Scientist finds evidence of extraterrestrial life; no one cares

[unalisaa]

So, apparently, some guy found an alien (http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/nasascientistfindsevidenceofalienlife) and published his findings in a scientific journal (http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html).
The next day, the media was going crazy over Charlie Sheen.
I was talking to a friend about this, and the subject of why this should matter all that much came up. If is is a fossil, and the originating life form is so far away that we fail to comprehend it, does it matter? Is it reasonable to expect people to be fascinated by what looks like a sausage with strings attached; a sausage most people will never have the chance to see in person?

[ElementMK]

Most people won't care. As you'll notice in the comments of that news article, people are more concerned about bashing Obama / The Tea Party and explaining that Jesus Saves / this is irrefutable proof that God is Dead.

However, this is very significant. I care, and people who can stop typing vitriolic political BS for a few minutes will care. If it turns out to be true, it will give us answer to one of the greatest questions in astronomy and science: Is Earth alone?

I'll put it in my collection of fantastic scientific discoveries, probably between Darwin and Garagin. Curie can come, too.

[Oaktree]

This is certainly significant. I always believed that there were other planets out there with life, but having strong evidence of it is a great step forward in discovering other life out there in the universe. And it is certainly important, regardless of the relative simplicity of the organism. The most mysterious part of life seems to be its means of origination, so for there to be even a simple life form means that chemical reactions were able to proceed in just the right way on some other planet. I think it would be fascinating to see if extraterrestrial organisms use the same nucleic and amino acids that life on Earth uses, though I doubt that there will be much (if any) genetic material/protein found in what is essentially fossilized bacteria.

[Tempscire]

It's not a confirmed finding and such claims have been made before. I'll save my excitement for further examination of the specimen. As this article (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/has-life-been-found-in-a-meteorite/) notes as well, that journal has published some "shaky" articles in the past and is now going out of business. (Apropos of nothing, they also have the least professional-looking website for a scholarly journal I've ever seen.)

And it has been reported by Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/05/exclusive-nasa-scientists-claims-evidence-alien-life-meteorite/).

[unalisaa]

That is an excellent point, and I certainly did not mean to suggest that people should rejoice to death. It's still an interesting hypothetical question, though.
I once read this timeline somewhere which theorised what would happen if we discovered alien life:
1. Everyone goes crazy. The media devote all their space to the new discovery.
2. A few religions pop up.
3. People get used to the idea.
4. The media lose interest.
5. The general public goes about its business as usual.
6. Only scientists, a few select nerds, and followers of the aforementioned religions care anymore until something new happens.

Before we meet a species we can communicate with on a sophisticated level*, extraterrestrial life just won't affect anyone enough to make a big change in the way we think about ourselves as a species, culture, and inhabitants of anything but our own personal microcosm.

*Something I consider highly unlikely. Look at the difficulty with which humans of different cultures communicate, and magnify that by several million. Even if both parties send their most flexible, well-trained individuals, it would take a while to get used to one another. On top of that, nothing guarantees that we perceive the universe in an even remotely similar way.

[Tempscire]

2. A few religions pop up.
I would include a phase in which a few religious adherents commit suicide for whatever reason in reaction. :|

[Rawra]

The NWO is preparing us for the day of disclosure. Extraterrestrial life will let themselves be known. They will come in peace but the NWO powers that be will tell us they want to destroy us. The NWO individuals do not want to lose their power over this planet. Their will be a battle and there are huge underground cities where the NWO and elite will hide until its over.

This has made my day.

[kattenijin]

I guess I'm part of the ho-hum group. We've known about fossilized bacteria in meteors for decades now; this isn't news. Wake me when an alien spaceship with a functioning stardrive is in orbit, then we'll talk.

As for the NWO, its just a front for the OWO. Seriously, you think the WO is going to change without the deaths of 3% of the planet?

[meriel]

The NWO is preparing us for the day of disclosure. Extraterrestrial life will let themselves be known. They will come in peace but the NWO powers that be will tell us they want to destroy us. The NWO individuals do not want to lose their power over this planet. Their will be a battle and there are huge underground cities where the NWO and elite will hide until its over.
Sounds like half decent sci-fi movie.
I'd watch it.

