NASA Scientist Claims to Have Found Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life

[similar.squirrel]

Let us hope this isn't another ALH 84001 incident. I would love to live through one of our most important discoveries.

 

[04whim]

And cue Necromorph outbreak in 3-2-ohsweetjesusmylungs!

Excuse me while I move to Holland... You never see an alien invasion movie involving Holland. And then, weed is legal

 

[similar.squirrel]

"Maybe life was seeded on earth -- it developed on comets for example, and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early Earth," speculated SETI Institute senior astronomer Dr. Seth Shostak.

That's meaningful. Surely he's not an ET enthusiast, is he?

Kinda reminds me of the story (or perhaps "myth" is the word) of the bullet that's fired, passes through a man's testicles, picks up his sperm on it, and then goes to to land in a woman's uterus, impregnating her.

..and that's how you explain panspermia to 50 Cent.

 

[Bloodstain]

SNIP

I too am interested in the world WE live in, aliens on the other hand are not from this world.
There is nothing WRONG with being excited, I was merely stating that I don't get it.

When I say "world", I mean the whole universe. Or, as Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World] puts it: "[...] everything that constitutes reality."
I'm not only interested in our tiny planet, but all planets and potential life forms. So if I have the chance to learn more about the latter (in this case: learning that it might exist), I'm more than happy to take it.
Some people like to know things just for the sake of knowing. I am one of those people. This has nothing to do with whether you are a "gamer" or not.

 

[sleeky01]

Is there other life in the galaxy? Give the question to Dr. Sheldon Cooper. He'll sort it out.

 

[thiosk]

God, what a buzzkill!

I just want to believe, man! Put your skepticism away for a moment at let us non-cosmologists and non-scientists to believe.

Still, could be an interesting discovery. We'll just have to wait to see what comes out from it.

Required reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001

This whole thing happened once already, except last time, it was in the top scientific journal in the world, and the president of the united states got on TV and told us all about the martian life.

Its been discredited and the researchers tucked their tails and got on to their next project.

Let us hope this isn't another ALH 84001 incident.

It is, just small time instead of big time. Rehashed and respouted.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

copycat

but nice presentation lol

Tbf this is a lot more comprehensive

 

[arife]

Go to phyrangula to read a pretty good debunking of the paper. One thing about the original paper is that it continuously changes the scale of the photos. Some of the supposed life forms are orders of magnitude larger then others. The paper is also filled with lots useless fluff, indicative of a bad paper. I believe that there is probably life in the universe. That does not mean that it is in our galaxy or that it is common. Also the claim about it being the most reviewed paper ever, is that he plans on it being so not that it has actually been peer reviewed at all.

 

[The_Emperor]

So much apathy, so many haters.

even single cell organisms that come from different planets could be scientifically important and could tell us alot about life itself and how it comes about. The enviroments it can endure, that maybe do not exist on our planet.

who knows? maybe we'll find that they are similar to earth organisms which implies that, if the conditions were right, there could be animal or intelligent life around.

It could speak of our origins on Earth.

all you guys are like "*yawn* lame, if it doesnt have tentacles and 3 boobs I'm not interested."

As if it's easy to find sentient beings, we don't even know for sure if faster than light speed is possible yet, you'll be lucky to see a spacefish in our solar system.

liven up you miserable gits.

personally if they are out there i think they are watching us like some kind of alien Attenborough, and they follow the prime directive.

Excuse me? People here are going into massive amounts of depth scrutinizing every last detail about the quality and history of the publication and research. If we aren't jumping on our chairs with joy it's because we aren't convinced by one widely-distributed journal of rather shady quality publishing such outlandish (literally) claims with such little evidence. Oh, and sorry for being such a miserable git, it's definitely not like this gets claimed many times a year.

I doubt the whole thread are delving into the intricacies of this, alot of the posts I saw merely stated "if it isn't sentient then I'm not interested"

Just because it's happened before doesn't neccessarily mean it's untrue either. Fair enough it's not a major science journal, that still doesn't rule out the possibility he might be right.

