Oh Hai Thar!

Erwin Rommel · Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:34 pm Post subject:

You make it sound like bacterial life is not a big deal. This is precisely the sort of life that scientists are searching for at the moment. Bacteria are really, really complicated organisms. They have DNA, and in many cases very complicated behavior. That sort of thing does not just miraculously fall from whole cloth. For something as complicated as bacterial life to arise independently on another planet is a big deal.

You also use the term "single-celled" to describe bacteria. While this is true on Earth, we have no idea what life on another planet could possibly look like.

Say we find some organism on another planet. At what point should we stop saying "Ho Hum interplanetary bacteria" and start saying "holy crap interesting life"? There is a whole range of life between bacteria and humans on Earth. (even setting up this "range" is very arrongant since we always place ourselves at the top)

Does it really come down to intelligence? I'm rather unsatisfied with that. Are we really arrogant enough to put ourselves in the position to judge such things?
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atatme · Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:37 pm Post subject:

Water is hardly the only thing that makes our planet unique. There is also a very good chance of there being microscopic aliens that we have no idea about, such as in the lakes of ethane or methane on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. "It has also been suggested that life may exist in a sub-surface ocean consisting of water and ammonia."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Titan

Bary is right, if we find life, even if its intelligent, there is (in my opinion) a greater chance that the aliens have very little in common with humans than the opposite

Stealth · Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:12 pm Post subject:

Whilst stating that we do not know the unknown is true, there can very well be something *completely* unexpected that is unlike Earth.

But we also must consider that the Universe is so massive that we simply must narrow our search. We did this by searching for what already is a 100% certainty because it exists.

Take a massive jar of M & Ms that are all Blue and there's one Red(Earth) one. Now say there's another Red one somewhere in the jar. It would be easier to look for the other red one rather than looking at all the blues ones. But wait! There's a purple one! But we didn't know there was a purple one in the jar, so how could we search for it?

With this in mind, Bacteria is the lowest possible life of all the lifeforms and if bacteria is found, then it simply means that life exists elsewhere, somewhere.

I do not dismiss that the Bacteria could be vastly different from our own, but we absolutely must search for what is already known rather than grasping at straws.

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I love Saturn and I love it's 60ish moons. Titan being one of my favorite. To understand other solar systems, we observed Saturn and Jupiter mainly due to their size.

With Jupiter's 4 moons (and a shit ton of satellites), we can see that the closer the moon is to Jupiter, the more active it is, the hotter it was. And the farther away it was, the colder and more dead it was. We use this as a model to help search for planets and helps influence the idea of the "habitable zone."

Back to Titan, Titan is too far from the sun to support life on it's surface based on Earth-based conditions. However, the interior has a possibility to be near 75 degrees, which could allow life and allow water to take many forms.

In summation, Bacteria life hardly has to be proven. Here on Earth, it's already show huge signs of adaptability even without having the need to find it elsewhere. The sheer volume of bacteria tells me that it exists and finding it is just a matter of time and thus is not as important.

On a side note, we cannot even figure them out here, let alone on a rock billions of light years away.

On a second side note, we seek intelligence so that perhaps we can understand our universe even more. It's not that we feel that all should be under us. Though some may think that.
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BarytaQ · Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:13 pm Post subject:

I'd just like to reiterate. We. Don't. Know. Shit.
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Stealth · Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:35 pm Post subject:

Our absence of knowledge is irrelevant. We simply cannot search every planet.
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Vlad Piranha · Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 7:23 pm Post subject:

I personally hope we never truly master space travel. That'll give humans more incentive to stop raping the planet we already have.

RaidJTC · Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2011 2:58 pm Post subject:

I'd love to travel to another planet. The people who would be allowed to go would most likely be the engineers and scientists so it would be like our own Utopian planet for a while.

Stealth · Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2011 11:27 pm Post subject:

In all probability, if we could say, colonize Mars, it'd basically be like living in a desert with no possible hope for water.

If supplies don't get there, we all die.

But I'd say space travel and colonization would be two different ball games though.

If it's possible, We'll develop travel first and then colonize probably muuuuuuuuuch later. I'd say that if we did develop space travel, we could learn so much more about natural phenomenons. But until someone figures out how to *break* the light barrier, we're fucked.
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