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Kontra Kommando

NASA Predicts We'll Find Signs Of Alien Life Within 10 Years

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Description said:

This panel discussion from NASA headquarters focuses on recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/08/nasa-alien-life_n_7023134.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/nasa-scientist-believes-brink-discovering-aliens/story?id=30154232

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I get the feeling it's going to be much longer than that, and even if they do find life it might just be animal-like organisms and nothing advanced like us humans.

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I am incredibly skeptical about these claims, but then again, only a couple of decades ago, the idea of detecting planets around other stars seemed like science fiction. Heck, I'm still not convinced we will not find life within our own solar system, like for instance, on the moon Europa. I mean, I certainly don't think we'll suddenly discover little grey aliens with big black eyes that have a habit of kidnapping people in the sticks, but astronomy has a habit of proving our assumptions about the universe wrong, and I have no doubt the assumption that we're alone in the universe will be proven wrong by astronomers, as well. Even if all they ever discover is evidence of microbes on another world, at least there's the comfort in knowing we're not alone in the universe.

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geekmarine said:

I have no doubt the assumption that we're alone in the universe will be proven wrong by astronomers

In my experience, people who think we're alone in the universe tend to be religious types who probably find the idea of life on other worlds threatening to their beliefs. It's not much of a victory when these people are proven wrong about something.

On the other hand, what if we're the ones with egg on our faces? I guess it would be equally remarkable, if not even more remarkable if Earth was the only planet in the universe which sustains life. But maybe the assertion that we're not alone borders on an assumption sometimes.

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geekmarine said:

Heck, I'm still not convinced we will not find life within our own solar system, like for instance, on the moon Europa.

Extremophiles in the Martian glaciers are another possibility, and closer to home. I would be extremely disappointed if Earth turned out to be the only planet with life - as we know it.

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With the string of sensationalist claims that NASA has spewed out in recent times, such as the 'Big Announcement' from the Curiosity Rover that made everyone think that they'd discovered life on Mars but really turned out to be a completely normal overview of its mission, I just can't bring myself to get excited over anything that NASA has to say.

TL;DR
NASA just wants attention.

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I doubt any state-sponsored agency would ever confirm/admit to the existence of extraterrestrial life, even if consisted merely of bacteria or strands of proto-DNA.

Admitting the existence of ET life would pretty much mean the collapse of all (or most) religious-political-ethical systems in existence, which, in the end, all (or most of them) revolve around the supposed uniqueness of Man and his status as "made in God's image", which in turn makes being ruled by "yer betters" more tolerable for most people, as there's a certain "Order of Things".

Officially admitting the existence of ET life, at least to a non-united and superstitious world like the present one, would be worse than setting off all existing nukes all at once.

At most you'll get such "teaser" non-paper statements now and then, and that's it, and even then, I'm convinced they hope that they never get confirmed.

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Avoozl said:

even if they do find life it might just be animal-like organisms and nothing advanced like us humans.

In what world is that prospect not mind-bendingly incredible?

In fact I hope we don't find other creatures similar to humans as we're incredibly destructive and will likely be the makers of our own undoing. If we're the only creatures like us in the universe, that's almost certainly a good thing.

Maes said:

I doubt any state-sponsored agency would ever confirm/admit to the existence of extraterrestrial life, even if consisted merely of bacteria or strands of proto-DNA.

Admitting the existence of ET life would pretty much mean the collapse of all (or most) religious-political-ethical systems in existence, which, in the end, all (or most of them) revolve around the supposed uniqueness of Man and his status as "made in God's image", which in turn makes being ruled by "yer betters" more tolerable for most people, as there's a certain "Order of Things".

Officially admitting the existence of ET life, at least to a non-united and superstitious world like the present one, would be worse than setting off all existing nukes all at once.

At most you'll get such "teaser" non-paper statements now and then, and that's it, and even then, I'm convinced they hope that they never get confirmed.

Sadly, I think you've hit the nail on the head, Maes - but then again, science is known for finding a way, even in the wake of "book burners" if you will.

