73 réponses à ce sujet

[Kimosabe]

marbatico wrote...
the only thing we know for sure is needed for life is water

How do we know this for sure? this is true on Earth but maybe not on another planet..

@Swordfishtrombone
You're probably right, if they found something it's more likely to be on Mars than on an planet in another solar system but I just stumbled across that article.

[Fiery Phoenix]

I'm curious to see what they've come up with. I doubt it's something too significant, though.

[marbatico]

i really hope (though the chance is smaller than me winning the NBA on my own) that they found some alien creature*.

*read: creature, not some kind of bacteria, but something we can see with the naked eye.

Modifié par marbatico, 01 décembre 2010 - 09:32 .

[ObserverStatus]

Hell, even if they found fossilized alien space mold, that would be pretty damn significant.

[Stanley Woo]

Mallissin wrote...

Sheesh, you guys and Cthulhu.

I can't wait until you have a "Win a tour of Bioware's offices" as a prize for the next contest, but the winners are never seen again.

What do you mean? We've been holding annual contests in Lovecraft County, Massachusetts, for decades...

[Ponce de Leon]

*raises hands*

When will you be considering Slovenia?

[Swordfishtrombone]

Kimosabe0 wrote...

marbatico wrote...
the only thing we know for sure is needed for life is water

How do we know this for sure? this is true on Earth but maybe not on another planet..

I don't think we can be absolutely sure of such a thing (as we can't be absolutely sure of almost anything), but it seems very, very, very likely that life is universally tied to water. This is because of several unique properties water has due to it's molecular structure. In any case, if there is a plausible replacement for water, it has to be a solvent like water - something in which the chemical reactions necessary for life can take place.

Water has the advantage in that it is abundant in the universe - it's composed of two of the three most common elements in the universe (hydrogen and oxygen), and thus we can expect to find it just about everywhere, in some form.

A second advantage is that water has a unique property - unlike other substances that contract when they get colder, water expands, and becomes less dense when it freezes. This is relevant because it means that under the right temperature range, a sea of water will be covered by an ice-sheet, protecting the water underneath from harmful UV rays and/or the ravages of the atmosphere of the planet. If water behaved like other substances, and contracted and got denser, the ice that would form on the top of the sea would sink down to the bottom, thus exposing more water to freeze, and so on, until the whole sea was frozen solid. 

So a solvent that doesn't have this property - which, as far as I know is unique to water - if it formed a sea, would have to be on a planet where the temperature never reached the freezing point of that liquid, or else the sea would freeze solid and encase any living things within it.

I guess one could imagine life based on some completely non-water chemistry, but I would also be willing to bet that any life more complicated than the simplest of bacteria will require water.

[ObserverStatus]

dark-lauron wrote...

*raises hands*
When will you be considering Slovenia?

lol, cool hat

[Khayness]

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

So a solvent that doesn't have this property - which, as far as I know is unique to water - if it formed a sea, would have to be on a planet where the temperature never reached the freezing point of that liquid, or else the sea would freeze solid and encase any living things within it.

IIRC pressure affects the freezing temperature aswell, that broadens the horizon even further in search for life in water.

[Onyx Jaguar]

*ignores the last page of thread*



OH GOD DOOM 3 WAS A FUTURE REANACTMENT SO WAS MASS EFFECT

HELL AND ALIENS WILL INVADE SOON

[Mallissin]

What?!



NO! THE LHC OPENED UP A PORTAL TO ANOTHER DIMENSION AND ALIENS ARE TAKING OVER THE FACILITIES!



GRAB A CROWBAR AND PUT ON THIS SPECIAL ORANGE SUIT!

[Khayness]

Mallissin wrote...

What?!

NO! THE LHC OPENED UP A PORTAL TO ANOTHER DIMENSION AND ALIENS ARE TAKING OVER THE FACILITIES!

GRAB A CROWBAR AND PUT ON THIS SPECIAL ORANGE SUIT!

[slimgrin]

I am dissapoint NASA.

[Mallissin]

I guess an orange hard hat will have to do.

Modifié par Mallissin, 02 décembre 2010 - 02:03 .

[Nezzer]

We've got Reapers orbiting our sun xD

Modifié par Nezzer, 02 décembre 2010 - 02:35 .

[Fishy]

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

Kimosabe0 wrote...

marbatico wrote...
the only thing we know for sure is needed for life is water

How do we know this for sure? this is true on Earth but maybe not on another planet..

