Life forms found 20 metres under ice, survived in isolation for 3000 years

[Dacien]

What could go wrong? how many of you played Halo Combat Evolved when it came out.. ...Flood...

Exactly. In the interest of Head-in-the-Sandism, we should refrain from dangerous "exploration", as it's being put.


I kid of course, exciting discoveries every day. Yay for discovery!

[Spectral]

Because its (maybe) there?

This nails it, really. Scientists (for the most part) don't really study things because they're looking for an application, they do it just to know. The applications are why people are actually willing to pay them though!

[Pandamists]

Allow me to give you a couple of simple reasons:

1) Studying alien life forms can help us better understand how life survived in harsher climates than ours, this understanding is necessary for manned space missions.

2) The resources on earth are limited and being used exponentially faster than they can be replenished. Look up Indium, we are almost out of it and it is used in pretty much anything with a screen on it. Same goes for many other rare elements.

---------- Post added 2012-11-27 at 10:47 PM ----------



I disagree with the statement about homo-sapiens. Our understanding of life is limited by the fact that we only ever come across carbon based life forms. There is no way science can tell us what forms life could take elsewhere in the universe, let aside how old or young it is. Up until curiosity we were pretty sure the radiation levels on mars were fatal to human beings and this is Mars, the planet we arguable no the most about, besides our own of course. It's like how we used to think that light was a wave and one day we learn it was comprised of particles as well and that changed our understanding of light. Our knowledge is very very limited.

Well, there is no denying the Homo genus is young as well as homo-sapiens, compared to other lifeforms on Earth we're very young.

[Wells]

In related news, a couple astronomers are going to start looking for Dyson Spheres.

[igame]

In related news, a couple astronomers are going to start looking for Dyson Spheres.

Imagine a Type II civilization.....wow!

[dd614]

The why-bother movement, the bane of mankind.

You could say the same thing about ambition, which has lead to untold millions of human deaths.

[Sayl]

Up until curiosity we were pretty sure the radiation levels on mars were fatal to human beings and this is Mars, the planet we arguable no the most about, besides our own of course.

Unless some media outlet totally botched the details of that story, I don't see where anyone thought radiation exposure on Mars would be fatal to astronauts. Even if the RAD instrument on Curiosity detected lower-than-expected levels of radiation, you can still find technical assessments of exposure risks to astronauts in NASA literature which put a value of 400mSv on an 18-month surface stay (and those values date back several years at the least -- also worth noting I can find very similar numbers going back two decades). That's comparable to the upper end of a year spent aboard the International Space Station.

It's the trip to and from Mars that puts astronauts at the greatest risk of exposure. Even with fluctuations in solar activity taken into account, the overall estimates for a round trip to Mars (again, including a year and a half spent on the surface) add up to 1/4 of the total lifetime exposure limit NASA requires for astronauts. I don't think our understanding in this regard is nearly as limited as you wish to suggest.

[Adam Jensen]

You make no sense at ALL ! The only reason America was ever discovered had nothing to do with PURE exploration it was to find a faster more lucrative trade route to India it was motivated by greed ..and also finding new land and new resources is a lot different and a lot more important then finding fossilized 1 cell martians.

Now exploring to find intelligent life that is a noble en devour

Because the discovery of life beyond earth, whether single celled or intelligent would possibly provide greater clues and better understanding of the mechanisms of life. Such knowledge has great potential in better understanding of our own biology, which may (or may not, but who knows) lead to better medical advances.

[Ave07]

Imagine a Type II civilization.....wow!

IRL mass relays? I hope so!

[Adam Jensen]

IRL mass relays? I hope so!

So long as they aren't created by a synthetic race of murderous space squids . . .

---------- Post added 2012-11-28 at 12:43 AM ----------

This nails it, really. Scientists (for the most part) don't really study things because they're looking for an application, they do it just to know. The applications are why people are actually willing to pay them though!

And almost every discovery has had some application derived from it, even if such applications weren't the intent of the inquiry.

[Woebegone]

2) The resources on earth are limited and being used exponentially faster than they can be replenished. Look up Indium, we are almost out of it and it is used in pretty much anything with a screen on it. Same goes for many other rare elements.

