This is why we are not alone in this part of the Galaxy

Nice post. I get the feeling the next year or two will herald more amazing finds like these.

OK........i'm putting both my hands up. I'm up for a one way mission for mankind.

(providing they can get me there fast enough before i die!!)

Anyone else in?

[edit on 10-1-2010 by grantbeed]

reply to post by gortex


Has it been considered that sending messages out into deep space could be a bad idea?

I am sure if there are any space-faring life-forms out there able to pickup deep-space signals sent from Earth , they have already discovered Earth and opted not to make themselves known to the inhabitants of Earth on a large scale.

If by chance there are some ill mannered or aggressive life-form that does receive our deep-space signals we may have signed our own death certificates or enslavement

Who's to say.

I am 100% for sending messages into deep space. It's the best thing we could do.

I'm not happy with the way things are being run here on our planet. We could do with some outside help and advice.

If they are hostile, then they won't be any different from todays governments anyway.

Optical SETI picked up a signal just over a year ago from Gliese 581E.

Here's the link to out thread on it.

Be nice if the neighbours were trying to phone, nicer still if their existence pulled us together as a species.

-m0r

Why are we always constrained to think of the possibility of intelligent life in the universe that must be based on our templates?

Nothing can be farther from the truth. But scientists continue on this wild goose chase trying to find planets having the same or similar conditions as on Earth.

Why?

Hawking had warned that we should be careful if we ever happen upon extraterrestrial life, because alien life may not have DNA like ours at all. What we normally think of as 'life' is based on chains of carbon atoms, with a few other atoms, such as nitrogen or phosphorous. Alien life most likely could have some other chemical basis, such as silicon.

Other prominent scientists have warned that we humans may be blinded by our familiarity with carbon and Earth-like conditions. In other words, what we’re looking for may not even lie in our version of a “sweet spot”. After all, even here on Earth, one species “sweet spot” is another species worst nightmare. In any case, it is not beyond the realm of feasibility that our first encounter with extraterrestrial life will not be a solely carbon-based fete.

Alternative biochemists speculate that there are several atoms and solvents that could potentially spawn life. Because carbon has worked for the conditions on Earth, we speculate that the same must be true throughout the universe. In reality, there are many elements that could potentially do the trick. Even counter-intuitive elements such as arsenic may be capable of supporting life under the right conditions.

Several other small life forms use arsenic to generate energy and facilitate growth. Chlorine and sulfur are also possible elemental replacements for carbon. Sulfur is capably of forming long-chain molecules like carbon. Some terrestrial bacteria have already been discovered to survive on sulfur rather than oxygen, by reducing sulfur to hydrogen sulfide.

How about the necessity of water?

Not necessarily. Ammonia, for example, has many of the same properties as water. An ammonia or ammonia-water mixture stays liquid at much colder temperatures than plain water. Such biochemistries may exist outside the conventional water-based "habitability zone". One example of such a location would be right here in our own solar system on Saturn's largest moon Titan.

Hydrogen fluoride methanol, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and formamide have all been suggested as suitable solvents that could theoretically support alternative biochemistry.

So then, why are we contstantly and consistantly applying our templates for life on other planetary systems?

> Life on other systems may not be carbon based.

> They may not need H2O (Water)as a basic ingredient for life. Water and carbon might be the very last things capable of supporting life in some extreme planetary conditions.

> They may not need to survive in equitable temperature or within the 'habitable zone' of their parent stars.

> They could also probably survive on a planet having much less or many more times the gravity obtaining on Earth.

Proxima Centauri, our nearest star system under our very nose just 4.2 Light Years away, could be teeming with advanced life, but we'll perhaps never discover it as what we're looking for is the possibility of life under our conditions!

Let's think out of the box. There are trillions of planetary systems out there and most may have life that we've never dreamed of or can even comprehend!



www.dailygalaxy.com...

interesting the nearest star is an early star (vega) its solar system if it has one may contain life at the early stages !

our own earth was closer to the sun as there is a calender solstice like stone henge in South America Tiwanaku claimed by scientist that the ruins of a civilization where this solstice calender is

www.world-mysteries.com...

when scientist made the alignments it was way off target

when the scientist had recalculated it to 17 thousand+/- years it was then right on target as the earth was closer to the sun (Note the egypt pyramids are claimed less than 4 thousand years old so they might still be on target to the stars as Tiwanaku is 4 times older is not)

www.atlantisbolivia.org...


please check out the video that is on the world-mysteries.com ! tiwanaku ruins we humans have only started creating some of those structures since the late 19 century. Yet these were claimed by scientist to have been made at the least 17 thousand years ago! nice little touch of the close encounters of the 3rd kind music in it it a must see amazing

also check out (the mysterious origins of man ) video with host Charles Heston it tell's about the solstice calender (sun gate) of tiwanaku

you can get this on youtube google video or the veoh website

a must for ATS fans


my question ? is this if the above is true about the calender and earth was closer! to the sun then Mercury would of turn to a glowing hot mass and the moon was closer to orbit ( reaching for that one ) but then again it would prove that (have to say this) That MARS ! Could of sustain life ! water and breathable atmospherelife could of been on the planet Mars to a intelligent level ! and its possible! that Venus ! may create life as its backing away from the Sun(star)

I call it planet skipping ! could it be possible ! we and the animal kingdom came from mars! >? the thought of it is endless ! so Venus is next in line to live on in the far away future!

