Nasa to make "extraterrestrial life" announcement tuesday

[Muhast]

At 1 pm on Thursday Nasa is making an announcement that will "Impact the search for extraterrestrial life forms".

http://carloz.newsvine.com/_news/20...ories-on-what-the-space-agency-has-discovered

Here are the 3 main theories on what they think will be announced:

1. Life on one of Saturn's moons
Over at Kotaku, the speculation has centered on Rhea, one of Saturn's moons.

Chances are it has something to do with the recent discovery by the NASA-led international Cassini-Huygens mission of a tentative atmosphere containing both oxygen and carbon dioxide on the surface of Saturn's moon Rhea.
The oxygen in Rhea's atmosphere is five trillion times less dense than that of Earth, and the surface of the moon is far too cold to support life as we know it. That doesn't rule out life as we don't know it.
​

2. Arsenic
At Kottke.org, one theory again focused on one of Saturn's moons, but not Rhea.

So, if I had to guess at what NASA is going to reveal on Thursday, I'd say that they've discovered arsenic on Titan and maybe even detected chemical evidence of bacteria utilizing it for photosynthesis (by following the elements). Or something like that.
​

Almost at once, however, Alexis Madrigal, science editor at The Atlantic, threw cold water on the notion that NASA had proof of alien life.

I'm sad to quell some of the @kottke-induced excitement about possible extraterrestrial life. I've seen the Science paper. It's not that.
alexismadrigal
​

3. A new model for the existence of life
Writing at Discovery, Phil Plait suggest that rather than blowing the crowd away with a photograph of a little green alien, NASA is more likely to unveil a discovery about the conditions required for life to exist.

Of course, the speculation is that NASA will announce the discovery for life. Maybe. I can't rule that out, but it seems really unlikely; I don't think they would announce it in this way. It would've been under tighter wraps, or one thing. It's more likely they've found a new way life can exist and that evidence for these conditions exists on other worlds. But without more info, I won't speculate any farther than that.
​

 

[DallasCowpoke]

Nasa to make "extraterrestrial life" announcement tuesday

At 1 pm on Thursday Nasa is making an announcement that will "Impact the search for extraterrestrial life forms".

Ummm...FUBAR?? Either that, or they discovered bedbugs on Uranus.

 

[TheCount]

BREAKING NEWS: Announcement Canceled. They were just weather balloons. Have a nice day.

 

[cowboyblue31]

BREAKING NEWS: Announcement Canceled. They were just weather balloons. Have a nice day.

:laugh2: :laugh2:

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

I'm going with a retraction statement here. My guess is that they are going to back track and announce that they were wrong about Earth. There is NO intelligent life on this planet.

 

[burmafrd]

we have known that for millenia.

 

[CATCH17]

Waste of money.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

we have known that for millenia.

Hey Burm, How's Southern New Mexico these days? It's a bit nippy here.

 

[SaltwaterServr]

From Space.com....

http://www.space.com/news/nasa-announcement-alien-life-rumors-101201.html

 

[nflandbooze]

I just want to know where the alien chics from the Bud Light commercial are, and when they're going to get here to mate. That is all.

 

[TheCount]

Cat's out of the bag. They found a bacteria in California whose DNA is built different from everything else on earth.

http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

So all that money we've been wasting on space ships really was for nothing.

 

[Phoenix]

I just want to know where the alien chics from the Bud Light commercial are, and when they're going to get here to mate. That is all.

Dibs on Anna from V

 

[YosemiteSam]

Cat's out of the bag. They found a bacteria in California whose DNA is built different from everything else on earth.

http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

So all that money we've been wasting on space ships really was for nothing.

Sweet. Damn I love science!

 

[SaltwaterServr]

Cat's out of the bag. They found a bacteria in California whose DNA is built different from everything else on earth.

http://gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

So all that money we've been wasting on space ships really was for nothing.

Wow. I don't think the average person can appreciate how incredible this really is. Unbelievable. No phosphorus at all???

Unfathomable.

Shocking.

Probably the biggest discovery since, hell, Watson and Crick decoded the double helix structure of DNA? How many hundreds of tons of textbooks on evolution, genetics, and basic biology just went obsolete????

This ruined my nap. Amazing discovery. I don't know how to fully articulate how much this changes the fundamental nature of our understanding of life. Wow, again.

 

[ScipioCowboy]

I was under the impression that remnants of simple lifeforms had already been discovered in meteorites.

 

[SaltwaterServr]

I was under the impression that remnants of simple lifeforms had already been discovered in meteorites.

No, amino acids have been discovered, and been seen in the remnants of meteorites. We've also been able to convert simple elements into amino acids by simulating the circumstances in which an ice ball meteorite impacts the Earth's atmosphere.

In this case amino acids have nothing to do with the life form since it doesn't have any amine groups in it's DNA! Mind blowing.

 

[ScipioCowboy]

No, amino acids have been discovered, and been seen in the remnants of meteorites. We've also been able to convert simple elements into amino acids by simulating the circumstances in which an ice ball meteorite impacts the Earth's atmosphere.

In this case amino acids have nothing to do with the life form since it doesn't have any amine groups in it's DNA! Mind blowing.

Either way, this article merely confirms my suspicion: If we sent NASA to California to discover new life, it truly is a world all its own.

 

[SaltwaterServr]

Either way, this article merely confirms my suspicion: If we sent NASA to California to discover new life, it truly is a world all its own.

Ha! They can't even get their DNA right!

Emails are flying like crazy at the Bio department right now at Tx State, as they are at just about every campus I would expect.

EDIT:

I have to think that this is about as big a day for NASA as putting footprints on the moon.

 

[Temo]

Wow. I don't think the average person can appreciate how incredible this really is. Unbelievable. No phosphorus at all???

Unfathomable.

Shocking.

Probably the biggest discovery since, hell, Watson and Crick decoded the double helix structure of DNA? How many hundreds of tons of textbooks on evolution, genetics, and basic biology just went obsolete????

This ruined my nap. Amazing discovery. I don't know how to fully articulate how much this changes the fundamental nature of our understanding of life. Wow, again.

They're still clinging to some phosphorus, though it's almost certain that if you removed those last bits, the bacterium would still survive.

 

[YosemiteSam]

This is a very cool discovery.

It's almost like switching a human from eating food to firing buckshot down their gullet and they adapt to it and begin to grow while eating buckshot! :laugh2:

Not only that, but they incorporate it into not just their DNA sequence, but into the DNA structure itself!

Arsenic-Eating Bacteria Opens New Possibilities for Alien Life

EDIT: Video of the presentation. (appears to be slashdotted right now)