"Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began.
"The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained."
I hope they're not planning to find the answers to all of these mysteries here on Earth. An honest search for the origin of life should include, at the very least, an understanding of panspermia -- and I see no way to seriously evaluate panspermia other than actually seeking out living things (or their remains) on other planets.
If we choose to go and look with open eyes -- and so far NASA has demonstrated only peripheral interest in exobiology, despite frequent sound-bites about the "search for life" in space -- then we will likely discover a Solar System brimming with tenacious life, microbial and otherwise.
And then the questions really begin.
18 comments:
"we will likely discover a Solar System brimming with tenacious life, microbial and otherwise."
Not so sure about this one. Earth and Mars may be exceptional cases (and the later seems to have been the unlucky host of a planetary cataclysm); IMO life is still quite rare in comparison to geological process. Iapetus may *appear* as if there's something peculiar about it -- suggesting possible artificiality -- but IF Iapetus (or anything on it) turned out to be artificial, I think the stuff was probably left there billions of years ago by a *visiting* race interested in studying the Saturnian system (they may have been using Iapetus as a scientific base, just like we've vaguely talked about turning our own moon into the same sort of thing). And the Saturnian System IS interesting; it may be the most interesting aspect of our solar system...
Where such visitors came from is another question, the answer to which may or may not have any connection/relation/relevance to the modern UFO phenomenon. In any case, if UFO abductors are actually ET, then I think that they, too, are from somewhere else. Where that "somewhere else" is, I can't say (and as I stated below, their reasoning patterns maybe configured in a way so far removed from our own that we would barely be able to communicate with them, much less make any sense out of their "motives").
I wasn't referring to intelligent life -- although I didn't make that too clear. However, I'm having an increasingly difficult time accepting that places such as Europa and Mars are sterile given the incredibly hardy extromophiles we're finding here at home.
However, I'm having an increasingly difficult time accepting that places such as Europa and Mars are sterile given the incredibly hardy extromophiles we're finding here at home.
Damn right. I saw Aliens of the Deep on IMAX, 29th July '05. Wow. Microbes that can survive in the black smoke of underwater volcanos? In heat that would literally melt through the submersible they were filming with?
I've never been as optimistic about alien life as I was after that.
My current working hypothesis is that life is an emergent property of complex systems, and as such, then we will indeed find that it's pretty common. Were life can exist, it will exist.
I hope that we find out life is very rare, though, for purely selfish reasons: it would disprove a major hunk of my CWH, which would force me to think up something better.
It's generally far easier to disprove something than to prove it, and more certain to boot.
"if they wanted to take over, they would have long ago, IMO. They probably just come and go, visit the nature reserve, look at the funny apes, take samples, the kids borrow dad's saucer and buzz us just for shits and giggles, hell, I dunno."
Let's assume for the moment that our UFOnauts are ET, and that their reasoning patterns are similar to our own. What could their motives possibly be for visiting our planet and abducting Earthlings? Are they here to covertly study us, our behavior, our anatomy, our physiology? If so, it's a wonder that they have anything left to study; their visitations and abductions have been going on for quite a while now. What's left that they DON'T know about us? On the other hand, they seem not to be interested in establishing any sort of communication and/or contact with us. Otherwise, wouldn't they have done so by now? Whatever they're up to, they're doing it without our permission and without explaining their reasons to us. This leads me to suspect that they're up to no good...
"All our planets should be filled with life (or most of them) if life is so common out there, yet this is not the case, or looks like it's not the case."
This is what I think too. Even if life turns out to be much more common in the universe than we once thought, it is still relatively rare in comparison to geological phenomena. The great majority of planets and moons out there are probably barren, dead (and I mean NO life -- not even microbial life).
When dice are rolled, every now and then they turn up snake-eyes or double sixes. The universe is always rolling dice, which means that there have already been a countless number of "lucky rolls" -- but at the same time the probability that the rolls should produce nothing out of the ordinary (i.e., that they should turn up "nonlucky") becomes still higher.