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I think that even if they do find, and confirm life; there will be plenty of deniers. Even with overwhelming evidence, there will always be large portions of provincially minded people that will deny it, just like they did with climate-change, and for some, even the moon landing.

The biggest problem, is that we have mental-midgets in positions of power, who's consitutencies are these numb-skull people

example:

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun said:

God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.


http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/07/nation/la-na-nn-paul-broun-evolution-hell-20121007

I have my issues with Democrats, but stuff like this makes me vehemently hate the GOP. This level of ignorance is an abominable disgrace to this country.

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"Mental midgets" is an excellent term, I've never heard that one before but it describes many of these politicians so perfectly.

All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell.

This is so absurd that it actually seems like a joke. Then again, at this point reality has actually eclipsed satire..

It doesn't bother me when people believe in god and science simultaneously, but when faith blurs a person's view of reality, especially when that person is in a seat of power, it's a fucking terrible recipie.. It's a shame just how common this is, and has always been..

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We would have already heard radio signals. Unless they've been dead long before us. I predict they won't for at least another hundred. I have as much credibility.

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geo said:

We would have already heard radio signals.


But when you consider the flaccid attempts we've made with our primitive equipment, within our infinitesimal existence; whose to say that we will not in the future?

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Krispy said:

TL;DR
NASA just wants attention.

Seems so. They can't know what and when they will find. Unless they're planning to fabricate it, or misrepresent vague "proofs" for big ones, or unless they've already found something and kept it secret, or a combination of the possibilities.

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scifista42 said:

Seems so. They can't know what and when they will find. Unless they're planning to fabricate it, or misrepresent vague "proofs" for big ones, or unless they've already found something and kept it secret, or a combination of the possibilities.


Well, we can only have faith in what a consensus of professionals in the field can tell us. The only way for us as individuals to truly have a more nuanced understanding, is to engage in the field ourselves. At any rate, I find it to be wiser, to not succumb to conspiratorial claims, just because there is cynicism of what is being reported.

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scifista42 said:

My post was just a train of thought, not my conviction. Just to make it clear.


Don't get me wrong, it is possible for institutions to fabricate stuff, and create agenda-laden narratives as a means to an end. But I definitely think that there is a danger when we start to assume conspiracies. When people lose their faith in the authorities of science, what other source can they turn to? Unfortunately, lots of them flock to charlatans, like people that try to push intelligent design. Fear and doubt, are the feces that these human-roaches, feed and thrive on.

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Fair points. You're probably right. I should have ended my post after the 2nd sentence, or not post at all.

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scifista42 said:

Fair points. You're probably right. I should have ended my post after the 2nd sentence, or not post at all.


It certainly is a bit hubris-tic of NASA to make a claim like that. Nobody could accurately predict the future. It was actually the Chief Scientist that was quoted to say it would only be 10 years. It is certainly very optimistic of him. But I think that's the part that was really blown out of proportion by the media. However, given the clues they have discovered, they may feel confident to make such a claim, based on probability. They're discovering that water can exist in large bodies on other planets, and moons. Moreover, for the time they have existed, in addition to favorable condition, the likelihood of finding life is considered high. They're particularly excited by the conditions of Europa; a moon of Jupiter. Further, another recent revelation was that the ancient oceans of Mars are discovered to have existed for 1.2 billion years. Perhaps excavations could uncover fossils of ancient organisms. They already found bacteria like structures, fossilized.

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Given the conditions that extremophiles have been found to survive in on earth, I'm almost taking it for granted that some kind of primitive extra-terrestrial life exists in the solar system, let alone the rest of the galaxy. At the very least it would surprise me if no signs were ever to be found.

Oh yeah and everything is a conspiracy of course. It's always the most rational explanation.

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geo said:

We would have already heard radio signals.

