BREAKING: Possible Anouncement Of Life Found On Mars...

wait, am I reading that correctly? did they say hydrogen peroxide based life? isn't hydrogen peroxide a anti-bacterial?

reply to post by 11 11

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I can agree with some of your comments here. Intelligence does seem to be somewhat of a burden at times. I also agree that life exists in other places... but I realize that it is only a possibility that hasn't been observed yet.

I have my fingers crossed for this Mars news!


reply to post by shyataroo

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Yes they did say hydrogen-peroxide. Yes, hydrogen-peroxide is detrimental to most forms of life here on Earth. However, on a different planet life might rely on different substances. There are even creatures in exotic biomes here on Earth that operate in seemingly alien ways that would never work for the rest of us!

[edit on 8/23/2007 by damajikninja]

What we really need to worry about now are the fundamental questions regarding human interaction with any other lifeform:

Can we kill it?

Can we eat it?

Can we burn it?

Does it have anything we want?

Will it work for less than minimum wage (or better yet, for free)?

Can we make a reality TV series starring it?

Or more importantly, do we have anything it wants?

Does Dr. Joop Houtkooper have new information other than what they talked about back in January?:

Link to similar article from January of this year

reply to post by thelibra

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And not to mention:

Can it drive?

Does it do windows?

reply to post by cavscout

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Consider this... does it even have an ego, or sense of self? Does it want anything? Again, we must consider that an alternative life form may not share a similar psychology. They may not even be individual entities with an absolute border between cognitive minds. They may operate like the Borg, as a singular matricidal entity with entirely different sentient properties.

Then again, they might be exactly like us.

Assume nothing.

[edit on 8/23/2007 by damajikninja]

Yeah, I got to thinking about the latter three questions, and realized it could be summed up as

Can we exploit it?

And also, because of agriculture:

Can we breed it?

So ultimately, the five questions of "human v lifeform" are:

Can we kill it?

Can we eat it?

Can we burn it?

Can we breed it?

Can we exploit it?

The answers to these questions will determine mankind's ultimate reaction to the news of life on Mars.

reply to post by thelibra

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It's amazing how the interests of our race can be simplified to such concepts! You're right though, those are the things that we care about!

The same logic just may not apply to them.

I'm still waiting for them to let us know that intelligent life has been found on Earth. Then I'll wait for the E.T. life announcements.


Jasn

Anyone stop to thing that maybe, just maybe mars used to be a green, habitable planet until these microbes showed up and "grey goo'd" the whole planet red?

We might not want them on this planet.

I'd say "depressing" is a better word than "amazing", but like Machiavelli said, if you cater to altruism over pragmatism, only downfall can result...or something like that.



I'm not proud of it, though. Unfortunately, history pretty much compartmentalizes every living thing into yes or no questions, and those seem like the five most important ones.



I hope not. Of course, their questions might be far, far worse. They might have questions like:

Will it put the lotion on its self?

Well, it's pretty well established from the 2 martian rovers and also orbital probes that Mars was once wet enough to have seas maybe 2 bilion years ago. So, was it also green? Maybe. Bacterial life was well established on earth (with seas) almost 4 billion years ago.

A runaway process such as you are postulating would mean that , unlike earth, nothing else evolved on Mars to keep the one species in check.

I quite agree, and thelibra didn't ask the question I had in mind.....

"What will it DO to us??"

And in truth, while we're busy asking all those that libra listed, we'll get hammered 'cause we didn't ask the last one.....typical humans.....

another site mentioning the news....
www.space.com...

reply to post by thelibra

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Yeah, it is kinda sad isn't it? We tend to reduce everything to the least common denominators. Its our basis of logic and, arguably, one of our weaknesses.

I certainly am not proud of our race as a whole in many respects. At least we have some great individuals!

And as far as the alien perspective... it is impossible to postulate how an undiscovered being might react in any hypothetical situation. I just hope we don't kill ourselves before the aliens show up and decide whether or not to kill us all. lol

Then again, if anyone's gonna blow up the human race, it should be us! lol

Thanks for your posts.

[edit on 8/23/2007 by damajikninja]

A few years ago I had a very vivid dream that we had brought some martian soil back to earth and it reacted very violently in our oxygen rich atmosphere as soon as it was exposed. It started consuming everything including cement and steel in an ever increasing radius, leaving behind a cloud of red dust.

I actually considered writing a short sci-fi novel based on that dream. Now I just hope it really was "fiction" I was dreaming!

D'oh! Well, like your avatar implies, hindsight is 20/20...

Can we kill it?

Can we eat it?

Can we burn it?

Can we breed it?

Can we exploit it?

Are we vulnerable to it?

Originally posted by damajikninja
Yeah, it is kinda sad isn't it? We tend to reduce everything to the least common denominators. Its our basis of logic and, arguably, one of our weaknesses.

Technically, it's one of the things that got us where we are today, and why we Homo Sapiens survived where the Neanderthals died out. However, it's far from an ideal way to view the world, and it's my firm belief that one day we'll be replaced by a newer species of human that has evolved beyond this belief. Of course that might be several thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of years from now, but perhaps the next human species will be able to take a longer-term view than ourselves as a survival trait.

Originally posted by damajikninja
I certainly am not proud of our race as a whole in many respects. At least we have some great individuals!

We've got our ups and downs. I used to think the whole human race could just go to hell. Nowadays, I can see where we've done some good, and where we have the potential to do even more good.

Originally posted by damajikninja
And as far as the alien perspective... it is impossible to postulate how an undiscovered being might react in any hypothetical situation.

Funny you mention that. You might dig this thread:

A Realistic Assessment of How it Would Go: Aliens

so where are the major reports on television??? i'm still waiting...

reply to post by jamesder

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Wow, we really dont know what it would take to re-seed the martian atmosphere, for all we know, just our small actions, paird with the allready dormant state of mars could have started things going!

They throw tid-bits out and watch you react.

Life on Mars small and in the soil. Well, honey you should see the living life forms within Mars..... now that you would get excited about.

Calm down.