Among other things, it contains details on what amphiphiles might actually be present on Titan, a very nice set of diagrams explaining their proposed process, and proposals for lab experiments to verify whether the process is possible. I've had a soft spot for the vesicle-first theory of abiogenesis since I first heard of it, so I hope someone runs the experiments. But as far as I can tell, this is all theoretical so far.
rolph 1 days ago [-]
amphiphillic vesicles are a stepping stone for persistent molecular forms.
essentially a reaction vessel, insulating the contents from the extravesicular mayhem.
jojobas 1 days ago [-]
It's thought that life on Earth started with RNA mayhem, not with vessels to isolate from it.
IAmBroom 14 hours ago [-]
There are a lot of different opinions on how life on Earth started, even amongst scientists studying it, and none of them are strongly supported by substantial, reproduced evidence.
andrewflnr 1 days ago [-]
RNA world is mainstream, but a few scientists have proposed that something like cell membranes, such as these vesicles, came first and provided the environment for more complex chemistry.
evrimoztamur 24 hours ago [-]
Life exists at the boundaries of density changes.
It makes absolutely no sense that the code would precede the hardware, and the hardware needs shielding.
StopDisinfo910 17 hours ago [-]
It doesn’t have to make sense.
It’s all a case of dynamic equilibrium in complex systems and emergence. Finality doesn’t really come into it.
codesnik 21 hours ago [-]
but actual code preceded the hardware!
anonzzzies 19 hours ago [-]
indeed, people like Dijkstra wrote quire a bit of code on paper before the hardware to run that code existed.
Gravityloss 15 hours ago [-]
Well, there existed ware, the code ran on wetware
rollcat 17 hours ago [-]
This. Ada Lovelace wrote programs for Babbage's analytical engine long before anyone succeeded at constructing one.
The source code of life is recorded and transmitted using physical matter.
Physics very much matters to matter.
For development of any information storage systems made of molecules, there must be a supportive development environment.
To even start the process of doing anything like what we see happening in a cell, homeostasis must be achieved first, and not inelegantly, its not good enough to have a complete cell wall if it has no ports for entry and exit of nutrients and waste product, thats also known as a coffin.
Both the walls and the gates and the information / physical systems to reliably exploit those features must be present at the same time to enable abiogenesis.
SJC_Hacker 14 hours ago [-]
Not necessarily. The primitive cell wall could have used other mechanisms. For example simple protrusion of the membrane does not have to resulr in catastrophic collapse, if done slowly enough membrane allows substances to enter and exit and still remain intact by closing up quickly after wall is broken
If you play around with soap bubbles carefully you can observe phenomena like this.
AllegedAlec 15 hours ago [-]
Congratulations. Now go and read the literature and learn how this might've occurred. You're not the first person to raise these objections. Biologists aren't morons.
10 hours ago [-]
oh_fiddlesticks 10 hours ago [-]
Having read a fair amount of the literature, it's not that compelling.
I would encourage people to stake their life on it, let's put it that way.
tomrod 17 hours ago [-]
I see where you're coming from, but I think you're thinking across too far over the boundary. Quantum mechanics aren't ordinarily affected by non-sentient life, they're just primitive to the environment at the macro level.
root_axis 16 hours ago [-]
Quantum mechanics has no relationship to sentience.
parineum 14 hours ago [-]
That's a pretty strong statement considering both facts that quantum mechanics affects everything and sentience is not understood.
root_axis 9 hours ago [-]
Quantum mechanics is a well defined theory and sentience, however you define it, has nothing to do with it. Your reasoning is akin to saying "gravity affects everything so you can't rule out it has some connection to sentience". It's a meaningless statement.
tomrod 16 hours ago [-]
Correct. My apologies that my comment was unclear such that from my comment's content one could not distinguish particle accelerators built by sentient life and woo-woo New Age claims of "The Secret" or manifesting.
fooker 17 hours ago [-]
Funny that code did predate hardware.
cmrx64 23 hours ago [-]
transmembrane proteins are complex hardware of their own…
bongodongobob 23 hours ago [-]
I think the idea is that if you have a nice bubbly froth and some proteins/RNA type thing end up inside and help reinforce the bubble wall through electrostatic forces you get a symbiotic relationship. The soup inside reinforces the bubbles around it.
dsign 21 hours ago [-]
And everything that we hold dear happens after that.
I don't object to this explanation of the world, but I reckon it's an uphill battle convincing people that all of the living natural world, and all of human history, their culture, their religions and their science and all the beliefs in-between had their origin in some electrostatic forces. I'm of the opinion that even well-informed people of science haven't had time to fully adjust their world-view during the handful of decades we have known this much.
igleria 19 hours ago [-]
Dunno about everyone else, but if that is the origin of everything that lives on this planet, I'd find relief. One less question in an ever increasing sea of questions is better than just an ever increasing sea of questions.
kjkjadksj 13 hours ago [-]
Part of what makes RNA world so compelling is the RNA is both code and hardware. Yes, central dogma is not the end all be all. RNA structures can be catalytic just like enzymes.
griffzhowl 11 hours ago [-]
> It's thought that life on Earth started with RNA mayhem, not with vessels to isolate from it.
They're not mutually exclusive. You could have various kinds of autocatalytic sets of molecules, including RNA, inside and outside lipid vesicles, and some of them might have re-produced better than others. Anything that could have happened in an open ocean of nuleotides and amino acids could also take place within a lipid vesicle, just that within some vesicle maybe the right concentrations of molecules had at some point emerged that could more easily reproduce itself than in the open ocean where the particular autocatalytic set could be washed away by the surrounding molecular chaos.
ggm 1 days ago [-]
I like the "vesicle first" theory because planar sheets of reaction can form perturbations, so getting from two surfaces mixing to complex shapes and enclosures feels plausible given any significant vibration or wave.
