Pentagon releases UFO footage

They can survive in the vacuum of space, if that isn't extreme then what is? The only reason they aren't officially classified as one is because they're not naturally adapted to live out in such conditions whereas that fungus in radiation is.
 
mrk said:
The only proof we have that liquid water is needed for life to evolve is us, a sample set of 1,
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Which is one of the things I said in the post you replied to.

mrk said:
there's is nothing that says life could not evolve under different conditions, like a liquid methane world or silicon based.
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And nothing that says it could. We know next to nothing. We don't even know what life is, let alone what conditions are required for it. Or how it begins. Or if it begins. Maybe life is inherent to the universe and has existed since the beginning of time. Maybe it's a bizarrely unlikely occurrence that has only ever happened once.

Silicon based life seems highly unlikely unless you're talking about life on silicon-based computers. For biological life, silicon is an extremely poor second to carbon. Maybe not viable at all, in any conditions. But since we don't know what life is, we can't rule anything out. Maybe it's possible for a rock to be alive. Or a planet. Or a galaxy. Or anything. Maybe the universe is a living thing and we're its tiny symbionts. Or parasites. Maybe we're part of it, like a liver or a toenail. Or not.

Speculation can be interesting, but on this subject it's way out there in the breeze with its foundation varying from gossamer thin to non-existent. Not only do we not know what exists, we don't even know what might possibly exist. We may as well be speculating about an animal when all we have is a drawing of part of a single hair of that animal.

mrk said:
Also another angle for a wider discussion is this, in the next 10 years SpaceX is going to be trying to send humans to Mars to begin the first settlement plans on a Mars colony. This will happen in our lifetimes. Mars was once just like Earth before it lost its magnetic field which stopped solar radiation from wiping away its atmosphere, but below the surface could still exist liquid water and a protected environment to life still thrive, just like on Jupiter and Saturn's icy moons. All 3 bodies have future NASA missions to specifically go to them and check for evidence of life.

But back to Mars, this will be the first instance of humans setting foot on another planet, now let's say primitive life does dwell under the surface of Mars and those humans excavate sections and find such life, those lifeforms will likely consider the humans as gods from the skies, it's the logical thing for primitive intelligence, it's exactly what our species did back when thunder was worshipped as a god, or a tidal wave the product of a god etc etc.

So in the space of 100 years we have gone from zero satellites in space and no real technological advances and the only goings on around the world was warfare in muddy trenches to roadmapping planned habitation on another planet.

If that is what we have been capable of in 100 years then can you imagine what other life out there in a far richer solar system with heavier elements readily available to them vs the tiny amounts of rare ones we have been able to make use of?
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To an extent. But I'm well aware that's all it is - my imagination. I can also imagine that life exists nowhere else in the universe. Or that all life elsewhere is simple single celled prokaryotic organisms because eukaryotic cells are such a freakishly unlikely development that it only happened once. Or that there are a million different species of people from different worlds with advanced technology living in a stable federation of some sort in this galaxy alone, with interstellar travel. I can imagine all sorts of things. But it's just my imagination.

mrk said:
None of this bypasses the fact that space is huge though, and light speed is a fixed figure, so any being with mass would still take hundreds to literal millions/billions of years to reach us depending on if they were from our nearest neighbours or from the far reaches of the Milky Way.
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Probably but maybe not. We haven't proved that the special theory of relativity still applies at that speed. When a theory returns a result of infinity it's often because the theory no longer applies under the conditions that return that result. Also, we know that the special theory of relativity isn't a complete explanation of how everything works. It doesn't include gravity and we know it doesn't work on all scales. The incompatibility between relativity and quantum theory proves that neither is the complete answer.

mrk said:
What are you asking, that methane based life could not exist or silicon?

We have little water bears that literally eat radiation and can survive the vacuum of space. We know extreme conditions are suitable to some lifeforms.
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Yes, but they all require water. A few can endure without water for a while in some form of suspended animation. And your memory was slightly faulty (tardigrades don't eat radiation - that's a different lifeform), but I see from later posts you know that.

I think the champion of durability is still Conan the Bacterium. I forget its formal name, but it was playfully named that by researchers. I'll look it up...Deinococcus radiodurans
 
mrk said:
there's is nothing that says life could not evolve under different conditions, like a liquid methane world or silicon based.
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I'm a chemist, and yes there is - its called science.
Silicone life is impossible, and it a gross misunderstanding of chemistry thats over 60 years old.
The temperature of liquid methane and various other factors make it also next to impossible to have complex molecules form, enough to give complex systems i.e. life.

people say a lot of crap that they are not remotely qualified to have an opinion in - its widely accepted that life is only realistically possible within a narrow temperature range, and water happens to be the best, most common, solvent in those conditions. Its very highly doubtful that life would not involve liquid water significantly.
 