[simsample]

So, apparently, some guy found an alien (http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/nasascientistfindsevidenceofalienlife) and published his findings in a scientific journal (http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html).
The next day, the media was going crazy over Charlie Sheen.
The two are linked, I think. The image of a fossilised alien made us recognise Charlie Sheen as being something really special!

But, we've been through this before- bookmakers even paid out on bets for finding alien life. And then they found out it was a mistake.

[Phoeberg]

You'd think it would have been a bigger story, if only for the human interest nature of it.

[Mistermook]

Sheen probably fossilizes bacteria in his basement and shoots it into outer space using only a pair of AA batteries and a copy of Hustler.

A bigger story? Nobody's bigger than Charlie Sheen! Nobody!

[Sunbee]

Well, I was pretty excited--but I'm a scientist's kid and a science fiction buff. On the other hand, it hasn't been confirmed by anyone else yet, so this is still very, very early in the process, and there have been contamination errors with these sorts of things before. The things reported and found not to be so in the past have been bacterial-type life forms or viral-type pseudo-life. This new one's a bacterial-type. Then there's also the question of could this specimen have terrestrial origins anyway?

Oh yeah, who's Charlie Sheen, and why should I care?

[ElementMK]

This is the part where I pout. (http://io9.com/#!5777919/no-alien-life-was-not-discovered-this-weekend)

[WayBack]

Fake or real, I'm one of those who didn't really care for the news. I'm a strong believer in extraterrestrial life so I just thought "Hmm, no big surprise." I'll be more interested once there will be a good quality photo or a video of a living creature from another planet. The idea of life in the outer space doesn't bother me, unless they would want to go through my window in the night to steal my liver :lol:

[simsample]

This is the part where I pout. (http://io9.com/#!5777919/no-alien-life-was-not-discovered-this-weekend)

:lol: Darn it! More Charlie Sheen for us, then!

[tizerist]

I think we can pretty much get used to the fact that there are alien lifeforms out there now. Every modern discovery has pointed to it.
Okay these bacterium that we're searching for are not that exactly exciting to look at, but they are the answer to The Biggest Question Of All.

I personally believe that life is common everywhere, given recent findings especially.
How does it begin? My personal theory is simply this: the right combination of warmth and chemicals in the same place at the same time, perhaps triggered by a bolt of lightning.
After all, where does fire come from? It wasn't there a minute ago! Its the same answer, a combination of elements all together, plus the spark.
And viola. Its there. Same with life.

[Oaktree]

This is the part where I pout. (http://io9.com/#!5777919/no-alien-life-was-not-discovered-this-weekend)

PZ Meyers is awesome. :D

Thanks for linking that; I didn't really spend the time to look through the original article, so that article catches things I totally missed.


I personally believe that life is common everywhere, given recent findings especially.
How does it begin? My personal theory is simply this: the right combination of warmth and chemicals in the same place at the same time, perhaps triggered by a bolt of lightning.
After all, where does fire come from? It wasn't there a minute ago! Its the same answer, a combination of elements all together, plus the spark.
And viola. Its there. Same with life.

You can get rather simple molecules that way, but the structures of proteins and DNA are a little too complex to simply come into existence at the strike of lightning. Proteins require a certain type of solvent to have a functional shape and they often require post-translational modifications. It's certainly possible that the earliest proteins were very simple ones. Actually, I'm inclined to think that peptides (essentially, tiny proteins) were the earliest of the compounds involved in life, so there would be fewer post-translational modifications with the trade-off being that the functions are generally simpler. Having peptides form on their own is quite a different matter from building up DNA that codes for the production of proteins, though. It would have taken a lot of trial and error and a long stretch of time to come to a complex, self-replicating system.

[tizerist]

You can get rather simple molecules that way, but the structures of proteins and DNA are a little too complex to simply come into existence at the strike of lightning.

Perhaps not lightning exactly, maybe I should have said a trigger.
I'm just using a basic example. Some sort of chemical reaction to spark it off. Warm water is a major player here also...