Once you have an enclosure you have potential for osmosis and other differentials across the boundary. It's not life Jim, but it's one hell of a building block/precursor.
polishdude20 1 days ago [-]
This is very similar to Nick Lane's theory of the origins of life.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem on the topic of Ocean is Conscious.
dekhn 12 hours ago [-]
This isn't really a "finding"- it's a theoretical prediction based on observed data, along with a proposed experimental apparatus to detect such items.
I don't really get excited for theoretical predictions like this - I want experimental observations!
quantum_magpie 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dekhn 9 hours ago [-]
I have a clue, and my point is not pedantic, it's clarifying. If they found- using experimental apparatus- some physical evidence, it would be a 'finding'.
plumb_bob_00 4 hours ago [-]
GP was rude and out of line, but to be frank with you, it is pedantic to quibble about the definition of the word "finding", a word which doesn't even appear in the article (yes, I did see the title).
If the research doesn't interest or impress you, there's plenty of other articles.
Iv 15 hours ago [-]
*methane and ethane lakes
Thought it could be a useful precision.
graypegg 11 hours ago [-]
Ah... so you're telling me I should delay my plans for the firepit on the titan lake-side human-alien diplomacy embassy? I feel like I won't be able to show them a great time without s'mores.
dash2 23 hours ago [-]
This feels very cynical, but what incentive does NASA have to do research showing alien life is not very likely in our solar system?
robbomacrae 22 hours ago [-]
Regardless of incentives I think this is some of the most important research they should be doing. As a species we need to get a better understanding of the probability of life on other planets and therefore a better understanding of fermi's paradox in case the dark forest theory is correct. So if NASA has an incentive to discover potential pathways for extraterrestrial life... great!
dash2 20 hours ago [-]
The problem is that the incentive is biased against scepticism. So the process is more likely to find potential pathways but not notice obstacles or counter arguments.
pavel_lishin 16 hours ago [-]
> a better understanding of fermi's paradox in case the dark forest theory is correct.
We know so little about this, that we can't even begin to estimate the probabilities. It seems like other things are known potential dangers to us, no?
14 hours ago [-]
catigula 16 hours ago [-]
A non-trivial faction of our government has been teasing knowledge of some sort of non-human intelligent lifeform (that word isn't considered precisely accurate) on EARTH.
This isn't some crackpot theory, they've been having congressional hearings about it and congresspeople say it's real. You can think they are or aren't credible or being lied to, but, if congresspeople are part of or victims of some sort of psy-op with vague parameters and goals, our entire system of government is basically forfeit.
I realize this is difficult to deal with but it's a pretty well-established fact at this point.
We don't need to go anywhere for this information.
GolfPopper 14 hours ago [-]
>our entire system of government is basically forfeit.
<looks at America's current government>
Yep, that seems accurate. Like it or not, the current US government is full of crackpot theories.
The "evidence" of "aliens" inevitably turns out to be blurry footage where people with bias tell you what you're supposed to think it is.
As for the U.S. Congress, you're talking about a body that has been avoiding it's own responsibilities for decades, particularly so right now. Invoking "Congressional hearings" here is an appeal to an unqualified authority. (Congressional representatives presumably has some experience with laws. I do not believe they are qualified for video forensics.)
kjkjadksj 13 hours ago [-]
Have you seen the footage? It isn’t blurry cell phone videos. It is quite clear thermal imagery from aircraft and drones. The most recent video going around shows a reaper drone tracking one of these objects that does not change its vector much after being hit with a kinetic missile.
GolfPopper 11 hours ago [-]
>thermal imagery
I have seen that one, as it happens. I am not an expert, but it looks to me like the asserted Hellfire hits a cruise missile and knocks some pieces off as the Hellfire fails to detonate, and the cruise missile then course corrects from getting knocked around.
The best way to determine that would be to have a number of experts independently assess the footage without being primed as to its provenance. A presentation by someone who is already convinced it's aliens to some congresscritters in need of a distraction is hardly that.
kjkjadksj 9 hours ago [-]
If it was merely that, why is it being presented to congress? How would the US military not know the origin of a cruise missile they are tracking? How many cruise missiles out there can take a broadside from a hellfire at 1000mph and continue on its direction of travel?
catigula 9 hours ago [-]
The information you claim to want isn't accessible to you. The US government has "platforms" with vast arrays of sensors and data collection capability - redundant, multiplicative platforms measuring things you and I might not even know about - and they use this data to get a pretty good idea of what they're looking at.
You're seeing a grainy video for a reason. It would be trivial for you to have every piece of data related to an incident but if you did, that might be problematic for multiple reasons, one of them being it would expose capability. Usually, multi-million dollar missiles aren't used on unknown targets with unknown capabilities for unknown reasons. Thus, more information is required.
So, where are we left? With you demanding inaccessible information to draw a conclusion. Given that you can't have it, you're essentially just throwing your hands up and saying "well, I guess we can't know". Fine, but untrue, as we can simply demand to know.
That is what people are doing. If you're at all concerned by any of this, you should be in this camp as well.
