NASA may have found evidence to support alien life exists?

[acd]

Did you actually read the article?
Do you have good reason to suggest NASA would release intentionally misleading information? Or that the media would hype this just so NASA could get funding? 'The liberal media and NASA are in cahoots /Rush Limbaugh

No one is saying this IS alien life... there is a lot of debate that will be going on about this...

 

[uuu]

SHHHHHHHHH! NASA needs funding.
Hype -> interest -> Support -> funding

WE NEED NEW SHUTTLES!

OK you win.
Just bring me along with you to Mars! interspectaculastronomiglobustellar journeys begin!

 

[Sloe Djinn]

Did you actually read the article?
Do you have good reason to suggest NASA would release fraudulent information? Or that the media would hype this just so NASA could get funding? 'The liberal media is in NASA's pockets!' /Rush Limbaugh

No one is saying this IS alien life... there is a lot of debate that will be going on about this...

I think she was joking.

 

[bickelz]

Right, as I said, they might just be unusual bits of rock, not fossils.

Ok, but that many "unusual" bits of rock that look exactly like fossilized bacteria. He found a lot of them supposedly. That just sounds silly considering how intricate the pictures looked.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that.

No, but some people are sounding like they are operating under the assumption that they could be from earth if the bacteria is earth like.

 

[acd]

I think she was joking.

So am I.
In fact. This whole thread is a practical joke because this never happened.
I created a website to fool you all into arguing/wise-cracking that this wasn't a potential for alien life.
You have passed the test.

 

[Galileo]

wow...very very cool!

 

[Sloe Djinn]

So am I.
In fact. This whole thread is a practical joke because this never happened.
I created a website to fool you all into arguing/wise-cracking that this wasn't a potential for alien life.
You have passed the test.

*Scratches head, backs out slowly and closes door*

 

[bickelz]

So am I.
In fact. This whole thread is a practical joke because this never happened.
I created a website to fool you all into arguing/wise-cracking that this wasn't a potential for alien life.
You have passed the test.

Troll, don't be a dick.

From the Toronto Sun (an actual paper)
http://www.torontosun.com/news/2011/03/06/17515861.html#/news/world/2011/03/06/pf-17515701.html

It was an actual study.

 

[TheLastMohican]

Ok, but that many "unusual" bits of rock that look exactly like fossilized bacteria. He found a lot of them supposedly. That just sounds silly considering how intricate the pictures looked.

Again, these shapes are not all that intricate. Far more complex forms (e.g., the human face) have stone lookalikes. They are unusual, but when you look at thousands of rocks, you eventually find such things.

No, but some people are sounding like they are operating under the assumption that they could be from earth if the bacteria is earth like.

I think the implication is that those bacteria may have spawned those common on Earth today.

 

[acd]

I can troll in my own dang thread if I please so long as others are going to troll it or annoy the bejeezus out of me with their off-topic posts!

Oh well. I'll probably post more relevent things to this thread once I read other reports of this by other scientists. Right now, I don't have anything else to say about it.

 

[bickelz]

Again, these shapes are not all that intricate. Far more complex forms (e.g., the human face) have stone lookalikes. They are unusual, but when you look at thousands of rocks, you eventually find such things.

Think about it in terms of probability here. You have to look at thousands of rocks to find one that looks like a face. How many rocks will you have to look at to find bacterial forms in them? How many of these rocks fall from outer space?

If these are fossils, they are probs like 1,000,000,000 years old so I wouldn't expect it to be a textbook rendition of some unknown bacteria.

 

[TheLastMohican]

Think about it in terms of probability here. You have to look at thousands of rocks to find one that looks like a face. How many rocks will you have to look at to find bacterial forms in them? How many of these rocks fall from outer space?

What point are you trying to make here? We don't know that any bacterial forms have been found, let alone what percentage of rocks contain them. What we do know is that most bacteria have relatively simple shapes, and that those shapes do occur naturally in rock. Keep in mind that we already saw what looked like bacteria back in 1996.

If these are fossils, they are probs like 1,000,000,000 years old so I wouldn't expect it to be a textbook rendition of some unknown bacteria.

Lacking experience with alien life forms, we don't know all the possibilities. But it's not unreasonable to think that even extraterrestrial bacteria would have fairly similar forms. There are numerous examples of convergent evolution on Earth; there appear to be certain structures toward which life gravitates.

 

[acd]

[MENTION=11]TheLastMohican[/MENTION] Do you have a link to where it is stated that the shapes found in the 1996 Martian meteorite were not once living organisms? I get the impression you are implying that it was debunked.

I've been looking for info on that, and everything I have read mentions that scientists are still debating this. I haven't seen anything conclusive on it. The most recent article I found was from May 2010 in the Washington Post..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002000.html

 

[uuu]

How many rocks will you have to look at to find bacterial forms in them? How many of these rocks fall from outer space?

And yet, how many rocks and planets are in space?
I do believe there's life, probably intelligent life, out there, but I'm not sure this is it. There's no reason to suppose that alien bacteria should look like this.
I don't really know how to interpret this. Certainly an interesting read.

 

[bickelz]

What point are you trying to make here?

What point were you trying to make when you mentioned rocks that look like faces? That it is possible that the "bacterial fossils" are just natural little grooves and erosion in the rock. Right?

Well, I was trying to state that this isn't entirely correct seeing that the guy found many of these "fossils".

You may be right in the end but I think you're ruling this whole thing out before the discussion has even started. Starting tomorrow, there will be arguments within the scientific community that go on for a few years.

We're arguing about the conclusion of this guy. He demonstrated that there were fossils of bacteria in the rock under the circumstances of his experiment. If there were flaws in the way it was set up or in the execution of something, that will discredit this. You have to disprove the method to disprove the theory.

 

[Cecilff2]

Erm, all he demonstrated was that there were what appeared to be fossils of bacteria in there. Not that there WERE fossils. That's why they're still going over it. They haven't confirmed that these are actually bacteria yet.

 

[myself]

IS IT SO HARD TO BELI

oops

is it so hard to believe that life is existing outside of this planet we find ourselves inhabiting?

i dont understand the need for more evidence

water is out there... life is sure to tag along

really interesting topic

why is there so much arguing? the tone is annoying. i'm ready to ban several of you.

assuming that we do confirm evidence of alien life, what are the implications for us?

do we only care if it threatens us?

 

[TheLastMohican]

[MENTION=11]TheLastMohican[/MENTION] Do you have a link to where it is stated that the shapes found in the 1996 Martian meteorite were not once living organisms?

No, that may never be determined. We just know that the shapes were much smaller than any life forms observed on earth

 

[Haven]

.

 

[~jet]

Yeah, while I fully expect to find bacteria like stuff in every corner of the universe we travel to, but this report has so many terrible holes in it... next!