Evidence of alien life discovered

http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/nasascientistfindsevidenceofalienlife

I'm not sure I want to believe this yet, not after so many hoaxes in the past. Thoughts?

edited 6th Mar '11 7:21:40 AM by Yamikuronue

If true, whoo.

If not, oh well.

A fossil of a microbe in a meteorite. Compelling.

I welcome our microbial alien overlords.

Awesome, hoping it turns out to have credibility. :)

When it comes to extraterrestrial life, even finding living alien microbes would be a world-changing event. It's because the time frame for finding existing alien life compared to how long humans have been around (let alone since we've been looking) is so vanishingly small compared to the age of the universe.

edited 6th Mar '11 7:33:46 AM by Ratix

We've already known that alien microbes existed. There's been several microbe fossils discovers in the past, so nothing new here.

edited 6th Mar '11 7:34:51 AM by Usht

My initial response was: "Well, duh."

My initial thought is this reminds me a little of the dinosoars with feathers controvercy some years ago. Of course today nobody doubts that such creatures existed, though there's still some disputes over individual species, but it took several fossils before people started to seriously examine the question of hoax vs. real as a purely scientific investigation.

Personally, what I am most curious about is whether these lifeforms, if they are for real, are genetically independent from Earthly life or if there is a common ancestor.

But didn't NASA find a microscopic alien on another planet that eats some chemical or something earlier than this?

edited 6th Mar '11 8:07:02 AM by Collen

Arsenic based life form. Meaning that if we ever meet a complex life form like that, we'll need to wear suits around them to survive.

edited 6th Mar '11 8:20:08 AM by Usht

The arsenic - based life was found on Earth, and there is some dispute over even that.

...You mean arsenic based life? Because it'd be pretty hard for life to be built out of an element that doesn't chemically react.

EDIT: Got ninja'd.

edited 6th Mar '11 8:19:48 AM by Yej

Erm, arsenic. Not sure what I was thinking with arson there. Could have sworn that was discovered somewhere not on Earth, but whatever.

The discovery of arsenic based life was initially speculated to be about extraterrestrial life when it was first announced, but it wasn't.

They did find what they thought were fossilised microbes on a Martian meteorite in 1996, but it's far from certain.

I think we can safely say alien life exists on millions of worlds or more. The problem is that they will all most likely be cellular or something similar. There may be a few (Tiny; really, really, really tiny) multicellular lifeforms out there, but considering how our Universe is, I seriously doubt we'll find anything sentient, let alone any animal like species.

Indeed. Single-celled life has been on earth for about 3 billion years. Complex multi-cellular life, about 600 million (I think). Sapient life? A million years or 2. Civilization? A few thousand years. Space-faring civilization? Not even a century.

The odds are heavily stacked in favor of only ever finding microbes, with intelligent life either billions of years away, or billions of years dead and gone. Or so advanced their antics are indistinguishable from stellar phenomena like quasars and supernovae.

Still, the more fossils we find, the more we can learn. It might point us in the right direction of where to look for more. :)

edited 6th Mar '11 8:52:13 AM by Ratix

Then again, it's a big, big universe. Assuming we manage to cover enough of it, we might hit the jackpot of the lottery.

Indeed, given the billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, the odds that another intelligent civilization exists somewehere isn't out of the question. If they're 10 billion light years away though, we probably won't meet them.

Which makes me wonder; if time moves at the speed of light, can event A and event B on opposite sides of the universe even be said to occur at the same time? My armchair physicist experience has no answers.

Last I checked, time is an independent medium for everything else to more forward on. You can warp it by going really fast and being made of matter, but time itself has no inherent speed.

No. "At the same time" is only meaningful if they're also at the same place.

We've already known that alien microbes existed. There's been several microbe fossils discovers in the past, so nothing new here.

That was controversial.

But didn't NASA find a microscopic alien on another planet that eats some chemical or something earlier than this?

You mean the circumstantial evidence from Titan's atmosphere?

I welcome our microbial alien overlords.

Oh sure, you can joke about it now, but just wait until you breathe in that sonovabitch.

Then you'll be screwed.

What's to say he hasn't already?

The Bad Astronomy web-forum has weighed in, and they are cautiously skeptical: http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php/113330-quot-Has-life-been-found-in-a-meteorite-quot

Err... silly question, but where would the meteorite have come from? Do other planets make a habit of exploding with debris that can reach us?