I'm not suggesting that we are alone (I don't think we are at all); life -- *possibly* intelligent life -- may exist on a given planet in system X in the remote corner of some galaxy far, far away (and this maybe the case for countless worlds separated from each other by great distances in spacetime)-- but the odds that it exists (even mircobially) on Jupiter, Saturn, or any of the other outer planets (including their moons) in our solar system seems slim indeed (I exempt Mars due, among other things, to my "duplication" hypothesis -- but even here life arose only because arbitrary conditions made it possible; life could just as well have duplicated itself on Venus, but it's too hot there).
"Ken Y -- This could explain the recently observed "tailing off" of UFO sightings. Maybe they did finally just get bored and leave."
I wasn't aware that UFO sightings have recently trailed off. Maybe that's because all the bullshitters who are *claiming* sightings and abductions have gotten bored with the whole idea and have begun to move on. But as far as I can tell, the UFO phenomenon itself is VERY old -- almost as old as the human race. In other words, it appears (at least to me) that we have been visited by UFOnauts since the dawn of history. True, there have always been bullshitters too -- but I somehow find it hard to believe that people have been bullshitting so consistently on this same theme for millennia. Therefore IMO it's much more likely that people HAVE been seeing UFOs since time immemorial -- so why should the phenomenon suddenly begin to taper off now at this particular point in time? Yet another mystery? Maybe, in reality, the number of UFO sightings have been consistent throughout history.
Then again, maybe you're right: Maybe the ETs just got bored and decided to take off. "Haha, what a fucked up race," they would be saying, "Earthlings were amusing at first, but after a while it got real old -- like a Seinfeld episode that's been rerun way too many times. Time to change the bat channel."
life could just as well have duplicated itself on Venus, but it's too hot there
Depends on your definition of "there." A couple years ago NASA scientists were talking about the possibility of airborne life in the upper atmosphere.
Earthlings were amusing at first, but after a while it got real old -- like a Seinfeld episode that's been rerun way too many times
Well, objectively speaking, you can never see a "Seinfeld" rerun too many times!
"Well, objectively speaking, you can never see a "Seinfeld" rerun too many times!"
You're right. I should have illustrated my point with a show which better corresponds to the "amusing" antics of our race -- like reruns of "Beavis and Butthead".
To all -
This is a long overdue project, and it promises to "fill in" some serious ambiguities in evolution.
I agree that life could have been seeded from elsewhere, but I gather that this project will be dealing with evolution from the "seeding" forward.
We have been sentient long enough now to be able to piece together a strong proof of evolution...if evolution accurately describes the mechanism.
If evolution is accurate, then we will find final proof of it and find answers to explain the exceptions, which would be a watershed moment in our history as a species.
If evolution is not accurate, we will see the rewriting of our history as a species, and with that all manner of theories would come forth. Again, a watershed moment.
The effort is to be celebrated, regardless of the ultimate finding. Either way, our world gets rocked pretty hard.
Change is good.
Kyle
"We have been sentient long enough now to be able to piece together a strong proof of evolution...if evolution accurately describes the mechanism."
The world was created in six days you heathen!
"life could just as well have duplicated itself on Venus, but it's too hot there
Depends on your definition of "there." A couple years ago NASA scientists were talking about the possibility of airborne life in the upper atmosphere."
I think I'm going to retract my earlier statement regarding Venus. It occurred to me that the bitch rotates in retrograde -- and that very slowly (243 Earth days per 1 Venus day). Mere proximity of two planets probably isn't enough to produce my duplication phenomenon. IF there is life in the upper atmosphere of Venus, it is not because of some spacetime nexus between that world and ours. In other words, life on Venus (should it exist) probably emerged and evolved altogether independently of anything that has happened on Earth.