I don't think we can be absolutely sure of such a thing (as we can't be absolutely sure of almost anything), but it seems very, very, very likely that life is universally tied to water. This is because of several unique properties water has due to it's molecular structure. In any case, if there is a plausible replacement for water, it has to be a solvent like water - something in which the chemical reactions necessary for life can take place.

Water has the advantage in that it is abundant in the universe - it's composed of two of the three most common elements in the universe (hydrogen and oxygen), and thus we can expect to find it just about everywhere, in some form.

A second advantage is that water has a unique property - unlike other substances that contract when they get colder, water expands, and becomes less dense when it freezes. This is relevant because it means that under the right temperature range, a sea of water will be covered by an ice-sheet, protecting the water underneath from harmful UV rays and/or the ravages of the atmosphere of the planet. If water behaved like other substances, and contracted and got denser, the ice that would form on the top of the sea would sink down to the bottom, thus exposing more water to freeze, and so on, until the whole sea was frozen solid. 

So a solvent that doesn't have this property - which, as far as I know is unique to water - if it formed a sea, would have to be on a planet where the temperature never reached the freezing point of that liquid, or else the sea would freeze solid and encase any living things within it.

I guess one could imagine life based on some completely non-water chemistry, but I would also be willing to bet that any life more complicated than the simplest of bacteria will require water.

Imagine you're Bob The human from the future .. about 5 millions years in the future...
And you read this post.Your post.It's would be like reading neandertha  grafiti on a cavern wall.

You read the post and you know right in the bat that human are much more intelligent in the present than in the past.

Science t always change.
Right now we think we're alone in the universe and that the most powerful being in the universe's called Obama..But we might be far from the truth.Very Far.Indeed ... Just like Water...

Modifié par Suprez30, 02 décembre 2010 - 02:49 .

[Mallissin]

Nezzer wrote...

We've got Reapers orbiting our sun xD

LOL... one of the "UFOs" is Mercury.

Do you know how big the object has to be to be seen like that? Even a Reaper isn't that big.

[Swordfishtrombone]

Suprez30 wrote...

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

Kimosabe0 wrote...

marbatico wrote...
the only thing we know for sure is needed for life is water

How do we know this for sure? this is true on Earth but maybe not on another planet..

I don't think we can be absolutely sure of such a thing (as we can't be absolutely sure of almost anything), but it seems very, very, very likely that life is universally tied to water. This is because of several unique properties water has due to it's molecular structure. In any case, if there is a plausible replacement for water, it has to be a solvent like water - something in which the chemical reactions necessary for life can take place.

Water has the advantage in that it is abundant in the universe - it's composed of two of the three most common elements in the universe (hydrogen and oxygen), and thus we can expect to find it just about everywhere, in some form.

A second advantage is that water has a unique property - unlike other substances that contract when they get colder, water expands, and becomes less dense when it freezes. This is relevant because it means that under the right temperature range, a sea of water will be covered by an ice-sheet, protecting the water underneath from harmful UV rays and/or the ravages of the atmosphere of the planet. If water behaved like other substances, and contracted and got denser, the ice that would form on the top of the sea would sink down to the bottom, thus exposing more water to freeze, and so on, until the whole sea was frozen solid. 

So a solvent that doesn't have this property - which, as far as I know is unique to water - if it formed a sea, would have to be on a planet where the temperature never reached the freezing point of that liquid, or else the sea would freeze solid and encase any living things within it.

I guess one could imagine life based on some completely non-water chemistry, but I would also be willing to bet that any life more complicated than the simplest of bacteria will require water.

Imagine you're Bob The human from the future .. about 5 millions years in the future...
And you read this post.Your post.It's would be like reading neandertha  grafiti on a cavern wall.

You read the post and you know right in the bat that human are much more intelligent in the present than in the past.

Science t always change.
Right now we think we're alone in the universe and that the most powerful being in the universe's called Obama..But we might be far from the truth.Very Far.Indeed ... Just like Water...

First, you make a fallacy in thinking that a human from the future would necessarily be more intelligent than you or me - there's no evidence that humanity is evolving towards some sort of a higher intelligence. For that to happen, you'd need, at the very least, a general trend of "the more intelligent you are, the more children you have". If anything, too much intelligence is a hinderance to this, as very cerebral types often gravitate towards very time-consuming carreers, and forego having children, or have fewer children than your average joe. It is a fallacy to conclude from past trends, directly into the future - we may be more intelligent than our ancestors several million years ago, but that says nothing of the future direction of evolution.