Ive seen pics on the internet from russian probes that landed on Venus and it look alot like Mars surface (where the soviet probe landed) with a Green Atmosphere and clouds!

could those planets around those star's that was discoverd to have them sustain life ? with the right calculate and -/+ of atmosphere & right elements and to use our solar system as a pattern ! yeah it seems possible

thanks for reading and please i do not need to be insulted with typo's
im not a grammer major if i was one i would of been a writer!

Wolfenz plz reply

[edit on 11-1-2010 by Wolfenz]

reply to post by metalholic


I disagree. The B-2 looks a lot like the Ho IX which was designed by the Horten brothers. So it's really the Germans who developed the flying wing design. Now think of Operation Paperclip and connect the dots.

IMO most UFO sightings are really secret military aircraft.

reply to post by OrionHunterX


Earth-like planets just increase the odds of finding life. They don't discard finds of planets that don't support life as we know it.
We also can't check if the planets we find have any life on them or not so it doesn't really matter anyway.

Originally posted by Misoir
I wonder why just recently our governments have begun to put extensive search into Earth like planets.

Technological advancement = better equipment = more chances of finding anything.
One major advancement in this area is the Kepler Mission which launched the Kepler space telescope last year. It's obvious that we are gonna find more and more of these planets in the future.

[edit on 11/1/2010 by DGFenrir]

reply to post by Misoir


Excellent question...

Originally posted by gortex

Its outermost planet Gliese 581 d orbits just inside of the habitable zone of its star

[edit on 10-1-2010 by gortex]

Who's to say that what is habitable to us humans is, under the same conditions, habitable to extraterrestrials?

[edit on 11-1-2010 by Piché]

[edit on 11-1-2010 by Piché]

[edit on 11-1-2010 by Piché]

Originally posted by m0r1arty
Optical SETI picked up a signal just over a year ago from Gliese 581E.

Here's the link to out thread on it.

I never saw anything about that!

One of the few cases where I'd say the relative lack of info around & nothing in the way of news (good or bad) 1 year on, speaks volumes.

Looking forward to seeing what this fella finds...

The sucsessor to Hubble:

The James Webb Space Telescope _ JWST

Nice post - Me personally I think its stubborn to not think there is no other life on planets besides our own . Theres over what... 100 million galaxies? God knows how many solar systems that could be in those galaxies that could be very similar to ours, or even very different , but with the capability of supporting life.

I dont know if anyone has recently heard but apparently studys on Mars ,has shown that water might very well have existed on mars thousands of years ago. This was discovered from sediment rock patterns very similar to ones found on earth-which could mean that an ocean could of very well existed on mars all that time ago,which could possibly of supported life...who knows.

I hope to live to see the day when other life is discovered , wether intelligent or not.

reply to post by Mr.Hyde


Why is it a bad ideia? Because they're going to eat us? That's a very primative ideia to have about aliens.


The only creatures that would want to eat us, are the ones that are closer to an animal form, as in a primitive form, like lions and such, and those are not capable of space travell, and any creature that might live in space (assuming everything is possible) wouldn't enter a atmosphere anyway...

Any civilization that is capable of capturing our signals, AND understand them, AND traking us, AND travelling here, are provably so advanced that they already have a way of gathering food and resources, that they don't need us for anything.

Humans are egocentric in nature. We think we are the smartest, we think we are the only ones, we think we are the best, we think we are the most friendly and that everyone is out to get us, we think we are the best food in the galaxy...

Maybe they don't even care about us.

If they are capable of gathering the resources for space travel, like dark matter, or using black holes, they provably don't need our meat...

[edit on 12/1/10 by Tifozi]

reply to post by Tifozi


I think the point raised by Mr.Hyde is a valid one , we have no way of knowing who or what is out there .
We live on a planet that is rich in resources that may be desirable to a civilization for there own need , we cant assume that all ET life forms have our best interests at heart , just because they may have conquered space travel doesn't mean they would be enlightened nice guys .
In this case I believe caution is the best policy .

Originally posted by gortex
reply to post by Tifozi

 

I think the point raised by Mr.Hyde is a valid one , we have no way of knowing who or what is out there .
We live on a planet that is rich in resources that may be desirable to a civilization for there own need , we cant assume that all ET life forms have our best interests at heart , just because they may have conquered space travel doesn't mean they would be enlightened nice guys .
In this case I believe caution is the best policy .

But the point is, what do we have that they need to steal from us?

