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Extraterrestrial life

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
June 15, 2020
Categorized
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Religion
Tagged
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New “Astrobiological Copernican Limit” claims 36 intelligent civilizations

Denyse O'Leary
June 15, 2020
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Religion
It’s all malarkey. In the real world, it would be awfully nice to find fossil bacteria on Mars. When that seems to be taking some time, we hear about 36 alien civs. That’s because there’ll always be a market for We Are Not Alone. The thing is, it used to be called religion, not science. And it still IS religion, not science. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
June 15, 2020
Categorized
Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
Tagged
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Is NOTHING sacred? Silicon-based life “may not be likely”?

Denyse O'Leary
June 15, 2020
Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
At Air & Space: "There aren’t many organic silicon compounds to begin with, and silicon-based life in water, or on an oxygen-rich planet, would be all but impossible as any free silicon would react quickly and furiously to form silicate rock. And that’s pretty much the end of the story." Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
May 15, 2020
Categorized
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Can deep undersea rocks give us clues about ET life?

Denyse O'Leary
May 15, 2020
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Cepelewicz: They’ve also found evidence that those microbes persist by getting energy from an abiotic process called radiolysis, during which radiation released by the rocks reacts with water in the system to release hydrogen, which the cells can then use in various forms as fuel. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
May 7, 2020
Categorized
Extraterrestrial life
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Researchers: Organic chemicals essential for life found in Martian meteorite; Rob Sheldon responds

Denyse O'Leary
May 7, 2020
Extraterrestrial life
Sheldon: The point is that we don't expect to find nitrate and ammonia in the soil of Mars, not unless some nitrogen fixing bacteria put it there recently, because over time it will all come out of the soil as N2 gas. Claiming that the process goes the other way, from N2 in atmosphere to nitrates in soils, goes backwards, from high entropy to low entropy. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
May 7, 2020
Categorized
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Researchers: Organic chemicals essential for life found in Martian meteorite; Tim Standish responds

Denyse O'Leary
May 7, 2020
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Standish: If the nitrogen cycle isn’t established within a certain time, nitrogen will be removed from the atmosphere and the surface will become rich in nitrate (bad) or, in a reducing atmosphere, ammonia (really bad). The bottom line is that there are speculations that probably get around this, but it is one more needle that has to be threaded for chemical evolution to produce the first life, or a problem for the first life to quickly take care of. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 21, 2020
Categorized
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Our idea of life is “too Earth-centric!”

Denyse O'Leary
April 21, 2020
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Koontz at Massive Science, on NASA's Darwin-only definition of life: "For instance, say we find a planet full of aliens who have achieved immortality. The population has been stable for thousands of years, with nobody being born and nobody dying — in other words, there is no self-replication going on. There is no variation. Everything is static. There’s no evolution. Would this alien species be considered living under our current definition?" Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 10, 2020
Categorized
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Big new telescope array to search for extraterrestrial alien signals

Denyse O'Leary
March 10, 2020
Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
The nice thing about SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) projects is that it makes very little difference if we don’t find anything. It’s not as though any conclusion can be drawn from a failure to find anything. We will just indulge in another round of speculations as to why we don’t. It’s not always clear why this is a science and not a religion. But hey. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 4, 2020
Categorized
Culture, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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SETI @ Home shuts down

Denyse O'Leary
March 4, 2020
Culture, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design
Well, the state of computing has certainly changed but, after so many years of no Contact, the magic has probably also gone out of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project. Also, to use the “Woke” approach that is becoming increasingly popular in popular science, why should SETI get to say what is and isn’t a valid search for ET? Why should SETI control the narrative? Can't everyone have or be their own ET? Sow the wind... Read More ›