Regarding "distraction", how is this a "good" distraction if it's not a widely credibly held position and can clearly damage your reputation? This is just a nonsense idea. There's no reason to believe these people are lying.
crackrook 15 hours ago [-]
> You can think they [...] aren't credible
I think I'd pick this one as being the simplest and most likely explanation if my other options are "psy-op[s] with vague parameters" and non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us. Congress people believing falsehoods is nothing new.
catigula 14 hours ago [-]
Non-human intelligence sharing the planet with us is a mundane explanation. It's a completely trivial possibility in the vastly expansive fields of biology and physics. Earth is known to host extremely complex life and is the only known planet to do so. To look for unknown forms of life one need only look at their feet. Bacteria was a previously unknown, extremely expansive form of life on Earth.
We unlocked the secrets of the atom and gained within it the capability of ending all life on earth trivially. Other secrets being locked behind physics isn't a radical speculation. In fact, it's surprising that we haven't really seen any since.
crackrook 11 hours ago [-]
Before we had the instruments to observe them directly we could theorize about the existence of bacteria because we could indirectly observe them through their effects on our biology and even their macroscopic effects on populations, effects that had no better explanations. I am not aware of any mysteries that are most simply explained by a hitherto unobserved, technologically advanced (I assume we're not talking about dolphins when we say) "non-human intelligence", whether they supposedly dwell in the depths of the ocean, the Earth's crust, Titan, or anywhere else in the universe. SETI has been listening for ~60 years and hasn't heard a peep from any of the billions (trillions?) exoplanet's worth of radio signals that could have reached us in that time.
The available-to-me evidence suggests that technologically advanced species are exceedingly rare, and the only such species we're aware of emits an overwhelming number of artifacts that would serve as evidence for its existence, so it would be very much not mundane to discover that another one has been living under our noses this whole time.
I am not making a truth claim here, as in "it's definitively untrue that there are non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us," I'm just arguing that it's an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence - grainy footage and hearsay isn't enough for me.
catigula 11 hours ago [-]
>I am not aware of any mysteries that are most simply explained by a hitherto unobserved, technologically advanced (I assume we're not talking about dolphins when we say) "non-human intelligence"
This is precisely the point. You aren't aware of these mysteries, despite the earnest attempts of many to bring them to your direct attention.
There is no longer any attempt to hide the mysteries categorically, so this lack of information is now on you.
>I am not making a truth claim here, as in "it's definitively untrue that there are non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us," I'm just arguing that it's an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence - grainy footage and hearsay isn't enough for me.
Yes, that's why the correct scenario is wide declassification of the premises that are asserted in this regard, i.e. to make general knowledge of unidentifiable phenomena which have no definitive known cause or origin, communication with these entities, capture of their technology, etc. All of these things could be explained by various competing theories, some of them "simple" (funny how Occam's razor is always just what I prefer), but this information, which has been trickling out from credible sources, needs to be brought into the public space and then we get to decide what it implies or doesn't imply.
Right now there is a deliberate veil of secrecy and serious mysteries that aren't denied by anybody serious. They definitively exist.
IAmBroom 11 hours ago [-]
> Right now there is a deliberate veil of secrecy and serious mysteries that aren't denied by anybody serious. They definitively exist.
OK, I get that you're a cryptozoology/"aliens walk among us!" kinda person, but...
A lack of evidence against a theory is never evidence for the theory. It's very hard to prove a negative.
catigula 11 hours ago [-]
Curious that you immediately descend into partisan thought short-circuiting and now that that didn't work, you come up with a new angle.
crackrook 3 hours ago [-]
The person you're replying to wasn't the one who invoked what you call "partisan thought short circuiting," (which, I have to say, reads a lot like parody). It was me. Occam's razor is not at all about "what I prefer" and is entirely about preferring theories with evidence over those that are lacking (instead of inventing new theories to explain away the lack of evidence).
crackrook 3 hours ago [-]
> the correct scenario is wide declassification
It sounds to me like you and I see the same expansive hole where the evidence should be. My preference would be to say "show me a claim without a hole or stop wasting my time," you appear to assume that the evidence exists - because someone "credible" said it's so - and demand that the hole be filled immediately.
To claim there exists a grand conspiracy and web of well-kept secrets, ironically, is to try to explain away the first substanceless claim with a new one.
IAmBroom 14 hours ago [-]
> This isn't some crackpot theory, they've been having congressional hearings about it and congresspeople say it's real.
Congresspeople also say Jewish space lasers are a thing.
> You can think they are or aren't credible or being lied to
Yes, I do. The current GOP party is not interested in any way in scientific fact.
catigula 14 hours ago [-]
You've immunized yourself from any possibility of entertaining this information. Many people sharing it aren't republicans, including senators.
ceejayoz 14 hours ago [-]
Senators are humans, and the selection process prioritizes charm over knowledge. Many people share all sorts of silly ideas.
I'm very prepared to look at evidence of aliens visiting Earth, but it better be damned good evidence.
kjkjadksj 13 hours ago [-]
Where do you draw the line for sufficient evidence? Are congressional hearings on recordings from US armed forces insufficient? It isn’t like the videos lack provenance like something random from youtube.
ceejayoz 12 hours ago [-]
> Are congressional hearings on recordings from US armed forces insufficient?
Have you watched a congressional hearing? They serve primarily as evidence that politicians like to hear themselves speak.
rkomorn 13 hours ago [-]
I draw the line at "we have conclusive evidence that it is extra terrestrial", not at "we don't know what it is", and I would say they are categorically not the same.
catigula 11 hours ago [-]
Nobody definitively says it's extra-terrestrial. In fact, the common thread seems to be that the entities are from Earth or from a dimensional space where that concept is potentially invalid. Other people speculate that they may come from the ocean. Regardless, I don't see much interest in the "they came from outer space" hypothesis, which makes sense, as it is very big out there and we already know a planet/region that sustains life and it's the closest planet of them all.
