Scientist: Alien life could already be on Earth

[47of74]

Source: Forbes

LONDON -- For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there's no reason alien life couldn't already be lurking among us - or maybe even in us.

Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times.

Read more: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/01/26/science-eu-britain-alien-life_7302936.html

[DJ13]

1. DC is infested

Its too bad DDT is banned.

[ChickMagic]

59. I always wondered why I called them "congresscritters"

Now, I know.

[madmax]

65. +1

[trotsky]

2. Panspermia, of course.

Nothing too new in that. Very interesting and reasonable theory.

[JuniperLea]

3. I've always thought this true...

And felt validation when the Pope said it's not a sin to believe in such things... that blew me away.

The problem with ET discussions is that we as humans know so little, and we tend to project our tiny beliefs upon new ideas. If they don't fit our tiny beliefs, we relegate the idea as "woo woo" to avoid confronting the unknown.

[CherokeeDem]

14. How Right You Are...

We do know so little...and what we know is based on such minute information.

This quote from former Secretary of Defense Rummy...

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know. ”

-United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

In some sort of convoluted way, this makes sense when applied to what we know and don't know about the universe.

Oh...to reread that and some of his quotes when I was looking for this one...well, it makes one appreciate President Obama even more even with the concerns we have health care, etc.

[Turbineguy]

17. I think when Rummy came up with that

he'd been watching too many "Yes, Prime Minister" episodes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh1eCDotdSc&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=4007E473402A0A45

[eppur_se_muova]

30. Anyone who watched "Yes Minister" was prepared for Rummy.

Bernard Woolley: "But you only need to know things on a need to know basis."
Sir Humphrey: "I need to know everything! How else can I judge whether or not I need to know it?"
Bernard Woolley: "So that means you need to know things even when you don't need to know. You need to know them not because you need to know them, but because you need to know whether or not you need to know. And if you don't need to know you still need to know, so that you know there is no need to know."

http://www.yes-minister.com/ypmseas2a.htm

(This is not actually the quote I was looking for -- there's another great exchange which starts off with Hacker asking "Is there something I don't know?" and ends with Bernard explaining "I don't know what you don't know!")

ETA: GMTA! See the YouTube clip in the previous response! :D

[louis-t]

34. Jeez, and they said John Kerry talked in circles.

[JuniperLea]

37. Haha! It scares me how much sense that makes now...

We are still living in interesting times... scary.

[notadmblnd]

4. you only have to look at the BFEE to know that.

[Cetacea]

5. .

[Kablooie]

6. Well, this is obvious. Just look at Republicans.

And soon the rapture will occur and then an alien life form from Heaven will come down and take all the other alien life forms back up with him to heaven.

[southernyankeebelle]

7. Yep, you betcha, aliens on this planet. Bachmann, and Palin they are really are from another

planet.

[47of74]

16. As are Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Savage, and so on.

[Warpy]

8. Oh, they already know life has developed on earth several times

There have been several massive dieoffs due to climate change, bombardment from asteroids, and massive vulcanism. Each time life has come back just as varied and in different forms.

We might be entering into another great dieoff now. We don't know for certain yet, although signs of it are all around us.

[Lionel Mandrake]

41. Yes and no.

Yes, there have been massive die-offs, after which new species developed to replace the old.

No, these events were not examples of independent origin of life. In each case, all the new species were descendants of previously existing species.

For example, after the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, many new species of mammals took their place. These new species were descendants of older species of mammals which had coexisted with the dinosaurs.

The explanation of the current die-off is that planet Earth has cancer. The cancer started in Africa and has metastasized to all the other continents. We are that cancer.

[veganlush]

44. indeed........n/t

[ChickMagic]

60. I like your sig line

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun.

He obviously never competed in high powered rocketry contests! :)
I've had to trudge after a 2 mile high launch.

[TrogL]

66. Isn't that in violation of the Test Ban Treaty?

[ChickMagic]

67. Not in my fields!

We can only build with non ballistic materials. That's kind of a bummer.
One time DH put buckshot in the cone of his MX kit and suddenly, out of the
blue, we saw a Cobra.

My favorite contest is overpowering itty bitty rockets. I put an F motor on
a little mosquito rocket and would have won had the motor not kicked.