My point still stands, unless someone WAAY more qualified than us comes out and proves it wrong, without a doubt, we shouldn't be so dismissive. Regardless of the low probability that this body of work becoming the, revolutionary, confirmation of extra terrestial life.

Everyone on the escapist seems so negative all the time. I agree this story probably isn't "the one" either, I just get sick of the negativity in these forums lol

Oh and apology accepted.

 

[arife]

So much apathy, so many haters.


Just because it's happened before doesn't neccessarily mean it's untrue either. Fair enough it's not a major science journal, that still doesn't rule out the possibility he might be right.

My point still stands, unless someone WAAY more qualified than us comes out and proves it wrong, without a doubt, we shouldn't be so dismissive. Regardless of the low probability that this body of work becoming the, revolutionary, confirmation of extra terrestial life.

Everyone on the escapist seems so negative all the time. I agree this story probably isn't "the one" either, I just get sick of the negativity in these forums lol

Oh and apology accepted.

I would disagree with your second point. Its not the job of a qualified person to debunk the claim. Its the job of the person making the claim to give enough evidence and support for his claim to make it convincing. I see the argument often that an argument should not dismiss an idea till its completely debunked. I think you should remain skeptical until the idea has enough suport.

 

[The_Emperor]

I would disagree with your second point. Its not the job of a qualified person to debunk the claim. Its the job of the person making the claim to give enough evidence and support for his claim to make it convincing. I see the argument often that an argument should not dismiss an idea till its completely debunked. I think you should remain skeptical until the idea has enough suport.

The more I see of this research the shittier it looks tbh, I thought it was a "real" paper

Yeah, I was more aiming towards the people who didnt even check it out because it wasn't a Kling On and sorta just dismissed because it was suggested that it was a microbe.

I don't think people realise how much we can learn from a small microbe from outer space.

 

[arife]

Ya i agree that if we truly did find microbe fossils on an asteroid that would be amazing. It reminds me of a Brian Regan joke about the search for extra terrestrial intelligence, and he says we have found life on Venus its just really dumb, so no one cares.

 

[Jumplion]

God, what a buzzkill!

I just want to believe, man! Put your skepticism away for a moment at let us non-cosmologists and non-scientists to believe.

Still, could be an interesting discovery. We'll just have to wait to see what comes out from it.

Required reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001

This whole thing happened once already, except last time, it was in the top scientific journal in the world, and the president of the united states got on TV and told us all about the martian life.

Its been discredited and the researchers tucked their tails and got on to their next project.

Let us hope this isn't another ALH 84001 incident.

It is, just small time instead of big time. Rehashed and respouted.

Gosh, you're such a buzzkill, man! Stop inserting skepticism and logic and just let ignorance take you!

 

[agnosticOCD]

Well, I'd love to see them try to prove that this is something from a place other than Earth.

Oops, there seems to be an air of sarcasm in this sentence, just to clarify: I'm serious, I hope it's a breakthrough. If it's not, well, at least they tried.

Leave aside it being real or fake at the moment and let the scientists and researchers do their thing, and for a while, imagine how it would be like if we'd proven that there was actually life that formed outside our planet, or our solar system... It would answer so many questions about how we came to be, about how things began, about religion, philosophy, and science, and will open up tons more questions for old and new generations of scientists to answer... Imagine how awesome it would be to have this kind of development in your lifetime.

It would make the vast, HUGE FUCKIN' universe that some of us have only begun to understand in scale seem a tad bit smaller (figuratively... in truth, it's still HUGE FUCKIN' GINORMOUS).

Man, I'm not assuming anything but I HOPE this thing's the real deal.

I'm all excited again. :3

 

[agnosticOCD]

Its only a matter of time before the fanatical Christians began to bash the findings because of the idea that that life on Earth did not begin here.

I was hoping to say this but then I was afraid I'd incur wrath... And I'm already hearing something along the lines of science being some kind of evil cult... again...

 

[Accountfailed]

Fox News, via Yahoo News

Fox News

Fox

I want to believe, but I'll need some more convincing, from other sources.

 

[The Random One]

I like how both the Escapist and the Science Blogs rebuttal linked complain that the website came out of the 1990's.