Scientists Declare: " Life may be universal"

I found this article thought provoking:

Scientists Declare "Life May Be Universal"
Thursday, January 23, 2014

The romantic notion of "stardust" has inspired authors, poets and song-writers for decades, leading to a dictionary definition that describes it as "a magical or charismatic quality or feeling."

Despite its enchanting reputation, this seemingly mystical substance is not merely confined to the imagination but is a genuine scientific term for the tiny cosmic dust grains floating through our solar system.
When Moby claimed in his 2002 song that "We Are All Made Of Stars," however, he may not have been too far from the truth, as scientific evaluations of this space dust over the past few years have yielded the surprising evidence that every atom in our bodies was once part of a star, maybe even several stars.

So, if our complex human forms somehow evolved from stardust, then could it also form the basis of other life forms throughout the universe?

New research collated by researchers at Lawrence Livermore Lab in California has indicated that stardust may interact with solar winds to create the building blocks necessary for life to form. Using an electron microscope, the scientists examined dust obtained from the outer atmosphere of the Earth, and found that the miniscule particles contained pockets of water.

John Bradley, director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and leader of the study, explained: "The two key ingredients for life on Earth are water and organic material. These particles arrived at the top of the atmosphere with both of the key ingredients for life."

The research paper, which was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 21, suggests that this fact opens up endless possibilities: wherever the environmental factors are favorable, and stardust is present in conjunction with solar winds, then there is the potential for life to spontaneously occur throughout the whole of the universe.

"The implications are potentially huge," said Hope Ishii, from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and one of the researchers involved in the study. "It is a particularly thrilling possibility that this influx of dust on the surfaces of solar system bodies has acted as a continuous rainfall of little reaction vessels containing both the water and organics needed for the eventual origin of life."

Scientists have been able to determine how the water forms by replicating the process in laboratory experiments. The stardust is composed mostly of silicates containing oxygen, and solar winds consist of a stream of highly reactive hydrogen ions originating from the sun's volatile atmosphere. When the winds and stardust meet, the hydrogen and oxygen react and create water. Cosmic dust also invariably contains organic carbon, known to be the key component for all known naturally occurring life forms on this planet, and this element, combined with water and an energy source, is thought to be the recipe for all life to develop and evolve.

The scientists do not believe that stardust is responsible for the production of the large volumes of water seen in our oceans; this is thought to have been the result of deluges from wet asteroids or comets colliding with our planet at some point in its early history. It is further afield that the implications of this latest discovery are thought to be most relevant, as the water-producing reaction could occur anywhere in the universe with a star, or even a supernova, says Ishii.
So, science takes another tentative step towards acknowledging the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, and it seems that the question is no longer " if" it exists, or even "how," but "where" it exists, and "what" form does it take? Though a recent poll, conducted in April 2013 by Public Policy Polling, indicated that 29 per cent of Americans already believe in the existence of extra-terrestrials, and a Reuters News poll conducted by Ipsos in the same month revealed that 24 percent of Americans believe aliens are actually walking amongst us, scientists have historically been far more reserved in their views on the subject. Whether the type of life evolving elsewhere in the universe would be recognisable to us is another matter, but the facts now seem to suggest that alien life is definitely out there somewhere.

For news from the Edge of the World and beyond, visit Unknown Country every day - better still, become a subscriber for more great benefits.

Image Credit: ID 16948185 © Rufous | Dreamstime.com

News Source: Oxford University Press Huff Post NASA Examiner

Find stories like this: alienalien intelligencealiensextraterrestrialextraterrestrial lifeextraterrestrialsstardustuniverse
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Read the original source: www.unknowncountry.com...

So the entire cosmos is saturated in a "fog" of life making particles. Almost like seeds, ...
-If I read it correctly,
Nice stuff. Very exciting.
s&f

The Life Bringers, are just another layer in the infinite progression from microcosm to macrocosm......
Strange that Science seems to be discovering what would be obvious to most...........

Gotta remember that scientists (being scientists) have to back up their claims with proof. I'm sure that many have thought this possible but have never been able to prove it. Till now.

reply to post by data5091


One of my favorite cosmology books has a great forward in it from Neal Tyson about this very thing and how everybody is made, literally, from star dust. His write-up on it was very beautiful and you can tell it's almost a religion to him. Very enchanting to think about, for sure.

that's the thing, we dont need religion, or dogma to try to explain the beauty and simplicity that all existence IS, reality by itself defies all notions and sometimes is so fantastically mind bending that every explanation we can possibly have falls short to the awesome mysteries that happen every single day, out there in here.

Life is the definition of existence, consciousness on the other hand is a different side dish in the buffet of the unknown!

Of course life is the norm, and not the exception, and before many of us die, we will be able to prove it.
I dont have to see into the future to extrapolate the mechanisms of life in our planet and the ways of the extremophiles to know that conditions out there could even be more favorable, in places than they were here to begin with!
Thanks for sharing Op!