Mars is another story: Its relative proximity, its rotation, even its size (not equal to Earth but proportionately complimentary) all factor into my hypothesis. If Martians once existed, they probably looked very similar to us (although one should not rule out environmental pressures as at least peripheral factors in Martian evolution. Martians must also have differed from us to the extent that conditions on Mars differ from conditions on Earth. Hence, Martians may have been antropoid in overall bodily structure -- as indicated by the Face -- but with some uniquely Martian characteristics due to the role adaptation plays in evolution. In other words, the overall similarities between life on Earth and the whole Martian course of biological evolution would be due to a spacetime nexus between our two worlds, whereas particular differences in strikingly similar developments should be attributed to forces of adaptation).
Ken,
"If Martians once existed, they probably looked very similar to us ..."
Why??
People seem to misuse the ideas of convergent evolution to try and show that any sentient life would be human-like."
I didn't say that ANY sentient life would be human-like. My hypothesis -- which I call the "duplication" hypothesis -- is that there is an *acausal connection principle* in the way life happened to evolve on Earth and Mars, respectively. Such an acausal connection would be due to a spacetime nexus of some sort between the two planets. Factors such as relative proximity, similarity in rotation and complimentarily proportional sizes *may* be indicative of this nexus. In short, a spacetime nexus of the sort to which I refer might conceiveably influence the entire span of evolutionary drama which took place otherwise independently on Earth and Mars. Chance may definitely play a role in biological evolution, but it may not constitute the be-all-and-end-all of it (at least not where such a spacetime nexus between two planets happens to exist).
C.G. Jung actually came up with the idea of an acausal connection principle, but his theory had to do with "meaningful coincidences" between psychic and external events (he called such phenomena "syncronicity"). My proposal is that this acausal connection principle can also be applied to two external events, provided that there is some sort of spacetime nexus between them.
I would attempt to draw up a mathematical proof of my hypothesis, but I lack the math to do so. lol
Gordon,
I consider my "duplication" hypothesis to be just that - a mere hypothesis. I came up with it to try and account for the Martian "banyan trees" (if they are indeed "trees"), as well as the "glyphs" (if they are truly glyphs) of what appear to be a big cat and the side profile of a woman. There is, of course, also the alleged Face in Cydonia, as well as the supposed remains of artificial structures (e.g., the D&M Pyramid, Tholus, Parallelogram, etc.) which -- if they are really artificial -- suggest an intelligence functioning in reasoning patterns similar to our own.
As you've pointed out, one would expect that differing conditions on differing planets would lead to widely divergent evolutionary pathways. Also, it appears that natural selection -- through which organisms develop -- is a fortuitous process in which chance (i.e., developing the right characteristics at the right time in the right place and under the right conditions) plays a primary role. If certain physical characteristics are passed on and developed in such an arbitrary manner, and if in addition to this overall environmental conditions on Mars and Earth differ, what are the odds of Martian evolution producing trees, big cats and sentient humanoids? Would their emergence be isolated instances which are merely coincidental (I mean, would Martian organisms in general still differ from the fauna and flora we find on Earth)? Or is it more likely that their existence suggests a broader similarity in evolutionary pathways on both planets? If it is the later, how did this happen?
Jung refers to syncronicity as a subjective event, but I am talking about a phenomenon *similar to* syncronicity -- NOT identical with it. Jung believed that syncronicity takes place because there is an underlying connection of some sort in spacetime between psychic and external events. Thinking along those same lines, I came up with the hypothesis that underlying connections of some sort may exist in spacetime between two external events as well -- such as, for instance, the evolution of life on Earth and Mars.
If such a spacetime nexus between Earth and Mars exists, it may have strongly influenced the way life originated and developed on both planets (i.e., it led to a "duplication" of biological development). We would have to leave room for relatively minute adaptational deviations, which are necessary and inevitable (for instance, the Martians may have been much taller than us due to reduced gravity), but the overall evolutionary process was shaped into duplicate patterns by much more powerful forces which were present due to the spacetime nexus.