Life as we know it sure, but new advances and findings bring about new evidence quite often. For astronomy people once thought the Earth was the centre of the solar system for example. People were quite literally killed for heresy for saying anything outside of that fact. You're doing what mainstream science does quite often, getting stuck in tunnel vision... and brush off any idea because it goes against what they know even if it's later proven to be plausible.

Take archaeology as one prime example, until Gobekli Tepe was discovered, science said that humans did not build monolithic structures that far back since there was no evidence of it. The mainstream was sure of that fact... Until they weren't sure and it was only in the 2000s they finally recognised the discovery as "one of the first manifestations of human-made monumental architecture". That's just one example, there are many of them covering all walks of science and astronomy based on more modern discoveries thanks to tech advances.

There was an article on ies from a few years ago that summed it up well, didn't outright say that it's impossible, but very carefully worded the writing in such a way as to not need an edit years/decades to come if a discovery is made, because in science new evidence for things are regularly found to either prove or disprove a theory, so until disproven, the chance of silicon life isn't 0%, it's just 0% for life as we know it.

Does silicon-based life exist?

Our February 2016 edition of the environmental SCIENTIST Growing in space: Science beyond the biosphere sparked our members’ interest.
www.the-ies.org www.the-ies.org

Also from 2017:

Science fiction has long imagined alien worlds inhabited by silicon-based life, such as the rock-eating Horta from the original Star Trek series. Now, scientists have for the first time shown that nature can evolve to incorporate silicon into carbon-based molecules, the building blocks of life on Earth.

As for the implications these findings might have for alien chemistry on distant worlds, "my feeling is that if a human being can coax life to build bonds between silicon and carbon, nature can do it too," said the study's senior author Frances Arnold, a chemical engineer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The scientists detailed their findings recently in the journal Science.
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(from https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/silicon-based-life-may-be-more-just-science-fiction-n748266)

Never say never.
 
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having a little bit of silicon in a carbon based molecule doesn't make it silicon based - its still carbon based.

Silicon as an element simply doesn't have the chemical capability to form molecules like carbon does - its not about something thats undiscovered or unknown, its a basic chemical fact about the element. Its not going to happen anywhere in this universe.

Both those article are basically a no, with a pointless tease to get people to read them - but the answer is still a no. We know how chemistry works, well enough to be sure.
 
It's a bit of a leap to drop in a comment about silicon based life though isn't it? Pretty much the theme of this entire thread:

Person A "Aliens / silicone based life could exist"
Person B "We have no proof / it's impossible"
Person A "But it's probable in the universe, because it's huge"
Person B "Sure maybe, although we have no proof yet"

I'd say your first article @mrk linked does say it's impossible - it's a little misleading to say otherwise. There are more interesting quotes from the NBC article about carbon-silicon bonds but you chose the bit about Star Trek :)
 
Agreed, although I wouldn't want to shut the discussion down, it is interesting to talk about.

We just might have our own interpretations of the same information. But that's life :cool:
 
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MoNkeE said:
So are you implying aliens destroyed the Baltimore bridge? Interested to see Pottsey’s stance on that.
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Not sure why anyone would be interested in my view on this. Crazy would be my answer to anyone trying to blame it on Aliens. Surly that is miss post into the wrong thread not someone blaming aliens. At this point everything I have seen points to it being a genuine accident. While a little rare nothing that unusual.
 
I just watched an interview with Adam Frank, an astrophysics professor and I think I completely agree with him on all this. Under standing what he's saying in particular in relation to intergalactic vs inter-planetary species vs how long a civilisation actually survives and the actual limitations imposed by the reality of physics.


The gist? We are not alone, but other species are not inter galactic, most likely. But if they are, then there is no reliable data for science to "scaffold" up with. At least not yet.
 
Just watched this rather sobering documentary on Prime if anyone has access - it debunks a lot of the 'evidence' discussed in this thread:

Watch The UFO Movie THEY Don't Want You to See | Prime Video

This film gives the real science behind the current UFO phenomenon and answers the questions so many are wondering. What is in our skies? What do we know, and how do we know it? And most importantly: Are we being visited?
www.amazon.co.uk

or search:

The UFO Movie THEY Don't Want You to See​


There is a section where they get an expert to check the military airplane videos and he completely destroys them.
 
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