NASA: Evidence of extraterrestrial life

[FalleNxWiZarDx]

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_M10-167_Astrobiology.html (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_M10-167_Astrobiology.html)




WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website at http://www.nasa.gov (http://www.nasa.gov/).





Epic Thread?
Real?
Fake?

[phyzik]

The conference is real. What exactly they are announcing is anyones guess. I've heard everything from the discovery of micro-biological findings to first contact. :lol

Im leaning towards something to do with finding an oxygen Atmosphere on one of Saturns moons. I bet they found biological orginisms there as well.

[DarkReign]

Color me passively pessimistic.

[mouse]

:wakeup

[4>0rings]

Well?

[IronMaxipad]

This is what they are going to announce:


Alien life form ‘is here on Earth’

NASA, who have called a full scale press conference for tomorrow, have tried to keep their findings under wraps, though an accompanying scientific paper has been released to some journalists under embargo.

Skymania has not seen the paper and so has been free to do some detective work to discover what will be announced. Despite wild speculation on the internet, there is unlikely to be an announcement that extra-terrestrials have been discovered, for the reasons very well put forward by Stuart Atkinson’s Cumbrian Sky.

But our own investigations suggest that it follows a breakthrough in the discovery of microbes in a deadly poisonous lake that get their energy from arsenic. Experts say this shows they had a completely different origin to any other creature known on our planet. It means that life began not just once but at least twice on Earth.

A key scientist on NASA’s panel will be Dr Felisa Wolfe-Simon who has spent two years investigating Mono Lake, in California’s Yosemite National Park. The lake has no outlet and has, over many millenia, built up one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth.

Geobiologist Dr Wolfe-Simon has been looking to see whether microbes with a totally different make-up to that of conventional carbon-based life could have developed. There was an interesting article about her search for alien life on Earth in NASA’s online Astrobiology Magazine.

The importance that NASA attaches to her discovery and its implications for finding extra-terrestrial life is demonstrated by the fact that they will have on tomorrow’s panel experts on two other sites in the solar system where life might have developed.

They are Pamela Conrad who is looking for life on Mars and Steven Benner who is studying Saturn’s largest moon Titan which has a dense atmosphere like Earth but lakes of liquid methane rather than water. Also on the panel will be ecologist James Elser who is involved with a NASA-funded search for ET.

All life previously discovered is of one basic type because it relies on phosphorous as an essential building block. The newly found microbes seem to use arsenic instead.

Astrobiologist Dr Lewis Dartnell, of the Centre for Planetary Sciences in London, told Skymania today: “Mona Lake has a very high concentration of arsenic dissolved in it which is usually poisonous and consequently there’s not much life.

“I’m 90 per cent certain that Felisa has found something in Mona Lake and they have been able to demonstrate in some way that it uses arsenic in its metabolism rather than be poisoned by it.”

He added: “Phosphorous is key and absolutely essential for life. It forms the backbone of DNA. Every form of life of Earth we have known so far depends on phosphorous as well as another molecule called ATP, an energy storage molecule, or biological battery.

“It is exciting to find life in an arsenic-rich environment. If these organisms are using arsenic in their metabolism, it demonstrates that there are other life forms to that as we know it.”

Dr Dartnell went on: “There is no reason to expect that life arose just once on Earth. It could have arisen any number of times. The only reason that all life we have found so far has all descended from the same progenitor – the same mother of life – is because we’ve been looking for life in the same way.

“But if you start looking in extreme environments like Mona Lake, where our kind of life doesn’t survive very well, that’s where you find fundamentally different life forms with a separate origin. They’re aliens, but aliens that share the same home as us.”

Dr Wolfe-Simon has previously said of her research: “It may prove that there are other possibilities that are beyond our imagination. It opens the door for us to think about biology in ways we have never thought.

“We are going to look for life on other planets and we only know to look for that which we know. This may help us to develop tools to look for something we have never seen.”

Last year NASA revealed the detection of plumes of methane on Mars that offered compelling evidence that there might be life on the red planet.