What isn't in contention is that there are unexplained phenomena to varying levels of description (president Obama confirmed the lowest level of description, i.e. that they exist and that they cannot be definitively explained).
A common additive to this contention is that these phenomena have intelligence and motives. You needent accept this, in fact I encourage you to not trivially accept it, but there is growing evidence that it is true. Is this a complete mind-fuck? Yes. Does that 'matter' in any real sense of the term? No, not really.
An additionally common follow-on from here is that the motives of the aforementioned intelligence aren't good and we cannot counter them using our technology, and this justifies the veil of secrecy. A lot of people seem very convinced by this. I can plausibly come up with some scenarios where this might be true, i.e. scenarios where knowledge would completely collapse the government, but I still think I'd prefer to have the information than not.
Anyways, the very concept you're highlighting is actually what is in the accepted UAP record. Theories, inconclusive evidence as to origin.
I have a feeling that the actual phenomenon relates to physics and the mystery of dark matter, and it's also probably a still very very small part of an even infinitely more complex, "higher" noumenal world, but I'm just speculating.
Dilettante_ 15 hours ago [-]
>if congresspeople are part of or victims of some sort of psy-op [...] our entire system of government is basically forfeit.
And you're asserting that this cannot possibly be the case? "For that which must not be, cannot be"?
catigula 15 hours ago [-]
No, I'm just asserting that I don't find that theory tenable.
I'd love to know more (even your mundane explanation of "there's a psy-op on congresspeople for some reason" - if so, why?) but it's been decided that we're not allowed.
Dilettante_ 13 hours ago [-]
If we take "psy-ops exist"(In my head, "propaganda" is a type of psy-op, but I would not disagree if you drew the circle tighter than that) as a prior, I would have to ask why in the world congresspeople would not be subject to them, both to those that target a broader population, which they are still undeniably part of, and to those that target policy-makers specifically, because if you had the power to influence people, it seems obvious to me that you would target those that gave you great leverage.
IAmBroom 14 hours ago [-]
One needn't posit a "psy-op".
We already know major GOP leaders court votes by pushing absurd ideas that are rejected by the scientific establishment. "Injecting bleach can cure Covid" is one from the highest-ranking GOP elected official. "No vaccines are safe" is from a top health official.
fwip 15 hours ago [-]
Making the analysis harder is the fact that those politicians are either exceedingly stupid or brazen liars, or both.
catigula 15 hours ago [-]
Credible non-politicians, people in sensitive CIA or senior military leadership have consistently made these claims. They may all be liars, but none seem particularly stupid.
One problem is that we haven't gotten a "UAP Snowden". Such a person has seen a serious chilling effect.
rkomorn 14 hours ago [-]
Or maybe there's been "no UAP Snowden" because there's actually nothing to leak.
catigula 12 hours ago [-]
No, that isn't possible.
Note that my post was designed to be agnostic. Leaking a psy-op, or leaking the extensive, close-up details of UAP phenomena which we do have (president Obama himself said there are confirmed unknown phenomena, taking him at his word on this topic), is still a Snowden style leak, especially if they continue to do this dog and pony show in congress and elsewhere.
There's also not a nuclear physics Snowden, or F-47 Snowden, do you think there's nothing to leak?
rkomorn 11 hours ago [-]
> There's also not a nuclear physics Snowden, or F-47 Snowden, do you think there's nothing to leak?
There might be, but even if there was, a leak in those fields would still have no bearing on whether or not there are actual things to leak regarding UAPs.
Maybe the info is simply not public because publishing it would let the very likely other humans responsible for said UAPs know that we do and don't know what they're up to.
And it could also be that that info on UAPs isn't leaked because (unlike the Snowden leaks), they aren't actually relevant to Americans and to their liberties, and so the people who have access to that info see no point in leaking it.
catigula 11 hours ago [-]
I'm going to address your hypothesis of "unknown technologies". It's something that widely seems credible but really isn't.
These phenomena have been documented, in-depth, for many, many decades. Credible sources note that certain materials and devices (I don't want to use the term 'craft') have been in government possession for going on 90 years, since the end of WW2. The notion that some country had achieved technical supremacy such that we still find their technology unidentifiable for 90 years isn't tenable.
Everyone involved in what the public knows about this are largely credible people who have undergone a classification briefing of what information they have, carefully vetting what they're able to share. They seem to feel that this topic is relevant to Americans and their civil liberties, they simply don't want to go to jail. I would tend to agree with these people.
Now, the government can actually just say whatever Dave Grusch knows about these entities can be declassified. Just say, "Dave is not bound by classification for any claims relating to contact with entities, deals with entities, specific information about entities, etc." This would instantly discredit his claims, because he'd be free to make outlandish and absurd claims without being able to hide behind the veil of "it's classified, we have to discuss this in a SCIF".
If they don't exist, what's the problem? This is a man we know was at the highest levels of the actual stuff he's talking about. He's a credible source. If he's making outlandish claims, just lift the veil of secrecy.
Of course they don't do that because it is classified.
IAmBroom 11 hours ago [-]
> (president Obama himself said there are confirmed unknown phenomena, taking him at his word on this topic),
So, by one POTUS admitting that we don't already know everything about everything, that proves aliens are here and they look like little grayskinned ET's?
kjkjadksj 13 hours ago [-]
By that logic there was nothing to leak before snowden
rkomorn 12 hours ago [-]
By that logic, you're also hiding the truth that you are actually seven sentient potatoes in a wetsuit. It just hasn't been revealed yet.
Except there is no "logic" to thinking a leak just hasn't happened "yet".
