Posted on 07/09/2007 6:26:15 PM PDT by blam
Alien hunters 'should also seek weird life'
By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 2:04am BST 10/07/2007
The hunt for extra-terrestrial life should encompass what experts call "weird life", according to a committee of scientists in the US.
The Huygens spacecraft visited Titan in 2004.
Scientists believe the moon is a promising source of weird life Nasa selects planets and moons with hints of water for its exploratory missions.
But according to the scientists, who have written a report for the National Research Council in the US, other chemicals such as ammonia or methane could also support life.
So-called "weird life" or organisms that lack DNA or other molecules found in life on Earth could exist, the scientists say.
For example, while DNA uses phosphorus in its backbone, it might be possible to build a backbone out of arsenic.
Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, has been singled out as a particularly promising source of weird life.
The scientists said the possibility of weird life should prompt NASA to reconsider future missions.
Michael Meyer, the senior scientist responsible for Nasa’s Mars exploration programme, said: "It’s going to help us a lot to make sure we go exploring with our eyes wide open."
"The committee’s investigation makes clear that life is possible in forms different from those on Earth," the scientists conclude in the study, titled The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems.
The report also urged that the hunt for weird life be extended to Earth itself, as some examples may exist on the ocean floor, said the scientists.
"There’s much about Earth life we don’t understand", said John Baross of the University of Washington, who chaired the committee.
Nothing is impossible
Prions.
I don’t know about that. I’d wager the Helen Thomas/Cindy Sheehan pics hit first.
Tell them to check out the next Democrat Convention. Or a NOW meeting. Or any of the myriad "gay pride" parades each year. Should provide them with years of data to study.
Why seek weird life in outer space when there’s a healthy enough supply of it to explore here on earth?
I don’t know, I always felt all life was kind of weird. Though I guess some life forms are weirder then other life forms. But how do you tell?
Plenty of it in California.
The problem with life, and intelligent life, is time.
That is, if you look at the “clock” of the planet Earth, some 4.5 billion years, and only half of that 2.7 billion years, had any life at all. Man has been around for about half a million years, and only in the last 100 have we done anything that could attract anybody else’s attention.
So a hundred years, plus maybe another 50-100 thousand years of intelligent species, not necessarily man, being around on Earth, before whoever will probably have to leave, at least for a while, because of some cataclysm.
So say, 200,000 years out of 4.5 billion is the time frame for intelligent life this planet.
If all other habitable planets began when we did, which they didn’t, this would mean something like a 10,000 to 1 chance against our intelligent life existing in a year when theirs did, assuming a heck of a lot.
But there’s a lot of stars in the galaxy. Yes, but a lot of them are very, very far away. Most of what we can see at night are within 60 light years away, and about 85% of those are stars that are not big contenders for supporting life. And across our galaxy is about 100,000 light years away.
So the bottom line is that the odds are against intelligent alien life forms being in our neighborhood, and we can find a heck of a lot of lifeforms, before we find any intelligent ones.
Egg-head scientists, try checking out Al Gore.
“Alien hunters ‘should also seek weird life’’
You rang?
They should look for weird life on earth because interstellar traveling space monsters don’t exist.
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