

NASA to Hold News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery - scdlbx
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2010/M10-110.html

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phreeza
Perhaps a good moment to re-read this:

Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing:
<http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf>

tl;dr: "Because it means life is not incredibly unlikely (after all, it
occurred on two planets in our own solar system); ergo what must instead be
incredibly unlikely is the ability for life to progress to the point where it
can spread across the galaxy (after all, no other life form has contacted us);
ergo we are doomed."

~~~
PostOnce
The other theory being that galaxy-spanning life is incredibly common, it's
just that we're too immature/uninteresting to bother coming to visit.

How often do you stop and try to communicate with the queen of a particular
anthill?

~~~
patrickaljord
The article mentions this theory, it says that if life is incredibly common,
it would only take one civilization to be curious and come visit us.

~~~
blhack
I feel like I'm playing into a cliche by even giving this response, but:

Would we recognize it? Would we even know that it had happened? Consider that
if there is a civilization capable of traveling across inter-stellar
distances, they very likely have got a _very_ different sort of life-span that
people on earth. Because of this, their language (if they have something we
would recognize as language) could be dramatically different than ours.

Honestly their brains, or "mechanism of creativity" as I guess you could call
it, could be something that we would never be able to communicate with.

There are biochemical reasons why extra-terrestrial life would probably be
similar to ours, but I can think of no reason why they would be neurologically
or psychologically _anything_ like us.

Think about the ants again. Ants have communications, sure, but it's not
language, at least not in the human sense. Ants very probably don't have
thoughts, and because they don't have thoughts, they don't have a reason to
abstract them to words.

This hasn't prevented ants (or bees) from building incredibly interesting and
complicated physical and organizational structures.

We've contacted bees. Do you suppose that they realize it?

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nhebb
I keep seeing stories pop up here that NASA has some upcoming announcement,
but I never remember to follow up on the announcement day to find out what the
hubbub was about. I'm starting to get annoyed that a government agency thinks
it needs to save "the big reveal" for a press conference. Why not just make
the announcement?

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ugh
That’s the contrarianism you are going to pick? A bunch of scientists having a
for the general public probably harmless but for the scientists in the field
no doubt somewhat exciting announcement?

You are not the target audience. This is a press release. Before the existence
of the web you would have never heard about the announcement unless you are a
science journalist. (The vast majority of people will never hear about this
announcement. Reading HN or other places where this announcement might
conceivably pop up is clearly not normal.) You really shouldn’t be annoyed
about something that is not even directed at you.

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iwr
Likely scenario: they found ancient life forms in lake Vostok, deep below the
Antarctic ice.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok>

~~~
j_baker
...or they didn't. :-)

Though I am curious: why are they announcing this via a press conference? It
seems as though they would publish a paper to be peer-reviewed or something
first.

~~~
robryan
The past track record though on these things seems to indicate though that
these press conferences fall more into the very interesting discovery for
scientists and those who follow it, rather than ground breaking discovery that
hits the front pages in general publications.

Although saying that if something truly ground breaking were discovered it
wouldn't surprise me if it were announced in the same way.

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Keyframe
Considering Streptococcus mitis already survived a period of 3 years on the
Moon, and amino acids were found in soil retrieved by the Apollo astronauts,
my hopes are high.

edit - source: [http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/1998/as...](http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/1998/ast01sep98_1/)

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cloudwalking
Jason Kottke looked at the speaker list and thinks it's photosynthesis using
arsenic. See this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228>

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amichail
Would the discovery of microbial extraterrestrial life have any significant
impact on your life?

~~~
Vivtek
Yes.

~~~
darwinGod
wow, I didnt get how 33 people blindly agree and upvote a one-word answer,
offering no perspective at all , to a very valid question on how a successful
outcome to SETI would influence an average guy's life!! Surely, this is not a
open-and-shut question. Let me dampen some spirits who are gleefully waiting
to see breaking news of extra-terrestrial life. Think about the budget and
investment into this grand objective.Think whether the money invested
has/would have a respectable ROI-would it have been better spent on less-
glamorous, but more useful ventures like funding projects with more "tangible
benefits, and issues", like OLPC. Think of world hunger,lack of access to
drinking water. Not glamorous-but plenty of scope to advance technology to
change the world we live in. And then think of romanticizing on "Are we alone"
, la Jodie Foster,Contact or NASA news conferences.

~~~
Vivtek
Think of the many other colossal wastes of money. I contemplated more than
"yes" but really? "Yes" says enough. The discovery of extraterrestrial life
will change my life, and for the better, and who the hell are you to denigrate
that? How much money does the world spend on bubble gum? How much money has
already been spent tearing Iraq and Afghanistan to smaller pieces this
morning? How much money was spent on ad buys on last year's Superbowl?

The world has heaping piles of money. Some minuscule fraction is spent on
basic science, and you're all high and mighty about lack of access to drinking
water. Give me a break.

You want perspective? It's all around you. If you need it from a one-word
answer that succinctly responded to the original question, then I'm afraid you
need to look elsewhere.

~~~
darwinGod
Hey,I didn't mean to denigrate you, or anything like that. If it sounded that
way, I am very sorry.

The examples that you quote citing colossal wastage of expenditure, ring quite
true.Exactly my point. But really, wasted expenditure is wasted
expenditure,plain and simple- There cant be any justification, more so, citing
another wasted expenditure. Analogy- how rational would it sound, if a
convicted murder says in trial "But I killed just one guy.Go,look at some war-
ravaged place in Africa what people get away with".

Actually,I believe basic science encompasses a lot more than astrobiology-Even
the issues I pointed out, would stand to gain a lot,from advances in basic
sciences, and perhaps need more investment.

Perhaps you feel that discovery of ET life would changed your life for the
good- I would completely agree with you, if it could make us humans
healthier,welathier, or otherwise more intelligent. Till then, I would wait
and watch :-) and... read the next interesting thread on HN!

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pjy04
They figured they should talk about their discoveries of life on other planets
before Wikileaks says it first

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ANH
Perhaps they've sussed out something about what we should expect to see in
extraterrestrial life at the molecular (e.g. DNA) level. The biggest clue is
the list of participants. One of them specializes in research on non-standard
biology. I'm guessing the announcement will be something along the lines of,
"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it", and it's right here on Earth!

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checoivan
I'm really hoping to officially hear we're not alone :)

~~~
kbatten
Just make sure Will Smith is on alert.

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electromagnetic
He covers the Alien/Robot/Zombie/Steampunk market, so I feel fairly secure.

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teejae
This sounds very much like the plot of Deception Point:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_Point>

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dnautics
mars is the result of an oxygen catastrophe where, unlike the earth, life did
not survive.

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juiceandjuice
The Andromeda Strain!

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zoomzoom
Maybe they will be announcing that Roswell has some secrets, after all.