There's no "logic" to thinking that the absence of a leak implies there is information to be leaked.
kjkjadksj 13 hours ago [-]
Isn’t David Grusch just that?
carabiner 10 hours ago [-]
That's just a null result from attempting to prove that life elsewhere does exist.
jiggawatts 22 hours ago [-]
This is a point I keep making: every one of NASA’s Mars missions has very carefully excluded any scientific instrument that could conclusively eliminate the presence of life... and hence future missions to find life.
I.e.: they don’t carry high power microscopes because apparently there’s no room for one on a 900kg rover the size of a car.
someothherguyy 22 hours ago [-]
> they don’t carry high power microscopes because apparently there’s no room for one on a 900kg rover the size of a car
They do though:
"The WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) is a reflight of the MAHLI (MArs Hand Lens Imager) that is a part of the Curiosity rover (Edgett et al., 2012). WATSON obtains full-color images from microscopic scales (∼13 μm/pixel) to infinity and is used for initial textural analysis of rock and regolith targets, as well as to assess potential proximity science targets and the safety of robotic arm activities (Edgett et al., 2012). The ACI (Autofocus Contextual Imager) is a fixed field, 10.1 μm/pixel resolution grayscale imager used to obtain best-focus and colocate laser spots with surface feature analyzed during SHERLOC spectroscopic investigations (Bhartia et al., 2021)."
They do not, because that's not high power microscope. I chose my words carefully.
10-13 μm per pixel is nowhere near good enough when a typical bacterium is 0.5 - 5.0 μm in size!
I remember the discussions around the mission plan for both Opportunity and Curiosity where NASA kept making "mumbly" noises about why they can't ship decent optics with these things.
Anything that would definitely eliminate (not just "potentially find") the presence of either life or water is never included. It's always omitted, for "reasons".
Water and life must forever remain possible things for the funding to keep flowing.
maxbond 21 hours ago [-]
Individual bacteria are also generally not visible in optical microscopes without staining. If there was life on the surface of mars, you probably wouldn't need a microscope to see it. Just like you don't need a microscope to observe your bread it's moldy.
Water isn't an abstract possibility on Mars. It's a reality. They've found minerals that only form in water, they've found ice, they've observed erosion. We don't understand the hydrology of Mars but it isn't some kind of conspiracy. It's a laborious process, which they continue to chug away at.
Looking for life isn't the primary mission of Mars rovers. They're remote controlled geologists. The search for life really has nothing to do with funding for Mars missions. No one expects to find it.
someothherguyy 20 hours ago [-]
> 10-13 μm per pixel is nowhere near good enough when a typical bacterium is 0.5 - 5.0 μm in size!
You're nitpicking. They said "typical"; they did not say "all".
Technically, a one-foot diameter dog's vomit slime mold is a single cell.
20 hours ago [-]
Scarblac 22 hours ago [-]
What kind of instrument could conclusively eliminate presence of life?
keithwhor 22 hours ago [-]
One that goes boom.
lukan 22 hours ago [-]
Some bacteria survives hard radiation of deep space in stasis mode.
jiggawatts 21 hours ago [-]
Anything that can return a sample. Notice that Curiosity collects samples, but omits the sample return rocket.
A good enough microscope can easily tell the difference between life and non-life, especially in the presence of water. If it moves on its own, it is almost certainly alive!
Certain kinds of chromatographs can conclusively determine that no complex chemicals are present, the kind essential to life. I.e.: if only simple metal oxides and the like are present, then you have only a rock.
rsynnott 19 hours ago [-]
> Anything that can return a sample. Notice that Curiosity collects samples, but omits the sample return rocket.
NASA (and also the Soviet Union and ESA) have repeatedly designed Mars sample return missions, but have not done them for budgetary reasons; it would be tremendously difficult and expensive.
Here's the current one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA-ESA_Mars_Sample_Return - however, given that it was hitting funding problems even _before_ ol' minihands gutted NASA funding, it seems destined to become yet another NASA/ESA canceled program (there's a bit of a history of ambitious NASA/ESA collaborations which die when one side or the other pulls the budgetary plug; JWST was likely lucky to escape this fate, say).
This puts it in a particularly weird place, as the earth return section is already built and due to launch on an Ariane 6 in two years (it will then proceed, slowly, to Mars using an ion drive, and await the lander and Mars launcher, which will presumably never arrive because budgets).
IAmBroom 14 hours ago [-]
You're suggesting we can state "Mars has no life" based on a single sample?
If that's so, I can produce a sample of material from the center of the Amazon rain forest that will conclusively prove to you that Earth is also lifeless.
someothherguyy 19 hours ago [-]
> A good enough microscope can easily tell the difference between life and non-life, especially in the presence of water.
" Inorganic precipitation processes are capable of producing a wide range of morphological outputs. This range includes shapes with both crystallographic and non-crystallographic symmetry elements. Among the latter, morphologies that mimic primitive living organisms are easily obtained under different physico-chemical conditions including those that are geochemically plausible. The application of this information to the problem of deciphering primitive life on the early Earth and Mars is discussed. It is concluded that morphology cannot be used unambiguously as a tool for primitive life detection. "
you should go work for spacex and show them how to do the sample return. they've thought about it for at least a decade now and haven't yet. so you can go there and show them how since it's so easy. you'll be millionaire real quick i promise.
lukan 22 hours ago [-]
Erm, just no. I have an old book lying around about Viking, the first mission to the surface of Mars and written before it reached Mars. The book is full of the expectation that they will find life and are rather curious what kind of life. (And the book describes all the instruments and methology)
But no traces of life were found ever.