[Mistermook]

It would have taken a lot of trial and error and a long stretch of time to come to a complex, self-replicating system.

Thankfully the universe is billions of years old and there's plenty of real estate. Whatever it takes, it obviously has taken place at least once, and there's an awful lot of time and places available for it to have happened elsewhere.

Also, Charlie Sheen. If there is Charlie Sheen, there must be alien life in the universe.

[Oaktree]

Thankfully the universe is billions of years old and there's plenty of real estate. Whatever it takes, it obviously has taken place at least once, and there's an awful lot of time and places available for it to have happened elsewhere.

I agree. Billions of years is a lot of time and then some. And billions of billions of solar systems is a lot of room for trial and error. Particularly if, as we are now considering, it is possible for life to appear in multiple places within a solar system, as we expect may be the case with some of Jupiter's moons in our own solar system.

[Sunbee]

Of course, life is one thing. Intelligent life is an entirely different. I'm fairly well convinced that there isn't any near us, or that there is no possibility of ftl, one or the other. Our radio sphere should be out past 100 ly by now, and really, if you were an alien out there, and you saw WWI and II, wouldn't you be concerned? I'd think we ought to either get a colonialism type response, or an exterminate them before they can hurt us, or something. We're not exactly the most thoughtful and kind species imaginable. Given our history, I wouldn't want us as a neighbor.
Also, presumably if there were anyone at our level of advancement or greater in our region, the SETI folk would be getting some results. Alien sit-coms or soaps, at the very least!

[thislookskindacool]

Aliens are totally real; the idea that earth is the only planet with life on it is silly, that being said almost all evidence of extraterrestrial life has been proven to be a deliberate hoax or to have a logical explanation. For example there is a sleeping disorder where you wake up during rem sleep, your body is paralyzed and you experience hallucinations, fear and a feeling like someone is in the room with you. Almost everyone has herd an alien abduction story which creates a false memory. I don’t see why aliens would travel to earth unless it’s like one of those renaissance fair things, so they can see first hand what primitive (most likely for them if they have the ability to travel from other galaxies) life is like.....

[Tempscire]

Our radio sphere should be out past 100 ly by now, and really, if you were an alien out there, and you saw WWI and II, wouldn't you be concerned?
Who knows how an alien would feel? :P Or even what modes of communication they might use-- a species that doesn't communicate with sight and sound wouldn't get much out of those broadcasts, for example. Alternately, they could be intelligent but only developed to a level of technology circa our 17th century. Maybe they know and just don't care at all.

Or for all we know they're waiting for us to "grow up" a little more with our war-making to challenge us to a duel. Or their leaders, fearing a panic with the confirmation of extraplanetary life, have been keeping it on the down-low, the way some conspiracy theorists on Earth believe is being done now.

My point only being that it's impossible to guess at motivations for species that stand a very real chance of being completely unlike us. All we know is we haven't knowingly communicated with any.

[Mistermook]

"Look at those guys! That's Charlie freakin' Sheen! How in the hell are we supposed to compete with that?"

"Nah, we'll come back when we stand a chance of impressing these guys."

[Black_Barook!]

Have you seen what's happing in my proverbial backyard!? As if I could care about extraterrestrial life when civil life might be reborn! :report:

[noobkiller138]

Seriously, communicating with sentient alien life would difficult, if not impossible. We would ahve no knowledge of each other's culture, language, or anything else. A greeting for them might look like them mooning us to us.

[ElementMK]

It would be difficult, sure, but I don't think it'd be impossible. For one, any sufficiently advanced alien race is probably familiar with using the electromagnetic spectrum as a way to communicate. It's a simple and effective no-brainer, because energy can travel through space, while primitive forms of communication (like yelling at the top of your lungs) cannot. Even if they used quantum entanglement or something to communicate now, they likely used radio or other waves at some point in their development. If those aliens are looking for other aliens (i.e. humans), they'll probably realize this and continue to send out and receive radio transmissions for that purpose alone. In fact, SETI is building radio towers that broadcast our greetings explicitly because our society is moving to more efficient forms of communication.

