Ontopic So it seems there may indeed be life on comet 67P
- Thread starter Jimmycrackcorn
- Start date
Scientists on the mission say that the craft is healthy. One said that if the mission were graded, it wouldn't even bump it from an A+ to an A. We're still going to see great things.
thintoast
Mayosapien
How is it a theory when there are rocks landing here multiple times a day containing organic material? We know this. Guess what happened when the dino extinction meteor hit Earf. We were part of the cycle ejecting billions of tons of organics into space. Panspermia is fact.
You're taking the piss.
Mr. Argumentor
I fab shitboxes and shitbox accessories.
He's saying that it's not the only thing that causes life.How is it a theory when there are rocks landing here multiple times a day containing organic material? We know this. Guess what happened when the dino extinction meteor hit Earf. We were part of the cycle ejecting billions of tons of organics into space. Panspermia is fact.
You're taking the piss.
thintoast
Mayosapien
So, if I just go outside and jizz all over the place until a giant rock comes down and blows us all to smithereens, and then the rock that my spermies were on gets launched into space and freezes, then lands on mars and starts a whole new colony of life, would I be god?
How is it a theory when there are rocks landing here multiple times a day containing organic material? We know this. Guess what happened when the dino extinction meteor hit Earf. We were part of the cycle ejecting billions of tons of organics into space. Panspermia is fact.
You're taking the piss.
A. it's not a theory, it's a hypothesis
2. just because something contains organic material doesn't mean that organic material will lead to life nor does it mean that organic material wasn't already on the earth long before any comets carrying it slammed into it
panspermia is far from fact. I think it's likely but until we find actual life on a comet we don't have any solid evidence
Guardian publishes a retraction, of sorts.
Quote
The Guardian’s story “Philae comet could be home to alien life, say scientists” has been met with scepticism and outright dismissal by leading comet experts.
The people behind the headline are Chandra Wickramasinghe, University of Buckingham, and Max Wallis, University of Cardiff. Today, the Daily Mirror reported Wickramasinghe as saying, “Data from the comet seems to unequivocally point to micro-organisms being involved.”
However, the evidence for any life on Philae’s comet is flimsy at best. Even Wickramasinghe’s own colleague fell short of agreeing with him outright. At the academic lecture that triggered the story, Paul Sutherland of SEN reported Wallis as saying, “If there is any active biology in the comet, we’d hope to detect it”.
Certainly, the vast majority of comet scientists would agree that comet 67P’s surface features are much more easily explained by non-biological mechanisms.
“No scientist active in any of the Rosetta instrument science teams assumes the presence of living micro-organisms beneath the cometary surface crust,” Uwe Meierhenrich of Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France, told me in an email exchange on Monday afternoon.
Meierhenrich serves as a co-investigator on Philae’s COSAC instrument, which was designed to chemically analyse the comet. He told me that a comet’s black surface crust was a prediction made in 1986 by J. Mayo Greenberg (Nature 321, 385), who calculated what would happen to naturally occurring organic molecules on the comet when they were struck by cosmic rays and light.
“These explanations seem to be valid, also with regard to new data of the cometary Rosetta mission,” wrote Meierhenrich.
Several of the news reports have quoted Wickramasinghe as saying that he was not allowed to place life detection equipment on the Philae lander. They go on to say that the spacecraft cannot detect life, even if it is there. This last assertion is simply not true.
Life is quite picky about which chemicals it utilises; therefore, if life were present on the comet, this would recognisably boost a number of key molecules. COSAC and the PTOLEMY instrument on Philae could measure this enhancement. “We can thereby well distinguish between the biological and astrochemical formation of organics,” wrote Meierhenrich.
A first list of molecules identified on the cometary nucleus by COSAC, authored by Meierhenrich and colleagues, will be published at the end of July in the journal Science. According to Meierhenrich, this list hints at non-biological formation mechanisms.
Wickramasinghe has a history of claiming to have detected extraterrestrial microbes. In 2001, he claimed to find extraterrestrial microbes in stratospheric dust collected at 41km in altitude. In 2003, he suggested that the SARS virus came from outer space. None of this work has been accepted by the mainstream.
However, an earlier hypothesis of Wickramasinghe’s that the molecular building blocks of life could have been brought to Earth by comets is now widely thought plausible. Evidence to back up this claim has been amassed by independent investigations, of which Rosetta and Philae are the latest round.