If there is life on Mars, it is hidden underground in vulcanic active areas and alike and no mission we can do today, could conclude with certainty that there is no life on Mars. But we have been looking real hard.
veqq 22 hours ago [-]
What's the name of the book?
lukan 22 hours ago [-]
Projekt Viking by Ernst Stuhlinger.
But in german and no idea if it was ever translated, but I assume similar books exist in english.
markus_zhang 16 hours ago [-]
OK so maybe they should drop a monolith there instead.
lifestyleguru 11 hours ago [-]
Within the Solar System we are the only life, look further, much much further. What's the probability of life developing on TWO bodies within one planetary system? Looking for another life within Solar System is exceptionalism similar to geocentrism.
Razengan 11 hours ago [-]
If all life starts at the microscopic scale, then the most common life in the universe will be microscopic.
Does that mean the most common forms of intelligent life in the universe may be very small too? Or is there a minimum body size required for "intelligence"?
metalman 19 hours ago [-]
This article is a wonderfull fever dream of genisis.Though it's starting point is mundane.
The whole vesicle theory is built on a physical/mechanical process ubiquitous in nature,that so far has no connection with life.
Wildly suggestive and so so close, but when you look at the actual way vesicles are made, and cell walls are made, they are not the same, but have the same properties, as it lkely that physics and chemistry only allow for tiny bubbles(cue track), to form in a limited number of ways, one is an accident, and the other a mystery.
IAmBroom 14 hours ago [-]
> The whole vesicle theory is built on a physical/mechanical process ubiquitous in nature,that so far has no connection with life.
To be fair, the conditions that were ubiquitous on Earth when life first formed are now extraordinarily rare, if they exist anywhere at all on the planet.
Padriac 22 hours ago [-]
... or they might not.
1 days ago [-]
alessandru 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
neutrinobro 16 hours ago [-]
Titan is completely dead, you can bet on that.
IAmBroom 14 hours ago [-]
I would bet on that, but not with absolute certainty.
neutrinobro 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
IAmBroom 11 hours ago [-]
But I saw a movie where some tentacled thing ate the first astronaut to go there!
Rendered at 05:38:44 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Among other things, it contains details on what amphiphiles might actually be present on Titan, a very nice set of diagrams explaining their proposed process, and proposals for lab experiments to verify whether the process is possible. I've had a soft spot for the vesicle-first theory of abiogenesis since I first heard of it, so I hope someone runs the experiments. But as far as I can tell, this is all theoretical so far.
It makes absolutely no sense that the code would precede the hardware, and the hardware needs shielding.
It’s all a case of dynamic equilibrium in complex systems and emergence. Finality doesn’t really come into it.
Physics very much matters to matter.
For development of any information storage systems made of molecules, there must be a supportive development environment.
To even start the process of doing anything like what we see happening in a cell, homeostasis must be achieved first, and not inelegantly, its not good enough to have a complete cell wall if it has no ports for entry and exit of nutrients and waste product, thats also known as a coffin.
Both the walls and the gates and the information / physical systems to reliably exploit those features must be present at the same time to enable abiogenesis.
If you play around with soap bubbles carefully you can observe phenomena like this.
I would encourage people to stake their life on it, let's put it that way.
I don't object to this explanation of the world, but I reckon it's an uphill battle convincing people that all of the living natural world, and all of human history, their culture, their religions and their science and all the beliefs in-between had their origin in some electrostatic forces. I'm of the opinion that even well-informed people of science haven't had time to fully adjust their world-view during the handful of decades we have known this much.
They're not mutually exclusive. You could have various kinds of autocatalytic sets of molecules, including RNA, inside and outside lipid vesicles, and some of them might have re-produced better than others. Anything that could have happened in an open ocean of nuleotides and amino acids could also take place within a lipid vesicle, just that within some vesicle maybe the right concentrations of molecules had at some point emerged that could more easily reproduce itself than in the open ocean where the particular autocatalytic set could be washed away by the surrounding molecular chaos.
Once you have an enclosure you have potential for osmosis and other differentials across the boundary. It's not life Jim, but it's one hell of a building block/precursor.
It's a good read, and I still think about the concept of origin of life in these terms every now and then.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem on the topic of Ocean is Conscious.
I don't really get excited for theoretical predictions like this - I want experimental observations!
If the research doesn't interest or impress you, there's plenty of other articles.
Thought it could be a useful precision.
We know so little about this, that we can't even begin to estimate the probabilities. It seems like other things are known potential dangers to us, no?
This isn't some crackpot theory, they've been having congressional hearings about it and congresspeople say it's real. You can think they are or aren't credible or being lied to, but, if congresspeople are part of or victims of some sort of psy-op with vague parameters and goals, our entire system of government is basically forfeit.
I realize this is difficult to deal with but it's a pretty well-established fact at this point.
We don't need to go anywhere for this information.
<looks at America's current government>
Yep, that seems accurate. Like it or not, the current US government is full of crackpot theories.
The "evidence" of "aliens" inevitably turns out to be blurry footage where people with bias tell you what you're supposed to think it is.
As for the U.S. Congress, you're talking about a body that has been avoiding it's own responsibilities for decades, particularly so right now. Invoking "Congressional hearings" here is an appeal to an unqualified authority. (Congressional representatives presumably has some experience with laws. I do not believe they are qualified for video forensics.)
I have seen that one, as it happens. I am not an expert, but it looks to me like the asserted Hellfire hits a cruise missile and knocks some pieces off as the Hellfire fails to detonate, and the cruise missile then course corrects from getting knocked around.
The best way to determine that would be to have a number of experts independently assess the footage without being primed as to its provenance. A presentation by someone who is already convinced it's aliens to some congresscritters in need of a distraction is hardly that.