[lumberjack_jeff]

57. Since the Cambrian, each age has had less diversity. n/t

[ChickMagic]

61. That's true

When humans become a past species, I wonder if diversity will explode like it
did during the Cambrian explosion (if I'm remembering my geology correctly)?
After the KT die-off, it does seem that species are less diverse.

[mike_c]

9. I've been convinced since childhood that I don't belong here...

...and was probably left on this sorry planet by mistake. It's inhabitants are way to strange too share ancestry with. :rofl:

[MineralMan]

12. Hmm...a stray, huh. Better stop feeding you, then...

:hide:

[CherokeeDem]

15. LOL...

:rofl:

[peacetalksforall]

10. "For this to work ... There has to be altruism in the universe," he said."

Why would entities with altruism want to contact us? We who are death, sex, and religion obsessed and to hell with mankind - as in being kind to man?

[MineralMan]

13. The altruism is out there...

[peacetalksforall]

18. I hope so. If you have more to say, I would read it.

[MineralMan]

24. Sorry, it was just a play on "The truth is out there..."

Altruism is rare, selective, and can disappear in an instant.

[peacetalksforall]

26. I understand. Tks.

[tclambert]

35. Altruistic aliens? That's silly. They could just as easily be Vogons

and we're in the way of their hyperspace bypass.

Some alien could come along with a bill of sale, duly notarized and recorded in the Galactic Hall of Records. Goldmanzot and Sachsblorp, Inc. may have purchased the Earth long before Humans appeared on the scene. As their claim predates ours, the courts would have no choice but to rule that they own the Earth . . . and us.

Given that we could never hope to contend with their advanced technology militarily, we must try to make ourselves as delicious as possible, so we can at least survive as cattle.

[Trillo]

40. There's definitely altruism in our earthly world.

It just seems to get lost in or overwhelmed by the other negatives you mention. I believe Confucius said something about that. Why are our negatives so overwhelming to us?

My own answer is that we've been trained since birth to pay more attention to negatives, and pay less attention to or ignore positives. Intersectionality.

[rocktivity]

11. I remember that movie!

There was an scene where a lecturer showed a cartoon of a scientist looking through a microscope and being shocked to hear a voice say, "Take me to your leader!"


rocktivity

P.S. My mother kept insisting that there were no such things as monsters, ghosts, or space aliens. But I would always see TV commercials saying that all aliens should report their addresses to their local post office!

[Hugin]

19. I have empirical evidence life has developed in my refrigerator several times.

So, why not? :shrug:

[rocktivity]

21. My sister once stored a plastic cooler for the summer with the lid CLOSED.

Talk about microscopic alien life forms--I thought we'd have to call in a HAZMAT crew!

:rofl:
rocktivity

[LiberalEsto]

49. Life has taken over my refrigerator at times

Green, creeping life.

[SlingBlade]

20. Yep. Republican Pod People

And they've taken over the Democratic Party.

They now call it the Democrat Party, And I think that may be a clue as to how we can identify
and distinguish them from real human beings. You know, Progressives and Liberals :)

K & R

[Lionel Mandrake]

22. I'm skeptical about this.

Paul Davies is "known for his popular science writing", not for real science. The Forbes piece mentions that he wrote something for Scientific American, which is an outlet for expository writing aimed at the general public, not a peer-reviewed journal for original research.

If life originated several times, then the genetic code (by which nucleic acid sequences are translated into polypeptides) would not be the same or even similar for all life forms. Extremophiles (which were mentioned in the Forbes article) use the same genetic code that ordinary bacteria and cells with nuclei use, with only minor variations. This is evidence of a unique origin of all life on Earth.

My conclusion is that Paul Davies's ideas do not deserve serious consideration.

[wtmusic]

36. Anyone who publishes in Pseudoscientific American is immediately suspect

They sell many, many magazines with "Have Aliens Already Visited Earth?"-type cover stories.

Your point about the overwhelming similarity of terrestrial genetics is a good one, but then again you could be an alien trying to play this down :tinfoilhat:

[Lionel Mandrake]

38. Damn, you blew my cover.

We weren't quite ready to take over. Now we'll have to accelerate our schedule.