Second, when you've got a conclusion based on evidence that you CAN understand, then adding more intelligence doesn't change the facts.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it's based on nothing solid. Sure, science has revised it's conclusions frequently - that's it's strenght, revising it's conclusions when the evidence warrants - but there are things that we really DO know, with such a degree of certainty that while details may change, the overall conclusion is extremely unlikely to do so. The chemical properties of water are very well understood, as are the properties of a great many other substances. The relative abundance of elements in the observable universe are also pretty well known (as we understand how heavier elements originated, and originate), so we're on a pretty good grounding to say that water is by far the likeliest substance around which life, where it occurs, is founded.

It's lazy thinking to reject current scientific conclusions in favor of a preferred fantasy, and think that it is somehow more likely that the fantasy is true than the current scientific conclusion, just based on the fact that scientific conclusions can change. Scientific conclusions are STILL orders of magnitude more likely to be true, or certainly closer to truth than whatever scenario you imagine without a scientific backing.

Imagination unconstrained by observation is the ultimate needle-in-a-haystack scenario - there are uncountable things we can imagine, if we ignore what science tells us are the limits, and your likelyhood of hitting anything remotely close to reality are too small to warrant consideration.

There are DEGREES of being wrong, and if the scientific conclusions today are wrong, you can bet that they are still far closer to being right than anything that comes out of non-scientific imaginings.

Isaac Asimov put it better than I could in his excellent essay "The Relativity of Wrong" - please do read it, you can find it here.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Be ready for the revelation of Nasa!

[Sigma Tauri]

Suprez30 wrote...

Imagine you're Bob The human from the future .. about 5 millions years in the future...
And you read this post.Your post.It's would be like reading neandertha  grafiti on a cavern wall.

You read the post and you know right in the bat that human are much more intelligent in the present than in the past.

Science t always change.
Right now we think we're alone in the universe and that the most powerful being in the universe's called Obama..But we might be far from the truth.Very Far.Indeed ... Just like Water...

lolwut? I'd never accept the fact that a modern, social networking-obssessed commoner is any more smarter than say Newton or Hypatia just because they lived in the past.

[Morbo]

From what I've heard, this is apparently going to be about how they found some bacteria with a basic biochemistry that has arsenic instead of phosphorus. Phosphorus normally being one of the key elements in any form of life we know (except viruses), together with the likes of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen, basically the elements forming DNA, RNA and proteins.

At least that's what was on the news here earlier. Peronally I would've liked a shoggoth-related announcement better.

Modifié par Morbo, 02 décembre 2010 - 01:19 .

[Khayness]

Yeah, and what I've heard they found it on Earth.

So much for excitement.

[MaaZeus]

jollyorigins wrote...

I wonder how people would react if NASA really DID find prothean ruins on mars, and everything from mass effect was real....EVERYTHING 0_0.

So... Bioware has some insider information?

[Kimosabe]

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

Kimosabe0 wrote...
How do we know this for sure? this is true on Earth but maybe not on another planet..

I don't think we can be absolutely sure of such a thing (as we can't be absolutely sure of almost anything), but it seems very, very, very likely that life is universally tied to water. This is because of several unique properties water has due to it's molecular structure. In any case, if there is a plausible replacement for water, it has to be a solvent like water - something in which the chemical reactions necessary for life can take place.

Water has the advantage in that it is abundant in the universe - it's composed of two of the three most common elements in the universe (hydrogen and oxygen), and thus we can expect to find it just about everywhere, in some form.

A second advantage is that water has a unique property - unlike other substances that contract when they get colder, water expands, and becomes less dense when it freezes. This is relevant because it means that under the right temperature range, a sea of water will be covered by an ice-sheet, protecting the water underneath from harmful UV rays and/or the ravages of the atmosphere of the planet. If water behaved like other substances, and contracted and got denser, the ice that would form on the top of the sea would sink down to the bottom, thus exposing more water to freeze, and so on, until the whole sea was frozen solid. 

So a solvent that doesn't have this property - which, as far as I know is unique to water - if it formed a sea, would have to be on a planet where the temperature never reached the freezing point of that liquid, or else the sea would freeze solid and encase any living things within it.

I guess one could imagine life based on some completely non-water chemistry, but I would also be willing to bet that any life more complicated than the simplest of bacteria will require water.

Ah ok, thank you for that explanation, I don't have much knowledge of physics and chemistry

And ofcourse we can't be absolutely sure about that, it would be impossible to check if that is true everywhere in the universe