I've heard or read nothing of this kind, and atleast a quick look up from Wikipedia suggests indium (and most likely other rare elemens as well) is still plentiful. Because the west outsourced most of it's rare earth mining to China, most of the world's reserves are probably still untapped. By the time we actually start running out of anything, recycling methods and / or alternate materials have developed far enough to ensure it's not going to become an issue.

I really, really doubt we'll be doing any kind of extraterrestrial mining within.. dunno, the next few hundred years.

[Deleted]

I still don't know how they pitched going to the moon honestly . I could see if it had resources of any kind but just to take a walk?

Its so Neil and Buzz could check out that Autobot ship that crashed there of course! Everyone knows that...

[Seezer]

I have never understood why people want to find life on mars anyways ? We know it will be simple life like 1 cell bacteria ..etc etc ...is it to disprove the creationists ? Those people don't believe in that anyways so why are they so psyched to find life on Mars ?

Because human beings want to know about everything. Right now our limits are with Mars. In the future they are going to launch a vehicle to one of Saturns moon that scientist have found ice and have a probe melt through the ice's surface and swim around to see what is in there.

And 12,000 years into the future when we can send ppl further and further in space, we'll do that. It has nothing to do with "Disproving creationists". That would be pretty ignorant to think that way. Scientists hunger for new discoveries. And Curiosity isn't on mars to only search for life. It is there so we can find more out about the planet. They're analyzing everything. An example"

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ms.../pia16573.html

[Deleted]

The way i see it, the universe is massive. Its unimaginable in size and there are people attempting to disprove theres life out there, im willing to bet everything we own there is life out there somewhere.

Will we see it this generation, or perhaps in 10,000 generations who knows. But we are only alive and well due to chance, why cant anything else exist due to that?

Hopefully whenever we do make contact/ receive contact with another species they wont destroy us like barbarians...

But i seriously doubt we'll ever get boots on mars within the next 50-100 years, tech constraints and all...

[Moadar]

I'm more curious about them finding new metals or other elements. Though I'm guessing curiosity can't really do any digging. Maybe they will send a robot that can take some samples with a deep bore.

[Ashnazg]

The way i see it, the universe is massive. Its unimaginable in size and there are people attempting to disprove theres life out there, im willing to bet everything we own there is life out there somewhere.

Will we see it this generation, or perhaps in 10,000 generations who knows. But we are only alive and well due to chance, why cant anything else exist due to that?

Hopefully whenever we do make contact/ receive contact with another species they wont destroy us like barbarians...

But i seriously doubt we'll ever get boots on mars within the next 50-100 years, tech constraints and all...

There are no significant tech constraints to put people on Mars. Taking them off it is another issue altogether. Even then, if there was significant political will to do so, it could be done, but in our age of political prostitution and pandering to the masses, its going to be a difficult affair.

And yeah, while there are uncountable planets out there, until we find one single instance of life outside of our planet, its a rather significant leap of logic to assume that life exists elsewhere.

However, once we have a single instance of life existing outside of our planet, the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the universe (and by proxy, evolved life) increases tremendously.

[Woebegone]

I'm more curious about them finding new metals or other elements. Though I'm guessing curiosity can't really do any digging. Maybe they will send a robot that can take some samples with a deep bore.

Not a physicist, but as far as my knowledge goes, we aren't going to find any new elements. Any undiscovered elements would be extremely unstable and would have a half-life far shorter than the lifespan of the planet, and as such would have decayed into lighter, known elements a long time ago. Most (read: all) new elements nowadays are elements predicted by the periodic table that we simply haven't been able to synthesize yet, and when we do they only exist for a few minutes or even seconds.

[apepi]

You can be amazed where life can live, some live bye a volcano living of the heat that they provide(I remember writing something about this on a standardized test and the eat the shit up).

[Themius]

Because, it's part of modern (and past, I guess) society's lore and culture to want to find out; it's practically hard wired into us to NEED to know. That, and I REALLY want to go "nenner-nenner, haha, you lose," to Creationists, yes.

Real mature.

[trisdog]

we are all just one big science experiment. just let it go.