[jayfish]

48. Paul Davies:

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

Paul Charles William Davies AM (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, currently a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He has held previous academic appointments at the University of Cambridge, University of London, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Adelaide and Macquarie University. His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He has proposed that a one-way trip to Mars could be a viable option.
In 2005, he took up the chair of the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Davies's inquiries have included theoretical physics, cosmology, and astrobiology; his research has been mainly in the area of quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Notable contributions are the so-called Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect, according to which an observer accelerating through empty space will perceive a bath of thermal radiation, and the Bunch-Davies vacuum state, often used as the basis for explaining the fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang. A paper co-authored with Stephen Fulling and William Unruh was the first to suggest that black holes evaporating via the Hawking effect lose mass as a result of a flux of negative energy streaming into the hole from the surrounding space. Davies has had a longstanding association with the problem of time’s arrow, and was also a forerunner of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars cocooned in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts. During his time in Australia he helped establish the Australian Centre for Astrobiology.

Davies' talent as a communicator of science has been recognized in Australia by an Advance Australia Award and two Eureka Prizes, and in the UK by the 2001 Kelvin Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics, and the 2002 Faraday Prize by The Royal Society. Davies received the Templeton Prize in 1995. Davies was made a member of the Order of Australia in the 2007 Queen's birthday honours list

And who are you again?



For your viewing enjoyment:

What We Don't Know - Are We Alone 1/5
What We Don't Know - Are We Alone 2/5
What We Don't Know - Are We Alone 3/5
What We Don't Know - Are We Alone 4/5
What We Don't Know - Are We Alone 5/5


Jay

[Lionel Mandrake]

53. The wikipedia piece is not convincing.

For example, "to suggest that black holes evaporating via the Hawking effect lose mass as a result of a flux of negative energy streaming into the hole from the surrounding space" is a real ho-hummer. What mattered was Hawking's suggestion that black holes radiate.

There is nothing in this puff-piece to suggest that Davies knows much about biology. :puffpiece:

I don't claim expertise in biology, either. I have read about it and thought about it from time to time.

[xchrom]

23. And George W Bush is their leader. Nt

[slackmaster]

25. Two flying saucers landed on my plate this morning

[MineralMan]

28. I, for one, salute our yolked overlords.

[slackmaster]

29. Let's just call them the "phenomena" for now

If you encounter an alien, avoid eye contact.

If no eyes, avoid all contact.

[MineralMan]

31. I'd rather sprinkle some Tabasco™ on them, then internalize them,.

in order to absorb their substance into my own body.

[Cetacea]

39. If I may respectfully submit sir, I think you've got your phenomena scrambled.

[slackmaster]

51. Conclusion: They think I am insane

But, I outrank them.

[RoccoR5955]

27. Can you say, "Dick Cheney?"

He's surely an alien life form!

[Ian David]

32. Maybe..

The World’s Ugliest Endangered Fish
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7573048

[Quantess]

56. Looks like Ziggy!

[Peace Patriot]

33. Some interesting items in this article...

"How weird do they have to be suggest a second genesis as opposed to just an obscure branch of the family tree?" he said. Davies suggested that the only way to prove an organism wasn't "life as we know it" was if it were built using exotic elements which no other form of life had.

Such organisms have yet to be found. Davies also noted that less than 1 percent of all the world's bacteria had been comprehensively studied - leaving plenty of time to find unusual organisms.

"You cannot tell just by looking that a microbe has some radically different inner chemistry," he said.

----

Frank Drake, who conducted the first organized search for alien radio signals in 1960, said that the Earth - which used to pump out a loud mess of radio waves, television signals and other radiation - has been steadily getting quieter as its communications technology improves.

Drake cited the switch from analogue to digital television - which uses a far weaker signal - and the fact that much more communications traffic is now relayed by satellites and fiber optic cables, limiting its leakage into outer space.

"Very soon we will become very undetectable," he said. If similar processes were taking place in other technologically advanced societies, then the search for them "will be much more difficult than we imagined."

----

Drake said scientists at SETI were excited by the possibility of using lasers to send super-bright flashes of light into space for a tiny fraction of a second. The flashes could theoretically be seen up by an advanced civilization up to 1,000 light years away, and Tarter said infrared versions of the devices could possibly send beams even further.