However, Wickramasinghe appears to see this acceptance as a weapon to be used against his bolder ideas. In a paper published in 2014, he wrote that the acceptance and promotion of this idea by scientific journals, “serves as a deliberately chosen device to keep the full force of evidence for ingress of extraterrestrial life from coming to the public’s notice.”
Today’s story began in a press release issued by the Royal Astronomical Society at 23:01 BST on Sunday 5 July. “Do micro-organisms explain features on comets?” ran the bold headline. It was to publicise a talk at the National Astronomy Meeting. However, the abstract of that talk mentions life only in passing.
Planetary scientist Professor Dave Rothery of the Open University posted in a comment on Facebook, “The Guardian and the RAS disgraced themselves today with the ‘top scientists’ argue case for life on comet’ piece today. I’ve just sat through the talk behind the press release and I think it fair to say that the audience was polite but entirely unconvinced. Diatoms [a type of micro-organism] in comets, my arse!”
http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2015/jul/06/no-alien-life-on-philae-comet
Quote
The Guardian’s story “Philae comet could be home to alien life, say scientists” has been met with scepticism and outright dismissal by leading comet experts.
The people behind the headline are Chandra Wickramasinghe, University of Buckingham, and Max Wallis, University of Cardiff. Today, the Daily Mirror reported Wickramasinghe as saying, “Data from the comet seems to unequivocally point to micro-organisms being involved.”
However, the evidence for any life on Philae’s comet is flimsy at best. Even Wickramasinghe’s own colleague fell short of agreeing with him outright. At the academic lecture that triggered the story, Paul Sutherland of SEN reported Wallis as saying, “If there is any active biology in the comet, we’d hope to detect it”.
Certainly, the vast majority of comet scientists would agree that comet 67P’s surface features are much more easily explained by non-biological mechanisms.
“No scientist active in any of the Rosetta instrument science teams assumes the presence of living micro-organisms beneath the cometary surface crust,” Uwe Meierhenrich of Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France, told me in an email exchange on Monday afternoon.
Meierhenrich serves as a co-investigator on Philae’s COSAC instrument, which was designed to chemically analyse the comet. He told me that a comet’s black surface crust was a prediction made in 1986 by J. Mayo Greenberg (Nature 321, 385), who calculated what would happen to naturally occurring organic molecules on the comet when they were struck by cosmic rays and light.
“These explanations seem to be valid, also with regard to new data of the cometary Rosetta mission,” wrote Meierhenrich.
Several of the news reports have quoted Wickramasinghe as saying that he was not allowed to place life detection equipment on the Philae lander. They go on to say that the spacecraft cannot detect life, even if it is there. This last assertion is simply not true.
Life is quite picky about which chemicals it utilises; therefore, if life were present on the comet, this would recognisably boost a number of key molecules. COSAC and the PTOLEMY instrument on Philae could measure this enhancement. “We can thereby well distinguish between the biological and astrochemical formation of organics,” wrote Meierhenrich.
A first list of molecules identified on the cometary nucleus by COSAC, authored by Meierhenrich and colleagues, will be published at the end of July in the journal Science. According to Meierhenrich, this list hints at non-biological formation mechanisms.
Wickramasinghe has a history of claiming to have detected extraterrestrial microbes. In 2001, he claimed to find extraterrestrial microbes in stratospheric dust collected at 41km in altitude. In 2003, he suggested that the SARS virus came from outer space. None of this work has been accepted by the mainstream.
However, an earlier hypothesis of Wickramasinghe’s that the molecular building blocks of life could have been brought to Earth by comets is now widely thought plausible. Evidence to back up this claim has been amassed by independent investigations, of which Rosetta and Philae are the latest round.
However, Wickramasinghe appears to see this acceptance as a weapon to be used against his bolder ideas. In a paper published in 2014, he wrote that the acceptance and promotion of this idea by scientific journals, “serves as a deliberately chosen device to keep the full force of evidence for ingress of extraterrestrial life from coming to the public’s notice.”
Today’s story began in a press release issued by the Royal Astronomical Society at 23:01 BST on Sunday 5 July. “Do micro-organisms explain features on comets?” ran the bold headline. It was to publicise a talk at the National Astronomy Meeting. However, the abstract of that talk mentions life only in passing.
