DailyDirt: Searching For Life Forms
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Discovering an alien life form would be quite an achievement, but we've been burned before by over-eager press releases that claimed to find evidence of life from beyond our planet. NASA might be more careful about making any announcements about life based on peculiar and potentially extra-terrestrial-based life, but NASA seemed to have forgotten about the extraordinary claims over ALH84001. Overall, though, it's probably good that NASA hasn't given up on searching for aliens, so here are a few links on looking for life from outer space.- Recently, some UK scientists claimed to find evidence of alien life in the Earth's upper atmosphere, suggesting that alien life is just raining down from space all the time. The concept of panspermia is interesting, but the evidence for it isn't quite convincing yet. [url]
- There are a bunch of ways to look for aliens, such as a search for extraterrestrial technology (SETT) to find non-natural shapes in space. Looking for alien crop circles on exoplanets ain't easy, though. [url]
- Some astronomers are looking for evidence of Dyson Spheres -- a massive array solar panels that advanced alien civilizations might use for sustaining enormous energy needs. This search is actually being funded by a grant from the Templeton Foundation. [url]
- NASA's Curiosity rover hasn't detected much methane in the Martian atmosphere, so the odds of finding familiar living organisms seems a bit more distant. Mars was most likely suitable for Earth-like life at some point, but it's looking pretty dead right now. [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: alh84001, aliens, astrobiology, biology, curiosity, dyson sphere, et, extraterrestrial, life, mars, nasa, seti, sett, templeton foundation
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Response to: Pixelation on Sep 24th, 2013 @ 6:01pm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Response to: Pixelation on Sep 24th, 2013 @ 6:01pm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Life maybe, but intelligent life? Doubtful.
However, whenever I think about the sheer number of unknowable variables potentially involved in the existence of an advanced civilization, the prospect seems mind boggling, and the endeavor like maybe a waste of time.
What is their life-cycle like?
What intervals of time do they relate?
Why do we suppose their energy needs would be comparable to our own?
What benefit would they get from contacting us?
What detriment might they suffer for contacting us?
What detriment might we suffer if they contact us? Might they consider this?
I know that the purpose of science is to seek out answers to these questions, but they just feel beyond the scope of our capacity at the moment. I just don't know that we have any credible evidence for the conditions of the possible existence of extraterrestrial life. At what point is the search for intelligent life like the search for ghosts?
The article on Dyson spheres sums it up nicely... the search for intelligent extra-terrestrial civilization involves too much wild speculation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Life maybe, but intelligent life? Doubtful.
Intelligence maybe sparse, including this planet.
Waste of time? Compared to what ... Rape and pillage? Pollute the planet? Or other generally mischievous behaviors
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Life maybe, but intelligent life? Doubtful.
Finding evidence of intelligent alien life is not the same as contacting them. As our communications are limited by the speed of light, it would be years before could contact them (if we thought that would be a good idea). What we see might also make us decide we need to put effort into not being detected by them. Best to know what's out there either way. Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Intelligent Life
[ link to this | view in chronology ]