The textbooks just changed: aliens officially exist (small ones)

I read that over the weekend as well. To me, it makes perfect sense. The building blocks that make up "life" are literally everywhere. We know that simple stings of acids can combine and make a simple living machine that "knows" how to eat and divide. We have good evidence that when the Earth was a noxious fiery mudball simple bacteria could exist. We still find them today thriving in the crushing depths of the thermal vents.

"Space Germs" should be an almost statistically assured thing, I would think. Where it gets tougher to believe or prove is as you go up the evolutionary ladder. How big and complex of an animal can you get with smaller and tighter parameters for known life to exist. In other words, I'm not really "wowwed" by some left over fossils of some sort of bacterium. I would be absolutely floored if it were something along the line of flatworm or something. Something with a basic nervous system, eyespots (or the equivalent), or anything else that would point to this being an actual animal.
 
You are building a theory on what the logic seems to indicate to you.
Science requires evidence first, with analysis to follow.
No hard evidence, no theory.

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J. Rosa said:
Interesting but it is still not without its discreditors.
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I found this article over the weekend... much to my delight. (Aliens! YAY!!!:thumbup:)

I haven't heard of anyone successfully discrediting the article; "detractors" or "disbelievers" would be the term you're looking for.
 
My only point is that nobody can say "There is no such thing as Aliens" anymore without looking like a fool.
Step 1 has been achieved.
 
And thank goodness! But what's step 2: build a working hyperdrive? (If so, count me in.)
 
Step 2, I suppose, would be some more leaks about stuff that happened so long ago, all the players have died (and are thus immune).
 
No hard evidence, no theory.
Click to expand...
No Hard evidence?
What makes you think irradiated soil and plant samples don't constitute "hard evidence" ?
Or pieces of Magnesium26 that are so pure, Dow chemical said "we can't make this with our current technology."?
Then there is the evidence confiscated by the govt. - Just because YOU haven't seen it personally, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
 
I'm not seeing it. NASA has stated that they don't think that this is the real thing; the meteorite had been sitting there for several hundred years, and it's probably contaminated with terrestrial microbes. That would certainly explain why some of them look familiar.

I'm not an expert. It looks like life to me. I couldn't tell you where that life is from. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, as they say, and the evidence is not yet extraordinary. I haven't made up my mind yet, but we've been down this road a few times before, haven't we?

I wouldn't be surprised if Hoover's right though. With all the...stuff, I guess, that goes on in our universe, it's not a stretch to believe that life has occurred elsewhere. Intelligent life is another matter. And even if either are around, it's a damn big universe. What are our chances of encountering one another?

I believe that it's possible. I hope that it's possible. I'd like to see it. I just don't expect that to happen in my lifetime. Call me an optimistic skeptic if you will.
 
The difference between 0 and 1 is infinitely larger than the difference between 1 and 10.
It's no longer a question of yes/no; it's a question of how much.

I'd like to say I was also an optimistic skeptic. Maybe I get too excited about stuff now and then, but to me, this is the most exciting subject Earthlings can discuss.
 
I think that NASA is being a bunch of wimps; how hard is it to believe that there could be bacteria in space? They're so afraid of being made fun of, that they now have neither an imagination nor a sense of adventure. And THEN what use are they?
 
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