Food? If there is another civilization out there, it means that the Universe has more life than what many people think, thus, it also means there are a lot more planets with resources from which they can harvest without even going into conflict.

I honestly don't believe that an advanced civilization advanced enought to make space travel is made of hunters that are coming to get us. Hunting and all the "exotic food" thing is more of a cultural basis than a biological one. OUR civilization evolved in a way that we consider some things exotic and luxury, and thus we capture them and eat them.

But a cultural evolution isn't the same than a biological evolution, at all.

Besides, we are "children" in the Universe. 50 years ago we started to really learn about what is around us, we are so young in the Universe. Yet, we already control our food supply. We breed our own animals and plants to eat, without using nature itself. And we are also going into vegetarianism. It's very plausible, by comparisson, that a far advanced civilization has all of those grounds covered and developed.


Minerals and other matter? It's common knowledge that we share the basis with all the Universe when talking about matter. What can't be synthetic is available in huge ammounts all over the Universe/Galaxy. Being it gases, minerals, or any other matter.

We don't "own" anything that they can't take from a star, asteroid field, lifeless planet, or something else like that where they don't need to go into conflict with another civilization.

[edit on 12/1/10 by Tifozi]

reply to post by Tifozi


Look at our own history , the Romans , the Greeks ,the Spanish , the British Empire .
Conquest doesn't need a specific reason , there is no reason to believe that there aren't warlike species out there , maybe with there own planetary Empire .
Of course there may be no need worry , maybe we do live in a peaceful Galaxy but if a fleet of invading ETs were to show up it would be a bit late to wish we hadn't sent the invite .
Anyway its been done now so I guess whatever will be will be

Originally posted by gortex
If Extra Terrestrials have managed to produce faster than light travel then these systems are right on our doorstep.

Even at sub light we could reach these stars within a human lifetime because time slows for the traveller relative to his departure point.

The traveller just wouldn't be able to return home to the same time.

Even a trip to the edge of the visible universe should be viable within a human lifetime at sub light speeds.

I think its important to remember that the limitations of the scientific community have probably blocked as many routes to the discovery of extra terrestrial intelligence as they have opened.
Thier insistance that the most likely planets to contain life are in the "goldilocks zone" is quite frankly a staggering bit of arrogance. Until it is PROVEN that life cannot exist in any format outside this zone, then it ought to be a loose theory with no baring on our investigation of the universe.
We havent studied enough planets , in enough detail to say with ANY certainty what so ever, that life can be prevented from occuring on any of the planets in our solar system. We can say that if life does exist in some of the harsher environs on offer , then we probably wouldnt damned well recognise it as such, but further than that is assumption, and not scientificaly supportable in any regard.
For example, as far as I know, we have never been able to get a detailed sample from the surface of venus. Oh we can examine it from afar, and get a good idea of what the elements are that make it up, but we cannot perform detailed examination of the exact disposition of those components. Who knows what mad kind of microbes or even totaly new microscopic organisms might be down there? Answer ? No one can tell for sure.
Thats one of the most aggravating things about the scientific community ... it pronounces assumption as if it is fact, or as good as. The fact is , we should be suprised when a planet has NO life of any sort on it whatsoever, rather than being overwhelmed and suprised when we find find it flourishing.

[edit on 12-1-2010 by TrueBrit]

reply to post by TrueBrit


It's not really a fact that life can only develop in that zone. It's too early for us to label it as a fact, we aren't even sure if the planets in our own system are completely lifeless.
What you are talking about is not limiting anything considering our current capabilities.
Scientists are considering the possibility there being life outside that zone. The planets in HZ are simply a top priority when we one day get the chance to sample them for life.

Habitable zone - The region around a star where an Earth-like planet can maintain liquid water on its surface.
It only means that we could find Earth-like life there.

[edit on 12/1/2010 by DGFenrir]

Originally posted by DGFenrir
reply to post by TrueBrit

 

...Scientists are considering the possibility there being life outside that zone. The planets in HZ are simply a top priority when we one day get the chance to sample them for life.

I agree. I don't see the "arrogance". As you said, they are looking for the places that would be relative "easy" to label habitable, AND they are also investigating how life could exist outside these Goldilocks Zones.

I have read works by many mainstream scientists (including NASA scientists) who are investigating how life perhaps could exist in liquid hydrocarbons (such as liquid methane). They are trying to figure out possible methods that alien organisms may use to exchange chemicals (one of the definitions of life) while living in pure hydrocarbon environments.

Life that used liquid methane instead of water to do their biological processes would by extreme different than what we know -- and there is a question as to whether we would even be able to identify it.

These scientists are learning how hydrocarbon biology could work so it could be identified if it is ever encountered (such as on Titan).

Perhaps 25 years ago scientists were only considering "Earth-style life", but many scientists are now doing their due diligence when it comes to looking for alternate forms of biology. I would not call that arrogance.



[edit on 1/12/2010 by Soylent Green Is People]