PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
did someone promise you that you could recognize it?......
Bringing the alien life debate back to reality
- Thread starter Cypress
- Start date
did someone promise you that you could recognize it?......
Dutch Uncle
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No. Did someone promise you that you couldn't, Pmp? Even your desire to be evil doesn't prevent you from knowing God gave mankind a brain with the expectation all people would use it. The entire Genesis story of the Tree of Knowledge is not about sin, but mankind's exit from the bliss of ignorance into the freedom and pain of knowledge. The Powers That Be of 325BC chose the common story for you, the victim of asking too many fucking questions. To help themselves, of course. Those in control want to maintain it by shaping the fears of the population including angry dumbasses like yourself. LOL
Trumpers. Can't love'em and can't kill'em.
Examples of a more likely Garden of Eden scenario:
You're a conspiracy theorist, here's the true story that the fearmongers don't want you to see:
The True Adam and Eve Story
God created the Garden and put the Tree of Knowledge in the middle. Then he created all the animals to live in the Garden along with humans. God let the humans have dominion over the Garden but warned that the Tree of Knowledge would make them forever unhappy if they ate from it. Eating from it would make them self-aware, become overly curious and be forever unhappy.
Adam was a bit of a dumbass and meekly complied, but Eve was a take-charge kinda gal and was already curious. Eventually she was curious enough to taste from the Tree of Knowledge. Awareness flooded through her like a wave. It both saddened her and gladdened her. Wanting to share this with Adam, she offered him a taste too. Adam, being a bit of a dumbass, would eat anything Eve gave. He, too, became self-aware.
God didn't throw Adam and Eve out of the Garden, they left like fledgling birds leaving a nest. God smiled.
We know how to recognize neutrinos and the charm quark. I'm pretty sure we could figure out how to recognize self replicating biological life.
A million light years?
All we have to do is go to Titan to see if methane lakes can host biological life.
Methane is a terrible solvent compared to water, and liquid methane only exists at subfreezing temperature, when the chemical kinetics to support metabolism would almost certainly be extremely unlikely.
Saint Guinefort
Verified User
From THIS ARTICLE:
(Emphasis added).
You're right that the temp is pretty low (95K = -178C) which would yield pretty slow reaction rates. The authors of the article propose the use of catalysts to facilitate these reactions:
The authors also discuss the problems related to solubility of organics in liquid methane but they also propose a mechanism utilizing large surface area for a given volume for the life forms that could still make use of "sparse solubility" as they say.
Dutch Uncle
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A million light years?
All we have to do is go to Titan to see if methane lakes can host biological life.
Methane is a terrible solvent compared to water, and liquid methane only exists at subfreezing temperature, when the chemical kinetics to support metabolism would almost certainly be extremely unlikely.
A million light years is about halfway to Andromeda. In between is a whole lot of nuthing. Even the Magellanic Clouds are less than 210K miles from the Milky Way galaxy.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/andromeda-milky-way-galaxy-black-hole-collision-simulation
BartenderElite
Verified User
This is sort of an odd response.
I don't want to assume anything. Is your contention that in the vastness of the universe, where there are trillions of stars and even more planets - the only life anywhere is on earth?
Dutch Uncle
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A million light years?
All we have to do is go to Titan to see if methane lakes can host biological life.
Methane is a terrible solvent compared to water, and liquid methane only exists at subfreezing temperature, when the chemical kinetics to support metabolism would almost certainly be extremely unlikely.
The main differences between a methane lake on Titan or Europa and on Earth is both the time and space elements...neither of which adequately explain "the spark of life".
I think Titan is super cool, but the thought that methane could act as a medium for life is pretty implausible.
Liquid methane isn't polar like the water molecule, rendering it pretty ineffective at dissolving the salts and ions neccessary for metabolism and cell function. And because methane is not polar, it can only exist as a liquid at extreme subfreezing temperature, making chemical reactions too slow to support any life we conceivably would recognize.
I thought the million light year comment was pretty funny to, given that the Milky Way is only about 100k light years across it's longest dimension.
Dutch Uncle
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Not a biochemist, nor do I have a degree of one to fake...at the moment, but carbon seems to be the best candidate with methane being a back up...although I don't know if higher life forms could evolve in such a climate/medium even given a few billion years.
Dutch Uncle
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Trump Dummy has a limited amount of time to do his drive-by posting before he has more important things to do. LOL
Yesterday, 23 posts in 31 minutes. Last Saturday, 14 posts in 42 minutes* and the previous Monday, 84 posts from 0932 for the next five hours.
BTW, A sphere passing through Flatland.
*big words slow him down.
I appreciate the candor and for not faking a biogeochem degree.
I'm not a biochemist either, I just read a lot about the planetary sciences because a lifetime of Star Trek!
Titan is interesting enough as a planetary body to send some more landing craft, irrespective of methane's capacity to be a medium for life.
Saint Guinefort
Verified User
Methane contains carbon. The idea is methane as the "solvent" (taking the place of water like we use here on earth). That's why there's the discussion of extremely low temperatures and extremely high pressures as well as the solubility of other compounds in the liquid methane.
The headline is misleading but:
https://autos.yahoo.com/scientists-figured-create-wormholes-transportation-193000684.html
Dutch Uncle
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Notice that even Perry the Putz didn't go that far like anymouse. LOL
Cool video. I remember the mission but hadn't seen the video.
NASA has a few launches on the schedule: https://www.nasa.gov/launchschedule/
I thought there was another one soon to arrive at Jupiter or Saturn but didn't see it.
Saint Guinefort
Verified User
That is my contention. Prove me wrong snowflake.
Normally it is not required to "prove a negative" since most of the time that is impossible. One cannot prove there is "no life in the universe except on earth". All of these discussions are really little more than playing the odds.
Life is pretty normal regular "jive old" chemistry. We find a lot of the organic molecules we see on earth also in meteorites. So it stands to reason that, given the entire size of the universe, the utter vastness of it, and the fact that the chemistry is pretty straightforward that life probably exists in many places.
Dutch Uncle
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Your own article says even if this technology is ever feasible, it still won't allow faster than light travel:
...and it'll be an exciting day IF mankind ever finds it.
Before I leap to the conclusion that life is inevitable in the presence of liquid water, I'd like to see evidence that life emerged more than once in four billion years on earth.
Once in four billion years almost sounds like a fluke or an extremely rare occurrence to me.
In the last decade we have become aware of a vast deep biosphere in the Earth's crust, miles below the surface. I think it would be one of the great scientific discoveries of the century to find life forms there which have a separate genetic legacy from all the known life that descended from LUCA.