Well, not really. Our pitiful networks of radio telescopes cover less than 5% of the sky. Not to mention that EM radiation does only travel at the speed of light. Any hypothetical alien signals may not have even reached earth. And truthfully I don't know enough about radio waves to say whether a non-directed signal from far enough away could be really perceived to be anything interesting. Lots of things produce radio waves that aren't necessarily classic rock stations.

Maes said:

Admitting the existence of ET life would pretty much mean the collapse of all (or most) religious-political-ethical systems in existence, which, in the end, all (or most of them) revolve around the supposed uniqueness of Man and his status as "made in God's image", which in turn makes being ruled by "yer betters" more tolerable for most people, as there's a certain "Order of Things".

No. Aliens could land on the while house lawn tomorrow and religious people are going to keep on keepin on. In fact, would such a scenario occur I would bet church attendance would quadruple immediately.

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Avoozl said:

I get the feeling it's going to be much longer than that, and even if they do find life it might just be animal-like organisms and nothing advanced like us humans.


How the fuck would that NOT be one of the greatest discoveries man has made thus far? The fact that life advanced beyond cellular life would be a massive find at all.

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geo said:

We would have already heard radio signals

That's actually really doubtful.

A couple of years ago I saw Vint Cerf give a talk where among other things he talked about his work on the Interplanetary Internet. Pretty forward-thinking work that's unlikely to be useful for a long time yet.

He said something really interesting, which he repeated in this video if you're curious. Basically his point was that, even if you were to transmit a signal from our nearest neighbor star (Alpha Centauri), *and* you sent it back to Earth via a focused, narrow-band laser beam, over a four light year distance the signal would spread out so far that it would be impossible to detect without a receiving antenna the size of a solar system to pick it up.

That's the challenge that we face if we want to transmit signals ourselves between stars, and that's just from the closest star to us. So it stands to reason that it's probably unlikely that we're going to be receiving any transmissions from aliens in other star systems, without some very serious infrastructure established around our solar system, and without knowing what to be looking for and exactly where we should be looking for it.

Quast said:

Well, not really. Our pitiful networks of radio telescopes cover less than 5% of the sky. Not to mention that EM radiation does only travel at the speed of light. Any hypothetical alien signals may not have even reached earth.

Exactly right, though you're not thinking ambitiously enough.

Telescope technology has evolved massively over the past century from crude optical telescopes, to the Hubble Space Telescope, and now the James Webb Space Telescope that is due to be installed at the Earth-Sun LeGrange point in a few years from now, which will be awesome once it's finally finished and launched. But I wonder if the next step will be solar system-sized telescopes deployed as a network around our solar system and acting in concert. That's probably decades away at the minimum, but it's the only way that we're ever likely to have the slightest hope of a chance of picking up signals from outside our solar system.

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Quast said:

No. Aliens could land on the while house lawn tomorrow and religious people are going to keep on keepin on. In fact, would such a scenario occur I would bet church attendance would quadruple immediately.

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Maes said:

I doubt any state-sponsored agency would ever confirm/admit to the existence of extraterrestrial life, even if consisted merely of bacteria or strands of proto-DNA.

Admitting the existence of ET life would pretty much mean the collapse of all (or most) religious-political-ethical systems in existence, which, in the end, all (or most of them) revolve around the supposed uniqueness of Man and his status as "made in God's image", which in turn makes being ruled by "yer betters" more tolerable for most people, as there's a certain "Order of Things".

Officially admitting the existence of ET life, at least to a non-united and superstitious world like the present one, would be worse than setting off all existing nukes all at once.

At most you'll get such "teaser" non-paper statements now and then, and that's it, and even then, I'm convinced they hope that they never get confirmed.

NASA has already announced the discovery of extraterrestrial life in the Martian meteorite Allan Hills 84001. It wasn't some small scale thing either, Clinton made a televised address about it. Other scientists have since disputed the claims, but there was absolutely zero religious or social upheaval at the time, or since. People didn't give a shit.

