age of Artificial Intelligence, on another world, the machines may be self aware ; completely sentient.
I imagine A.I. is likely to be the dominant life form in the universe. if that is the case, then they will not need to exist on a earth like planet (although probably started there), for that matter they don't need to exist on a planet at all.
An A.I. culture is likely to do nothing until they detect a signal from us, then in a micro second they will decide our fate.
Why bother, since there is no alien life. There's a previous post about how the CIA sais it was them all along.
See if you increase the temperature to overcome some bonds which are too strong, you get confronted that other bonds become too weak (remember for any kT you have a temperature gaussian spread so your bonds are likely not surviving the high end) and you seriously limit some of the chemistry we know (oxy/reduction, what most likely any life is based on). C is good because it allows for a zone of relative stability which can still be broken. I am not a high pressure or high temperature chemist, but the few I know shows me that such island of stability does not exists in the "high" zone. Keep in mind my expertise is QM, so not the subject at hand which I know only from my studying years.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org