British space scientist Professor Colin Pillinger, who has devoted his life to finding life on Mars, told Skymania: “If they have found anything which they can attribute to arsenic-based life then it is very interesting and obviously has connotations for other places in the universe where life forms other than the ones on Earth may very well have developed.”

[Borosai]

Boobies from Another Planet

[The Reckoning]

didnt we already know that?

[mouse]

You have to hand it to NASA they know how to work the audience, looks like they will get the $$$ they seek after all. Sorry Cancer your cure will just have to wait three more decades.

[Sisk]

You have to hand it to NASA they know how to work the audience, looks like they will get the $$$ they seek after all. Sorry Cancer your cure will just have to wait three more decades.

lol thinking cancer research and NASA research are related

Cancer hasn't been cured because there's a whole lot of money to be made in treating it.

[MannyIsGod]

lol arguing with mouse

[boutons_deux]

ET life isn't the (mouse's) Bible, therefore it can't possibly exist.

[JoeChalupa]

mouse is a cancer.

[mouse]

lol thinking cancer research and NASA research are related

They both use up money,research,and scientific breakthroughs how are they not related?


Cancer hasn't been cured because there's a whole lot of money to be made in treating it.

That is true the 90% Medical industry especially the pharmaceutical industry are a bunch of money hungry crooks.

At the end of the day and after all the dust settles would you rather to tell your 10 year old daughter they found a cure for her disease or that NASA found a cricket on one of Jupiter's moons?

[mouse]

lol arguing with mouse

To bad your not at my place to tell me to shut the fuck up like you did at the last gtg, class act that Manny! :tu

[mouse]

ET life isn't the (mouse's) Bible, therefore it can't possibly exist.

First off I don't carry a Bible, second I have never said ET doesn't exists.

If you ever took the time to read my postings instead of skimming over them you would know that.

I better leave before Phyzik and his tree hugging Darwin lovers start whining about how i hijacked another of their Scientific topics they seem to know so much about.

[MannyIsGod]

To bad your not at my place to tell me to shut the fuck up like you did at the last gtg, class act that Manny! :tu
:depressed:depressed:depressed:depressed:depressed

[DarkReign]

Lame, so lame.

Like I said, pessimistic.

[boutons_deux]

So mouse is for New Earth/Creationism, anti-evolution, but so broad-minded he allows for ET?

I guess ET is only 6000 years old too?

[ShoogarBear]

I think Sam Cassell finally fessed up.

[mouse]

So mouse is for New Earth/Creationism, anti-evolution, but so broad-minded he allows for ET?

I guess ET is only 6000 years old too?

Your really digging deep to try and tie me in with the creationist. You must have all your Bible thumper smack links on bookmark and your eager to use them. I feel you brah you need to release that built up energy someone gets when they havent had any physical contact with the opposite sex in over 6 months...been there, done that.


I already know your new to the debates and you don't read well if you did your post should have read...

"Wow! my bad! I read your takes on this subject and I had you all wrong"

Instead you go in an area that has nothing to do with NASA and by the time the next page comes along posters who are to lazy to read all the postings will just see me waxing your ass....while they assume I am the trouble maker and topic hijacker/ruinator when in fact ....I only post one thought and merely replied to begin addressed to.
Am I wrong to reply to a poster who calls me out? Is it wrong to belittle this person if I happen to have the skills and knowledge about a certain subject that it boggles the minds of many? Am I to be penalized for my high IQ score? when is being at the top of your game a crime?

I know its hard for some of you to comprehend but there are people who don;t support Evolution and don't support the Bible.


It's not my fault you have no classification for me, that's your problem not mine.
Trust me,
they are many others out there who don't support the Bible and yet think the earth is not 4 Billion years old....it's not uncommon.

[DeadlyDynasty]

Much ado about nothing

[KapitanTutan]

the nerdlucks!

[IronMaxipad]

Is anyone watching the stream? OMG what a pompous bitch! haha.

Shit is gold!