When it comes to actually communicating, there will always be some missteps. Humans are usually kind enough to understand these sorts of things. For example, when one greets another in Japan, there's a certain code to bowing that differs depending on the relationship two people have. Foreigners don't always know this, but the Japanese won't hate you because "YOU BOWED LOWER THAN ME YOU ASSHOLE". Likewise, humans and aliens will probably be courteous in their own offensive ways on first contact, but we'll eventually learn to figure each other out. Of course, there has to be a limit, or else we'll have a case of Mars Attacks!, where killing humans is a gesture of "friendship".

And that's all I have to say about that.

[Sunbee]

There's an older science fiction story called Omnilingual which uses the periodic table of the elements in order to decode alien writing. I figure we'd start with scientific exchanges, because that gives us something universal. A hydrogen atom by any other name still has the same properties.

[SuicidiaParasidia]

Seriously, communicating with sentient alien life would difficult, if not impossible. We would ahve no knowledge of each other's culture, language, or anything else. A greeting for them might look like them mooning us to us.

and that is assuming that neither of us would accidentally wipe each other out via viruses/bacteria/germs....

[Tempscire]

and that is assuming that neither of us would accidentally wipe each other out via viruses/bacteria/germs....
I read a neat scifi one time hinged on that. The aliens didn't live within an atmosphere and communicated through chemical and biological signals (and colors). When they tried finding life in the universe, their message came in the form of a virus that infected and killed around 90% of humanity (not a deliberate effect-- they really were just communicating as they best knew how to discover if other life existed). Not a spoiler because real point of the novel is about humanity coping with this devastation and wrestling with idea of whether they should contact the aliens. [The Bridge by Janine Ellen Young if anyone's interested]

Just think...what if aliens already had tried to contact us and we just had no way of receiving or notice the message? (Or maybe that was the real cause of the Bubonic Plague...;)) Perhaps some society that's long gone extinct was sending out messages that reached us in our Middle Ages and we totally missed our chance to receive them. :(

[edinfresno]

Actually, laying the foundations of extraterrestrial communication wouldn't be difficult at all. It could all be started with base numbers, simple as that. Regardless of what base system an alien race might use (base 10, base 8, base12, whatever) it all starts with the number one which is the same everywhere in the universe.

If an extraterrestrial race is advanced enough to have interstellar flight or, at the very least, high speed communication then they're surely going to know what the number one is! Sheesh! Why do people always make things like this so dang difficult? Simplicity is the rule!

[pinketamine]

Actually, laying the foundations of extraterrestrial communication wouldn't be difficult at all. It could all be started with base numbers, simple as that. Regardless of what base system an alien race might use (base 10, base 8, base12, whatever) it all starts with the number one which is the same everywhere in the universe.


Exactly HOW do you know this? What makes you think that any living species in the universe has the same numbering system or even... numbers at all?

[unalisaa]

Exactly HOW do you know this? What makes you think that any living species in the universe has the same numbering system or even... numbers at all?
Because if they are sufficiently advanced, they must use maths somehow. A species cannot advance to the point of space travel without some sort of mathematics. It may not be shaped like our maths or even number based, but it must be there.
I read somewhere once that if one should encounter an alien, the quickest way to prove the intelligence of the human species was to draw the following:

. : :. :: ::. ::: :::. :::: ::::. :::::
1-2-3-4--5--6--7--8---9---10


Thus 1) explaining that we grasp numbers 2) teaching them our numerals and 3) explaining that we like base 10.

[pinketamine]

Oh I see... what I understood is that they would use our numbering system (1,2,3,4,5...) but I think they might have totally different numbering systems, to the point that probably we would not be able to understand them or they to understand us.
I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to numbers anyway, so I don't find them a good.. communicating system.

[Mistermook]

They still might not understand us, because there's all sorts of ways to sense data in the world beyond what we're biologically capable of, but if they can sense us depicting numbers and they're at all technological, then numbers are our best bet for communicating. Numbers don't change meanings. I can write 7 or seven or VII, and they're all the same thing. It's not like "person" which has an interpretive element, or "food." What is food to you and I won't be to aliens, but seven will always be seven, even if it's done in base 13 using a language that's composed solely of ultrasonic whistles.