You're seeing a grainy video for a reason. It would be trivial for you to have every piece of data related to an incident but if you did, that might be problematic for multiple reasons, one of them being it would expose capability. Usually, multi-million dollar missiles aren't used on unknown targets with unknown capabilities for unknown reasons. Thus, more information is required.
So, where are we left? With you demanding inaccessible information to draw a conclusion. Given that you can't have it, you're essentially just throwing your hands up and saying "well, I guess we can't know". Fine, but untrue, as we can simply demand to know.
That is what people are doing. If you're at all concerned by any of this, you should be in this camp as well.
Regarding "distraction", how is this a "good" distraction if it's not a widely credibly held position and can clearly damage your reputation? This is just a nonsense idea. There's no reason to believe these people are lying.
I think I'd pick this one as being the simplest and most likely explanation if my other options are "psy-op[s] with vague parameters" and non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us. Congress people believing falsehoods is nothing new.
We unlocked the secrets of the atom and gained within it the capability of ending all life on earth trivially. Other secrets being locked behind physics isn't a radical speculation. In fact, it's surprising that we haven't really seen any since.
The available-to-me evidence suggests that technologically advanced species are exceedingly rare, and the only such species we're aware of emits an overwhelming number of artifacts that would serve as evidence for its existence, so it would be very much not mundane to discover that another one has been living under our noses this whole time.
I am not making a truth claim here, as in "it's definitively untrue that there are non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us," I'm just arguing that it's an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence - grainy footage and hearsay isn't enough for me.
This is precisely the point. You aren't aware of these mysteries, despite the earnest attempts of many to bring them to your direct attention.
There is no longer any attempt to hide the mysteries categorically, so this lack of information is now on you.
>I am not making a truth claim here, as in "it's definitively untrue that there are non-human intelligences sharing the planet with us," I'm just arguing that it's an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence - grainy footage and hearsay isn't enough for me.
Yes, that's why the correct scenario is wide declassification of the premises that are asserted in this regard, i.e. to make general knowledge of unidentifiable phenomena which have no definitive known cause or origin, communication with these entities, capture of their technology, etc. All of these things could be explained by various competing theories, some of them "simple" (funny how Occam's razor is always just what I prefer), but this information, which has been trickling out from credible sources, needs to be brought into the public space and then we get to decide what it implies or doesn't imply.
Right now there is a deliberate veil of secrecy and serious mysteries that aren't denied by anybody serious. They definitively exist.
OK, I get that you're a cryptozoology/"aliens walk among us!" kinda person, but...
A lack of evidence against a theory is never evidence for the theory. It's very hard to prove a negative.
It sounds to me like you and I see the same expansive hole where the evidence should be. My preference would be to say "show me a claim without a hole or stop wasting my time," you appear to assume that the evidence exists - because someone "credible" said it's so - and demand that the hole be filled immediately.
To claim there exists a grand conspiracy and web of well-kept secrets, ironically, is to try to explain away the first substanceless claim with a new one.
Congresspeople also say Jewish space lasers are a thing.
> You can think they are or aren't credible or being lied to
Yes, I do. The current GOP party is not interested in any way in scientific fact.
I'm very prepared to look at evidence of aliens visiting Earth, but it better be damned good evidence.
Have you watched a congressional hearing? They serve primarily as evidence that politicians like to hear themselves speak.
What isn't in contention is that there are unexplained phenomena to varying levels of description (president Obama confirmed the lowest level of description, i.e. that they exist and that they cannot be definitively explained).
A common additive to this contention is that these phenomena have intelligence and motives. You needent accept this, in fact I encourage you to not trivially accept it, but there is growing evidence that it is true. Is this a complete mind-fuck? Yes. Does that 'matter' in any real sense of the term? No, not really.
An additionally common follow-on from here is that the motives of the aforementioned intelligence aren't good and we cannot counter them using our technology, and this justifies the veil of secrecy. A lot of people seem very convinced by this. I can plausibly come up with some scenarios where this might be true, i.e. scenarios where knowledge would completely collapse the government, but I still think I'd prefer to have the information than not.
Anyways, the very concept you're highlighting is actually what is in the accepted UAP record. Theories, inconclusive evidence as to origin.
I have a feeling that the actual phenomenon relates to physics and the mystery of dark matter, and it's also probably a still very very small part of an even infinitely more complex, "higher" noumenal world, but I'm just speculating.
And you're asserting that this cannot possibly be the case? "For that which must not be, cannot be"?
I'd love to know more (even your mundane explanation of "there's a psy-op on congresspeople for some reason" - if so, why?) but it's been decided that we're not allowed.
We already know major GOP leaders court votes by pushing absurd ideas that are rejected by the scientific establishment. "Injecting bleach can cure Covid" is one from the highest-ranking GOP elected official. "No vaccines are safe" is from a top health official.
One problem is that we haven't gotten a "UAP Snowden". Such a person has seen a serious chilling effect.
Note that my post was designed to be agnostic. Leaking a psy-op, or leaking the extensive, close-up details of UAP phenomena which we do have (president Obama himself said there are confirmed unknown phenomena, taking him at his word on this topic), is still a Snowden style leak, especially if they continue to do this dog and pony show in congress and elsewhere.
There's also not a nuclear physics Snowden, or F-47 Snowden, do you think there's nothing to leak?
There might be, but even if there was, a leak in those fields would still have no bearing on whether or not there are actual things to leak regarding UAPs.
Maybe the info is simply not public because publishing it would let the very likely other humans responsible for said UAPs know that we do and don't know what they're up to.