Scientists can kiss my you know what. If they took al these years to figure out that we ain't alone in the universe they are retarded. They don't know ish

We define life as biological but there could also be other forms of life...?

Now all they have to do is prove it. I ain't seen any alien life, much less an abundance of it.

reply to post by Annunak1


What an idiotic thing to say,
Flagged before, but I still see your moronic post is still up. - guess the mods accept the ignorant and unthoughtful use of "retarded" these days?


Do us a favor and stick to your Call of Duty forums.
thanks.[

What does it change that life is abundant in space? What does that change? Distraction from:

We still have to solve all the problems here on earth, actually the problems that live within the human soul, like greed, gluttony,lust, etc. With those still embedded in us we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes again on a different rock.

We are looking for another habitable planet because of the love of money here and nothing else. We are slowly destroying this one and we know it. Instead of fixing our attitudes we are looking to escape to another one.

I just don't understand...

reply to post by data5091


Hardly really surprising news, always said it's just a matter of time before it is actually confirmed.

And if you didn't know that we are all "made from star stuff", then you are a moron and who hasn't studied. First rule in Astrobiology, Ingredients for life:

CHNOPS!

Break it down and you get "the star stuff":

CARBON
HYDROGEN
NITROGEN
OXYGEN
PHOSPEROUS
SULPHUR

reply to post by Zcustosmorum


I like that: chnops. My wife has a very nice chnops configuration.

And if you didn't know that we are all "made from star stuff", then you are a moron

The courtesy of our hall is somewhat lessened of late...

On topic:


Thinking it and proving it are different things.
-But that apparently doesn't stop people from wondering why others haven't proven their own theories..
Calling them morons or retards..
hrmmm..

canucks555
And if you didn't know that we are all "made from star stuff", then you are a moron

The courtesy of our hall is somewhat lessened of late...

On topic:


Thinking it and proving it are different things.
-But that apparently doesn't stop people from wondering why others haven't proven their own theories..
Calling them morons or retards..
hrmmm..

edit on 23-1-2014 by canucks555 because: (no reason given)

You are ignorant to think you can make judgements on someone based on a sentence, study makes perfect especially on a topic such as this. If I hit a nerve then I assure, it wasn't meant personally

reply to post by data5091


If you think about it without religious or anthropocentric bias, it seems fairly obvious that life is fairly common in the universe. Hard to believe there is something unique about Earth, or the Sun, or our little corner of the Galaxy.

We've seen organic molecules form spontaneously among the interstellar dust-clouds. We've seen water rain down on newly-formed planetary systems. We have seen how structure can emerge spontaneously from the behaviour of complex systems. And now we have physicists claiming that the thermodynamic behaviour of matter may make life inevitable.

The days when we could comfortably consider ourselves special are long gone.

I've been saying for a while: Life, like planets, is ubiquitous!

Looks like science agrees

canucks555
Gotta remember that scientists (being scientists) have to back up their claims with proof. I'm sure that many have thought this possible but have never been able to prove it. Till now.

Abiogenesis has yet to be proved . . . this is really just using calculus and differential equations to demonstrate that the percentage chance of life would be very high if their assumptions are valid.

I have yet to see any proof that all organic material, higher order atoms, were generated from supernovae. It is entirely possible that much of the material was generated during the big bang and never actually coalesced into a star. They are also stretching the limits of where life is thought to be possible. IE so far we only have evidence of life on Earth and its conditions are the only confirmed ones to harbor life, this being said we have yet to actually locate another Earth and simply assume another is out there based on statistics.

Basically this guy is hyping a lot of assumptions, and you know what they say about assumptions being the mother of all something or others.

-FBB

Cosmic Ray Spalation
en.wikipedia.org...

Cosmic ray spallation after the Big Bang is thought to be responsible for the abundance in the universe of some light elements such as lithium, beryllium, and boron. This process (cosmogenic nucleosynthesis) was discovered somewhat by accident during the 1970s: models of Big Bang nucleosynthesis suggested that the amount of deuterium was too large to be consistent with the expansion rate of the universe and there was therefore great interest in processes that could generate deuterium after the Big Bang.

Oops.

bitsforbytes
What does it change that life is abundant in space? What does that change? Distraction from:

We still have to solve all the problems here on earth, actually the problems that live within the human soul, like greed, gluttony,lust, etc. With those still embedded in us we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes again on a different rock.

We are looking for another habitable planet because of the love of money here and nothing else. We are slowly destroying this one and we know it. Instead of fixing our attitudes we are looking to escape to another one.

I just don't understand...

We are a conquering, warring race of savages, when we get interplanetary travel the real fun begins.

its likely that when its comes to our travel plans, other space faring races will collide with us. bang pop boom.

its only a matter of time before the armada arrives again to decimate humanity.