Category: Extraterrestrial life
ET life: We should look for planets like Earth’s past, not it’s present
| September 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Suggested at New Scientist: There may be life out there that was like life on Earth when Earth was a very different environment: In the 4.5 billion years our planet has existed, it has experienced dramatic transformations: ice ages and warming periods, times when the atmosphere was impossible to breathe, when large areas were desert, […]
There really IS a space alien religion
| September 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Religion |
We’ve often noticed that people who are bound and determined to find intelligent aliens treat it as a sort of religious quest. But now, as National Geographic reports from Brazil, it is taking an institutional form: According to Sunrise Valley followers, extraterrestrial beings landed on Earth 32,000 years ago to advance human civilizations. The beings […]
How can lots of water worlds be “bad news for life”?
| August 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Fine tuning |
In other words, Earth doesn’t just “have water”; it is fine-tuned for life. We need to find exoplanets that are likewise fine-tuned.
At Scientific American: Maybe aliens live too fast or too slow for us to recognize
| August 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Even on Earth. And that is why we don’t see them, astrophysicist suggests: For example, could the messy chemistry we see in fossil fuels on Earth – a smorgasbord of organic reactions, a seemingly tarry chaos – be simply a short-term view of a living system that functions across hundreds of millions of years? Or […]
Atlantic writer loses his faith in aliens
| August 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Ethics, Extraterrestrial life, Mind |
And starts to come to terms with the difference that makes: If the revelation that humans are probably alone in our universe stands, and as that revelation sinks into our collective psyche, it could effect a second, weirder Copernican revolution in culture. To begin with, it’s really hard to square humanity’s status as perhaps the […]
Claim: A planet does not need plate tectonics to sustain life
| August 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design |
Plus, a friend offers a reply. From ScienceDaily: There may be more habitable planets in the universe than we previously thought, according to Penn State geoscientists, who suggest that plate tectonics — long assumed to be a requirement for suitable conditions for life — are in fact not necessary. When searching for habitable planets or […]
New paper: Cambrian explosion driven by viruses from space
| August 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Origin Of Life |
Delivered by comets. Abstract: We review the salient evidence consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology. Much of this physical and biological evidence is multifactorial. One particular focus are the recent studies which date the emergence of the complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian […]
Worms survive Siberian permafrost for 42,000 years
| August 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life |
Yesterday, we talked about the worm that survived the space shuttle blowup and the water bears in space, in relation to the question of whether early life forms night have ended up on the moon briefly, back when the solar system was rather soupy. And now we hear this: In Siberia, melting permafrost is releasing […]
Might we find evidence of past life on the Moon?
| July 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Well, not today. But at one time, the Moon was not completely separate from Earth. It really depends on how long ago life got started here whether some microbial life could have been trapped on the moon and survived a while. The sagas of the worm that survived the space shuttle blowup and the water bears in space should warn against too-hasty dismissal.
Is that Mars lake way too salty for life?
| July 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life |
Hugh Ross thinks so. From Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media: On Wednesday, media outlets breathlessly reported that scientists have discovered a “lake of liquid water” on Mars. Fox News called it a “game changer” in the search for alien life, and Yahoo News reported something similar. The New York Times headline spelled out the implications: […]
But if we don’t find life on either Mars or Europa…
| July 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Does that mean anything? The reason we ask is, From Lisa Grossman at Science News: A Mars orbiter has detected a wide lake of liquid water hidden below the planet’s southern ice sheets. There have been much-debated hints of tiny, ephemeral amounts of water on Mars before. But if confirmed, this lake marks the first […]
If we are alone in the universe, shouldn’t that make us feel more special?
| July 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Design inference, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Philosophy |
Instead of meaningless? How exactly did we get from “Alone” to “Meaningless” via eloquence from tenured pundits? Where do we buy return tickets? A blogging neurologist asks this obvious question. From Steven Novella at The Ness: Until, however, we detect actual aliens or their signals, the rest of the factors in the equation are likely […]
SETI reacts to the new study that says not to wait up for extraterrestrials
| July 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
From SETI’s Seth Shostak, who surely doesn’t welcome this news, at NBC: A recent paper by three researchers at the University of Oxford is throwing shade on those who feel confident that the cosmos is thick with extraterrestrials. … If we own up to the true extent of these uncertainties and do the requisite math, […]
Must we find water to be sure there is alien life?
| July 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
From Charles Q. Choi at Inside Science: When it comes to looking for alien life, scientists mostly focus on where there is water. Now researchers suggest that looking at “bioessential” elements such as phosphorus and molybdenum could help judge a world’s potential for life. But if we can’t find water, why should we consider these […]
At Forbes: Maybe fine-tuning doesn’t matter as much as some claim. Many planets might support life…
| July 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
From Ethan Siegel at Forbes: Based on everything we know, it seems like the conditions that make life possible are a lot more diverse and flexible than most people would expect. … Take Earth’s large moon, for example. The gravitational forces from it keep our planet rotating on the same axis over time. Our present […]
Exoplanet has stable axial tilt, like Earth – but Earth has help from the moon and other planets
| July 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design |
The reality that earth is fine-tuned for life screams out at us from stories that seem to make a point of not emphasizing the fact. From ScienceDaily: The researchers suggest that Kepler-186f’s axial tilt is very stable, much like the Earth, making it likely that it has regular seasons and a stable climate. The Georgia […]
All the aliens in one place at one time…
| July 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Astronomy, Cosmology, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Plus a bunch of useful stuff. In a month when we have been heard hearing about all things alien, from everything from it’s good news that they probably don’t exist through to they might be hoarding stars… here is a book that has it all in one place: From Sophia Centre press: An anthology of […]
The Atlantic asks experts where the aliens are… seriously
| June 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
From Derek Thompson at The Atlantic: In the seventh episode of Crazy/Genius, a new podcast from The Atlantic on tech, science, and culture, we put the question to several experts, including Ellen Stofan, the former chief scientist of nasa and current director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; Adam Frank, a writer and […]
At Forbes: About extraterrestrial life, “fancy probabilistic analysis” just isn’t science
| June 29, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
From astrophysicist Ethan Siegel: No amount of fancy probabilistic analysis can justify treating guesswork and wishful thinking as having any sort of scientific weight. Applying scientific techniques to an inherently unscientific endeavor, such as inventing estimates to unknowns about the Universe, doesn’t make it any more scientific. The opposite of knowledge isn’t ignorance; it’s the […]
Life on other planets? Yes, for sure, if Earth’s microbes get there with our help
| June 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Genetics, Intelligent Design |
The discovery of complex organic molecules on Saturn’s moon Enceladus raises the question:What about introducing organisms from Earth, even if none exist out there now? From Laurie Fickman at the University of Houston: In professor George Fox’s lab at the University of Houston, scientists are studying Earth germs that could be contaminating other planets. Despite […]
