Nasa may announce discover of life outside of earth Thursday

[Plotinus]

Tom nailed this one with his link above, I wasn't even surprised when they made the announcement after reading that.

I once had an argument with a friend who is going into neuroscience about the search for life. He was attempting to define chances for life as minuscule because conditions on Earth are so unusual. I pointed out that life could be found in many forms, and we have no idea what its building blocks might be, which he took to be a radical statement in opposition to scientific consensus.

So I'm both happy to be vindicated by this release, and also pretty shocked that he was right about there being a scientific consensus that life could only come in "Earth flavor." How could a community of intelligent people make such a naive assumption? I think all scientists should be required to study more of the history of science so that they stop closing off these fruitful avenues of inquiry preemptively.

 

[Carbon]

Even if you ascribe a very strict Earth-like criteria for finding life in other parts of the Universe, it is highly likely that there is other intelligent life out there somewhere. I doubt it's anything we'll ever know in our lives, but it's out there. There are just far too many galaxies with so many solar systems and planets for it not to be the case.

 

[crawdad]

im sure some life form looking at earth during the period of the huronian glaciation which lasted 300 million years would of said our planet looked lifeless. we know very little not only due to our short reach (eyes, arms, minds) but also since our entire species is but a fraction in time of the age of the cosmos and much happens over a length of time that dwarfs our collective consciousness.

i feel our reasoning or purpose (life itself, not just us) is a way for the universe to know itself, its that drive within all of us that wants to know "why".

 

[OO]

i went to mono lake this year, it was pretty lame.

i hear though that if you kayak to the island, it is awesome.

 

[SalamiCity]

Well they did find that planet 20 light years away, so it's not like it's imposible, do you really think we are the only life forms in the universe? haha.... Did they announce anything yet?

 

[vaporizer_man]

I will think of NASA's discovery whenever I use my Magic Flight LB, which takes me into outer space.