Re: Search For Alien Life Challenges Concepts, Says U.Colorado-Boulder Professor (Forwarded)
- From: rl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:38:20 -0800
On Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:33:58 -0500, Andrew Yee <ayee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
|>Office of News Services
|>University of Colorado-Boulder
|>Boulder, Colorado
|>
|>Contacts:
|>Carol Cleland, (303) 492-7619
|>Jim Scott, (303) 492-3114
|>
|>Feb. 18, 2006
|>
|>Search For Alien Life Challenges Concepts, Says CU-Boulder Professor
|>
|>For scientists eying distant planets and solar systems for signs of
|>alien activity, University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Carol
|>Cleland suggests the first order of business is to keep an open mind.
|>
|>It may be a mistake to try to define life, given such definitions are
|>based on a single example -- life on Earth, said Cleland, a philosophy
|>professor and fellow at the NASA-funded CU-Boulder Center for
|>Astrobiology. The best strategy is probably to develop a "general theory
|>of living systems," she said.
|>
|>Many biologists agree the best definition of living systems today is the
|>"chemical Darwinian definition" involving self-sustaining chemical
|>systems that undergo evolution at the molecular level, she said. But the
|>theory is limited in that life on Earth probably resulted from physical
|>and chemical "contingencies" present at the time of its origin on the
|>planet.
|>
|>"What we really need to do is to search for physical systems that
|>challenge our current concept of life, systems that both resemble
|>familiar life and differ from it in provocative ways," she said. Cleland
|>participated in an astrobiology symposium at the annual American
|>Association for the Advancement of Science meeting held in St. Louis
|>Feb. 16 to Feb. 20.
|>
|>In 1976, for example, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft conducted automated
|>biology experiments on Mars by mixing soil samples with radioactively
|>labeled nutrients to determine if metabolic "burps" from possible
|>extraterrestrial microbes could be detected, she said. Although positive
|>readings convinced at least some team scientists that life was present,
|>a subsequent investigation by a second Viking instrument failed to find
|>evidence of organic molecules on the planet's surface.
|>
|>"Initially, the scientists were ready to break out the champagne," said
|>Cleland. "But because subsequent investigations yielded baffling results
|>that didn't fit the original metabolic definition of life they were
|>working with, NASA eventually concluded the original signal was not
|>evidence of life. This is an experiment that is still debated today, and
|>it's a classic example of an anomaly."
|>
|>Out of more than 100 amino acids, terrestrial life constructs all of its
|>proteins from only about 20 of them, suggesting a single origin for life
|>on Earth, said Cleland. "It's very difficult to generalize about life
|>based on just one example," she said.
|>
|>An article by Cleland and CU-Boulder molecular, cellular and
|>developmental biology Professor Shelley Copley, published online in the
|>Jan. 16 International Journal of Astrobiology, explores the idea that an
|>"alternative microbial life" may exist on Earth. Such a "shadow
|>biosphere" could have a different molecular architecture and
|>biochemistry than known life and would be undetectable with current
|>techniques like microscopy, cell cultivation and Polymerase Chain
|>Reaction amplification, the authors wrote.
|>
|>Despite new suites of sophisticated instruments developed in recent
|>years, the ability of scientists to detect life on Mars or in another
|>solar system is probably very limited, Cleland said. "If the DNA in an
|>alien organism was even slightly different than the DNA in life on
|>Earth, with a different suite of nucleotide bases to encode genetic
|>information, we probably wouldn't be able to recognize it."
|>
|>So what might be out there? "It's not too far-fetched to imagine an
|>alien microbe whose genetic material directly and adaptively changes in
|>response to different environmental conditions," said Cleland. "Instead
|>of looking for life as we know it, scientists may be better served to
|>look for anomalies, which amounts to looking for life as we don't know it."
|>
|>In the past decade, scientists have discovered more than 170 new planets
|>around other stars, a number that seems to grow by the month due to
|>clever new planet-hunting techniques, Cleland said. In the future,
|>astrobiologists surveying other planets will no doubt encounter
|>non-living systems that are "really weird," she said.
|>
|>"In such cases, it probably is best to suspend judgment," she said. "The
|>great strength of science is its tentativeness, and through history, it
|>has been the careful analysis of anomalies that have eventually changed
|>scientific paradigms."
This may possibly all be found 'here' on 'earth' since many people have
a different color sun to report such as small yellow, large yellow, White, Blue,
but they all call it from earth.
Expressions like What color is the Sun for you is considered an insult
to the deep shithead pizza colored sun group.
Some 'people' think we all have arms and legs, but use the symbolism
'wings', or expressions like I'm filled to the 'gills' is a like all
'expressions' just a metaphor, but for some it's reality.....
Finding ET could be quite easy but they may not have to look that far,
since our concept of life is biological, whereas nobody is as free or tough as a
Tree. Back to ET, well it's all 'here' in a Multidimensional concept.
There might even be some kind of ET on the 2011 planet X, but they would
be 30X the density of earth biological people.
There's a lot more of course but I hate to get ranted out........
Triad Productions-Fantalla(c)~EZine~ParaNovel
National Astrophysical Assault Research
http://rlacasse.naar.be http://ammo.at/lacasse
.
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