But Drake noted that the interstellar equivalent to turning a flashlight on and off only works if a prospective alien civilization wants to get in touch to begin with.

"For this to work ... There has to be altruism in the universe," he said.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/01/26/science-eu-britain-alien-life_7302936.html

----

I'm not quite sure what Drake means by there having to be "altruism in the universe." Curiosity would suffice. And I guess we can only hope that an advanced civilization with curiosity about us also has "altruism" (brotherly love--is what I think he means) as a dominant characteristic. "Altruism" is more strictly defined as loyalty--and that can take many forms. I mean, you can be loyal to Hitler and the 'Master Race,' right? Altruism does, however, usually carry connotations of high-mindedness, compassion, love, courage.

Based on our own relationship with animals--especially animals that are very likely sentient--dolphins, for instance--or seem to have degrees of sentience (chimps)--or have some kind of higher thought process that we really do not fathom at all (birds, spiders)--and based on all of our evolving relations with all other creatures--the precedents (from our tiny sample of experience in the universe), are not terribly good for us being treated well by more advanced sentient beings. And I have not even mentioned racism amongst ourselves--relegating some races to sub-human status and slavery--which has only recently been deemed illegal and fundamentally wrong, but which continues in other forms. Would more powerful, extraterrestrial beings deem us "inferior" and either dismiss us or enslave us?

I think it may have been Frank Drake himself who said that beings advanced enough to contact us or respond to our signals would likely have followed the human social development path, i.e., the more you learn, the more you develop, the more technically proficient you become, the more tolerant, progressive and compassionate you become. But we have seen some rather negative evidence on that score, with the Bush Junta and all. Here is the most technically advanced society on earth, the USA, slaughtering a hundred thousand innocent people, in the first weeks of bombing alone, to steal their oil. Will some future extraterrestrial 'Bush Junta' do that to us? We have reason to be profoundly shaken in our view of ourselves, as Americans and as human beings, and in our prognostications about the universe and its "altruism."

As for microbes, well, yeah...who knows? Does it really matter that much how we go here (except to solve the perennial human problem of our feeling, somehow, alien in our surroundings)? What matters is what we do here--and out there, when we finally go.

[Phoonzang]

42. This isn't what the article is talking about but what if....

What if intelligent life is among us right now. I don't mean visiting in UFOs...I mean walking down Broadway. We're already working on creating artificial life right now. Who's to say a civilization a thousand, 10 thousand, or a million years ahead of us couldn't create an artificial construct, a human, indistinguishable from a real organism? Who's to say that they haven't dropped some of those constructs down here to observe us, to live as one of us? If it got hit by a car and killed, no one would be able to tell it was anything unusual.

Actually...why does it even have to be a person. It could be an artificial bird...a rat...a cockroach. We might be under observation right now and we'd have no idea. I mean, aren't we working on robotic flies for surveillance and such right now?

Erm....sorry. I'm in an imaginative mood. :)

[MilesColtrane]

43. How else do you explain the Big Giant Eye?

[cascadiance]

64. She will be exposed in the new V later...

[bemildred]

45. Time to build a big fence and install scanners. nt

[Yavin4]

46. So Men In Black Really Does Exist?

Interesting.

[shadowknows69]

47. It would explain a lot.

"No, Elvis is not dead. He just went home."

[Duer 157099]

50. I'd be much more shocked if it were proven this were *not* the case

First of all, define alien. Europeans were once "alien" to North America.

Anyone who thinks that life must conform to our limited interpretation of what that means should watch the Discovery Channel or one of those others that explores, for example, the creatures that live near deep sea vents.

Life on this planet is so varied in function and appearance already, it's amazing that we have preconceived notions about what form "life" takes.

It's even in dispute whether nucleic acid is required! (eg, prions)

[alfredo]

52. I've saw some in SE Indiana. Fearsome creatures I must say.

[krabigirl]

54. hehe, like in that movie "they live"?

[santamargarita]

55. Yes, and they have their own cable news channel

:think:

[formercia]

58. The food on this planet sucks. n/t

[area51]

62. Of course there's aliens on earth.

They call themselves republicans.

[Canuckistanian]

63. They're waiting until we get warp capability

Everyone knows that.