Your understanding of religion, society, science and human psychology appears to have zero basis in reality, and be instead by informed by the worst Reddit garbage, and your own arrogant prejudices. Religious and social structures are not so fragile that they would collapse based on some inconsequential scientific discovery. Even if intelligent life came to Earth and gave a speech to the UN, 99.999% of people would get up and go to work or school as normal.

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Something i didn't pay attention to
QUOTE:"We are not talking about little green men," Stofan said. "We are talking about little microbes."

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Jonathan said:

Even if intelligent life came to Earth and gave a speech to the UN, 99.999% of people would get up and go to work or school as normal.


While I think Maes was going a bit overboard by saying such a discovery "would be worse than setting off all existing nukes all at once", I also think the idea that everyone wouldn't give a shit if intelligent aliens visited us is also ridiculous. Of course there would be a fairly massive reaction from the people - It would be one of the most massive milestones in scientific history, and would also likely be a major topic amongst religious leaders and lead to reform (in various ways) amongst at least some of them. Some would use it to further push their current agenda, some would rework their current beliefs around it, etc. It would most certainly result in a few changes amongst quite a lot of people.

tl;dr It wouldnt necessarily turn the world upside down, but it wouldn't be like nothing happened at all either.

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There's lot of potential for life underneath the moons Europa and Ganymede, but I doubt we'll get anywhere to find any sort of life in the next decade. 20 years seems more plausible, as technology is rapidly developing.

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Doomkid said:

While I think Maes was going a bit overboard by saying such a discovery "would be worse than setting off all existing nukes all at once", I also think the idea that everyone wouldn't give a shit if intelligent aliens visited us is also ridiculous. Of course there would be a fairly massive reaction from the people - It would be one of the most massive milestones in scientific history, and would also likely be a major topic amongst religious leaders and lead to reform (in various ways) amongst at least some of them. Some would use it to further push their current agenda, some would rework their current beliefs around it, etc. It would most certainly result in a few changes amongst quite a lot of people.

tl;dr It wouldnt necessarily turn the world upside down, but it wouldn't be like nothing happened at all either.

I agree that contact by intelligent aliens would be a huge deal. People would certainly give a shit about that. But even when huge and crazy stuff happens, social and religious structures don't just disintegrate.

Look at the situation in places like Ukraine, Iraq or the Palestinian territories. These are societies with a perpetual backdrop of violence and destruction, but they remain functional. People continue living their lives, even when they know that they, or someone they love, could be the victim of an attack or a suicide bombing any day. That's not to say that they don't notice what's going on or care deeply about it, just that things don't just fall apart as a consequence.

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geo said:

We would have already heard radio signals. Unless they've been dead long before us. I predict they won't for at least another hundred. I have as much credibility.


You're assuming that radio signals are a long term technology that will never become obsolete. But who's to say how a civilization hundreds or thousands of years ahead of us technologically will be communicating with each other over long distances? Think gravitational waves, modulated neutronos, quantum entanglement, folding space (e.g. wormholes), etc.

You also have to consider the fact that radio transmissions aren't instantaneous: they travel at the speed of light. While this feels instantaneous for local transmissions (e.g. you probably won't notice a delay talking to someone on your phone), over galactic scales it certainly isn't. In fact, this is a good reason they could indeed become obsolete one day, especially if our civilization spreads beyond the local solar system.

Our own civilization only began using radio around 100 years ago, so the furthest they could have travelled within the galaxy is that same figure in light years. As our galaxy is currently thought to have a radius of at least 50,000 light years (some estimates are much higher), this means artificial radio signals originating from earth have only reached something like 0.002% of the galaxy. That's a pretty small percentage.

Obviously the same is true of our capability to detect radio signals from other civilizations: if there are other civilizations out there who began using radio at roughly the same time as us, we can only detect them if they exist within our local 0.002% of the galaxy. Go up to civilizations who discovered radio 500 years ago and it's 0.01% of the galaxy. Increase to civilizations who've had radio for 5000 years and it's still only 0.1% of the galaxy. Even civilizations who were transmitting radio signals 50,000 years ago would have to be within our local 1% of the galaxy for us to be able to detect them.

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