Planetary scientist Professor Dave Rothery of the Open University posted in a comment on Facebook, “The Guardian and the RAS disgraced themselves today with the ‘top scientists’ argue case for life on comet’ piece today. I’ve just sat through the talk behind the press release and I think it fair to say that the audience was polite but entirely unconvinced. Diatoms [a type of micro-organism] in comets, my arse!”
http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2015/jul/06/no-alien-life-on-philae-comet
And it answers nothing. If life here just came from somewhere else, then we still haven't answered the question.
thintoast
Mayosapien
Didn't you read the bible? God created life by throwing a giant rock onto the earth filled with carbon. This carbon was used as the foundation to create Eve. Then he beat the shit out of Eve, cut her open, stole one of her ribs and made Adam from the left over carbon.
From Atom to Adam.
Guardian publishes a retraction, of sorts.
Quote
The Guardian’s story “Philae comet could be home to alien life, say scientists” has been met with scepticism and outright dismissal by leading comet experts.
The people behind the headline are Chandra Wickramasinghe, University of Buckingham, and Max Wallis, University of Cardiff. Today, the Daily Mirror reported Wickramasinghe as saying, “Data from the comet seems to unequivocally point to micro-organisms being involved.”
However, the evidence for any life on Philae’s comet is flimsy at best. Even Wickramasinghe’s own colleague fell short of agreeing with him outright. At the academic lecture that triggered the story, Paul Sutherland of SEN reported Wallis as saying, “If there is any active biology in the comet, we’d hope to detect it”.
Certainly, the vast majority of comet scientists would agree that comet 67P’s surface features are much more easily explained by non-biological mechanisms.
“No scientist active in any of the Rosetta instrument science teams assumes the presence of living micro-organisms beneath the cometary surface crust,” Uwe Meierhenrich of Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France, told me in an email exchange on Monday afternoon.
Meierhenrich serves as a co-investigator on Philae’s COSAC instrument, which was designed to chemically analyse the comet. He told me that a comet’s black surface crust was a prediction made in 1986 by J. Mayo Greenberg (Nature 321, 385), who calculated what would happen to naturally occurring organic molecules on the comet when they were struck by cosmic rays and light.
“These explanations seem to be valid, also with regard to new data of the cometary Rosetta mission,” wrote Meierhenrich.
Several of the news reports have quoted Wickramasinghe as saying that he was not allowed to place life detection equipment on the Philae lander. They go on to say that the spacecraft cannot detect life, even if it is there. This last assertion is simply not true.
Life is quite picky about which chemicals it utilises; therefore, if life were present on the comet, this would recognisably boost a number of key molecules. COSAC and the PTOLEMY instrument on Philae could measure this enhancement. “We can thereby well distinguish between the biological and astrochemical formation of organics,” wrote Meierhenrich.
A first list of molecules identified on the cometary nucleus by COSAC, authored by Meierhenrich and colleagues, will be published at the end of July in the journal Science. According to Meierhenrich, this list hints at non-biological formation mechanisms.
Wickramasinghe has a history of claiming to have detected extraterrestrial microbes. In 2001, he claimed to find extraterrestrial microbes in stratospheric dust collected at 41km in altitude. In 2003, he suggested that the SARS virus came from outer space. None of this work has been accepted by the mainstream.
However, an earlier hypothesis of Wickramasinghe’s that the molecular building blocks of life could have been brought to Earth by comets is now widely thought plausible. Evidence to back up this claim has been amassed by independent investigations, of which Rosetta and Philae are the latest round.
However, Wickramasinghe appears to see this acceptance as a weapon to be used against his bolder ideas. In a paper published in 2014, he wrote that the acceptance and promotion of this idea by scientific journals, “serves as a deliberately chosen device to keep the full force of evidence for ingress of extraterrestrial life from coming to the public’s notice.”
Today’s story began in a press release issued by the Royal Astronomical Society at 23:01 BST on Sunday 5 July. “Do micro-organisms explain features on comets?” ran the bold headline. It was to publicise a talk at the National Astronomy Meeting. However, the abstract of that talk mentions life only in passing.
Planetary scientist Professor Dave Rothery of the Open University posted in a comment on Facebook, “The Guardian and the RAS disgraced themselves today with the ‘top scientists’ argue case for life on comet’ piece today. I’ve just sat through the talk behind the press release and I think it fair to say that the audience was polite but entirely unconvinced. Diatoms [a type of micro-organism] in comets, my arse!”
http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2015/jul/06/no-alien-life-on-philae-comet
well of course a dude in cardiff would think he sees aliens all the time