But if a nexus of this sort truly exists between Earth and Mars, how do we explain it? What are its mechanics? Granted, Mars is only occassionally in conjunction with Earth (a factor you've brought to my attention, which I did not consider earlier) -- but could the nexus between them chiefly lie not in their relative proximity or configuration but in their origins? Could the manner in which both planets originated have created a spacetime nexus of some sort between them, which is evident in their proportional sizes and similar rotations (not to mention physical similarities if/when Mars had oceans and a thicker atmosphere)?
Or maybe my speculations are way off, and the mechanics of this spacetime nexus lie elsewhere altogether.
In any case, there is evidence that Mars suffered a planetary cataclysm at some point in the past. Whether this cataclysm came by way of impact with comet/asteroid or some other event (e.g., the exploding planet hypothesis) is not clear -- but whatever transpired must have obliderated life on Mars. To be sure, the spacetime nexus still exists between Earth and Mars (if it existed in the first place), but ever since the cataclysm the conditions on the later have not been conducive to reproduce what must have once flourished upon it.
If memory serves me correct, it was recently discovered that spacetime is *dragged* just a little bit in the rotation of the Earth. I'm thinking that if spacetime can be dragged in its rotation, then maybe also in its orbit. But if spacetime can be dragged, it follows that there maybe a possibility Earth's spin and orbit will effect spacetime within the proximity of Mars (and vice versa) since they occassionally come into conjunction and in any case they both rotate in the same direction, at approximately the same speed.
The spin and orbit of Earth may effect the spacetime within the proximity of Venus as well, but Venus is most likely too close to the sun (too hot) to harbor life, its atmosphere is poisonous, and it spins much more slowly than the Earth -- in retrograde, at that! Perhaps these circumstances make "duplication" an impossibility between Venus and Earth.
"Consider that any planetary cataclysm that hit Mars (and broke the effect of the nexus) must have occured millions of years ago. There were no cats or humans around then on Earth, so how could "external synchronicity" account for your glyphs?"
Actually, some scientists are speculating that the Martian cataclysm could have taken place as recently as 13,000 years ago. But in any case, my hypothesis doesn't necessarily entail that biological phenomena must be duplicated simultaneously on both planets. Mars may have developed advanced life forms long before the Earth did -- but the phenomenon would be duplicated on Earth in its own time and turn. At least that's the crux of my hypothesis.
"If there really are artificial glyphs of cats and humans on Mars, I think the most likely explanation would be that someone/something familiar with Earth _put_ them there."
I think that this is also a very real possibility. The glyphs and monuments on Mars could actually have been left by ET -- perhaps the same ET who may have been visiting/abducting us for millennia.
"As the geocsiences is an area I am actively involved in, I'd like to know which scientists have advocated a Martian cataclysm as recently as 13 000 years ago. Could you provide any links for this?"
I got this information from reading _Mars Mystery_ by Graham Hancock. Hancock alludes to a theory proposed by geographer Donald W. Patten and engineer Samuel L. WIndsor that a hypothetical tenth planet they call "Astra" came into a collision course with Mars. According to Patten and Windsor, "Astra approached to within 5,000 kilometers of Mars, well inside the Roche limit, and was torn apart by gravitational and electromagnetic forces -- splattering the Martian hemisphere that was facing it with a sudden burst of high-speed projectiles all coming in from the same direction at the same time" (Hancock p.39).
"Where Patten and Windsor do fly in the face of conventional wisdom...is in their proposed chronology. They assert that the timing of the Astra cataclysm was thousands of years ago, not millions. Subsequently they narrow down the window to a period neither earlier than 15,000 B.C. nor later than 3,000 B.C...Other authorities who make a related case include the eminent Oxford University astronomer Victor Clube and his colleague William Napier...They present evidence that a giant interstellar comet wandered into the solar system and began to fragment less than 20,000 years ago spreading ruin among the planets" (p.47).
Hancock theorizes that the global cataclysm which brought an abrupt end to the last Ice Age here on Earth was directly related to the bombardment (and death) of Mars.
Post a Comment