And it could also be that that info on UAPs isn't leaked because (unlike the Snowden leaks), they aren't actually relevant to Americans and to their liberties, and so the people who have access to that info see no point in leaking it.
These phenomena have been documented, in-depth, for many, many decades. Credible sources note that certain materials and devices (I don't want to use the term 'craft') have been in government possession for going on 90 years, since the end of WW2. The notion that some country had achieved technical supremacy such that we still find their technology unidentifiable for 90 years isn't tenable.
Everyone involved in what the public knows about this are largely credible people who have undergone a classification briefing of what information they have, carefully vetting what they're able to share. They seem to feel that this topic is relevant to Americans and their civil liberties, they simply don't want to go to jail. I would tend to agree with these people.
Now, the government can actually just say whatever Dave Grusch knows about these entities can be declassified. Just say, "Dave is not bound by classification for any claims relating to contact with entities, deals with entities, specific information about entities, etc." This would instantly discredit his claims, because he'd be free to make outlandish and absurd claims without being able to hide behind the veil of "it's classified, we have to discuss this in a SCIF".
If they don't exist, what's the problem? This is a man we know was at the highest levels of the actual stuff he's talking about. He's a credible source. If he's making outlandish claims, just lift the veil of secrecy.
Of course they don't do that because it is classified.
So, by one POTUS admitting that we don't already know everything about everything, that proves aliens are here and they look like little grayskinned ET's?
Except there is no "logic" to thinking a leak just hasn't happened "yet".
There's no "logic" to thinking that the absence of a leak implies there is information to be leaked.
I.e.: they don’t carry high power microscopes because apparently there’s no room for one on a 900kg rover the size of a car.
They do though:
"The WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) is a reflight of the MAHLI (MArs Hand Lens Imager) that is a part of the Curiosity rover (Edgett et al., 2012). WATSON obtains full-color images from microscopic scales (∼13 μm/pixel) to infinity and is used for initial textural analysis of rock and regolith targets, as well as to assess potential proximity science targets and the safety of robotic arm activities (Edgett et al., 2012). The ACI (Autofocus Contextual Imager) is a fixed field, 10.1 μm/pixel resolution grayscale imager used to obtain best-focus and colocate laser spots with surface feature analyzed during SHERLOC spectroscopic investigations (Bhartia et al., 2021)."
From: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022EA00...
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_(rover)#Instrumen...
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/scie...
10-13 μm per pixel is nowhere near good enough when a typical bacterium is 0.5 - 5.0 μm in size!
I remember the discussions around the mission plan for both Opportunity and Curiosity where NASA kept making "mumbly" noises about why they can't ship decent optics with these things.
Anything that would definitely eliminate (not just "potentially find") the presence of either life or water is never included. It's always omitted, for "reasons".
Water and life must forever remain possible things for the funding to keep flowing.
Water isn't an abstract possibility on Mars. It's a reality. They've found minerals that only form in water, they've found ice, they've observed erosion. We don't understand the hydrology of Mars but it isn't some kind of conspiracy. It's a laborious process, which they continue to chug away at.
Looking for life isn't the primary mission of Mars rovers. They're remote controlled geologists. The search for life really has nothing to do with funding for Mars missions. No one expects to find it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrombolite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spongiostromata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncolite
Technically, a one-foot diameter dog's vomit slime mold is a single cell.
A good enough microscope can easily tell the difference between life and non-life, especially in the presence of water. If it moves on its own, it is almost certainly alive!
Certain kinds of chromatographs can conclusively determine that no complex chemicals are present, the kind essential to life. I.e.: if only simple metal oxides and the like are present, then you have only a rock.
NASA (and also the Soviet Union and ESA) have repeatedly designed Mars sample return missions, but have not done them for budgetary reasons; it would be tremendously difficult and expensive.
Here's the current one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA-ESA_Mars_Sample_Return - however, given that it was hitting funding problems even _before_ ol' minihands gutted NASA funding, it seems destined to become yet another NASA/ESA canceled program (there's a bit of a history of ambitious NASA/ESA collaborations which die when one side or the other pulls the budgetary plug; JWST was likely lucky to escape this fate, say).
This puts it in a particularly weird place, as the earth return section is already built and due to launch on an Ariane 6 in two years (it will then proceed, slowly, to Mars using an ion drive, and await the lander and Mars launcher, which will presumably never arrive because budgets).
If that's so, I can produce a sample of material from the center of the Amazon rain forest that will conclusively prove to you that Earth is also lifeless.
They are still arguing over this one three decades later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg7905
" Inorganic precipitation processes are capable of producing a wide range of morphological outputs. This range includes shapes with both crystallographic and non-crystallographic symmetry elements. Among the latter, morphologies that mimic primitive living organisms are easily obtained under different physico-chemical conditions including those that are geochemically plausible. The application of this information to the problem of deciphering primitive life on the early Earth and Mars is discussed. It is concluded that morphology cannot be used unambiguously as a tool for primitive life detection. "
https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of...
you should go work for spacex and show them how to do the sample return. they've thought about it for at least a decade now and haven't yet. so you can go there and show them how since it's so easy. you'll be millionaire real quick i promise.
But no traces of life were found ever.
If there is life on Mars, it is hidden underground in vulcanic active areas and alike and no mission we can do today, could conclude with certainty that there is no life on Mars. But we have been looking real hard.
But in german and no idea if it was ever translated, but I assume similar books exist in english.
Does that mean the most common forms of intelligent life in the universe may be very small too? Or is there a minimum body size required for "intelligence"?
To be fair, the conditions that were ubiquitous on Earth when life first formed are now extraordinarily rare, if they exist anywhere at all on the planet.