[Glenn Holland]

Is anyone watching the stream? OMG what a pompous bitch! haha.

Shit is gold!


guess that means we'll all be needin some golden diapers.
http://www.rollogrady.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/christopherwalken.jpg

[IronMaxipad]

:lol:lol

[Drachen]

Lame, so lame.

Like I said, pessimistic.

I disagree. It is possible that my view is a little colored though. I watched a history (or discovery channel) special about a group of scientists who are searching for a shadow biosphere. Basically the idea behind this shadow biosphere is that the beginnings of life started back when the first amino acids were combining into the first proteins in the primordial ooze. From that first combination everything that you see around you has sprung. Well these researchers and scientists started wondering "if it happened once, could it have happened multiple times?" Then they started searching for offspring from this second (or third . . .) separate combination (i.e. organisms which share the earth with us whose evolutionary history is 100% separate from our evolutionary tree). On this show, they showed a female scientist who had found these bacteria and how they continued to flourish at many 100's of thousands of times the arsenic concentration which any previously known living thing could withstand.
I remember thinking this is awesome, a completely separate evolutionary tree, I hope to hear more about it.

[lefty]

Meh...

[CosmicCowboy]

Your really digging deep to try and tie me in with the creationist. You must have all your Bible thumper smack links on bookmark and your eager to use them. I feel you brah you need to release that built up energy someone gets when they havent had any physical contact with the opposite sex in over 6 months...been there, done that.


I already know your new to the debates and you don't read well if you did your post should have read...

"Wow! my bad! I read your takes on this subject and I had you all wrong"

Instead you go in an area that has nothing to do with NASA and by the time the next page comes along posters who are to lazy to read all the postings will just see me waxing your ass....while they assume I am the trouble maker and topic hijacker/ruinator when in fact ....I only post one thought and merely replied to begin addressed to.
Am I wrong to reply to a poster who calls me out? Is it wrong to belittle this person if I happen to have the skills and knowledge about a certain subject that it boggles the minds of many? Am I to be penalized for my high IQ score? when is being at the top of your game a crime?

I know its hard for some of you to comprehend but there are people who don;t support Evolution and don't support the Bible.


It's not my fault you have no classification for me, that's your problem not mine.
Trust me,
they are many others out there who don't support the Bible and yet think the earth is not 4 Billion years old....it's not uncommon.

:lmao

Mouse, you actually typed all that shit responding to BOUTONS?

the dudes fucking nuts.

[Phenomanul]

Silicon, Sulfur or Nitrogen based life-forms?

Life-forms without RNA/DNA?

[Phenomanul]

NV.... Arsenic based... (incorporates the Arsenic into DNA instead of Phosphorus...)

I take it the microbe is a poison to humans...

[mouse]

:lmao

Mouse, you actually typed all that shit responding to BOUTONS?

the dudes fucking nuts.

If we all were to judge posters on how smart they are before responding to them the club would have no traffic.

[mouse]

Much ado about nothing


Johnny Luna a friend of mine just did a trailer and Much ado about nothing was changed to.

http://www.facebook.com/MAllenArt#!/pages/The-Place-to-B-Productions/165486863468377
A buddy of mine made a short film about that.
LNtdsYIO4F4

[Sisk]

So... anyone want to sum up exactly what was announced? Haven't heard a thing about it tbh.. so it must've not been too exciting

[RandomGuy]

NV.... Arsenic based... (incorporates the Arsenic into DNA instead of Phosphorus...)

I take it the microbe is a poison to humans...

No not really. The arsenic is bound up in its DNA molecule. Probably might not even technically be "DNA", but I don't have the organic chemistry background to name it specifically. This might even alter what "organic chemistry" means.

Although the news bit I looked at said that this was life that arose seperately from phosphorus-based DNA forms, I would be willing to bet it evolved there out of previous life that used phosphorus, and that at some point during the build up of arsenic in the water, the chemical transformation just happened. Evolution is a very powerful force for change in organisms when environments change like that.