

NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life - shimi
http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/nasascientistfindsevidenceofalienlife

======
tybris
Best way to deal with these discoveries is just to forget about them and in a
few years time look back and see if anyone stood up to challenge them.
Reviewers can only look at the sanity of the paper, not at its truth. Even if
they are very sceptical, they typically decide that a paper should be accepted
because it is interesting and opens discussion. It is not the first time that
structures like these have been found and published [1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001>

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Anchor
Full paper can be found at <http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html>

~~~
tybris
Did they have to make it look like a conspiracy website?

~~~
robryan
It is weird the sites design, maybe it's one of the reasons they are going out
of business, people arriving there from a search engine may not find it much
of a reputable journal at first glance.

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motters
Finding fossil microorganisms and observing that they look very similar to
those found on Earth would be an indication to me that the rock may not be a
meteorite after all, or that it may be a meteorite _from Earth_ (i.e. blasted
out into space by an impact, then fallen back to Earth some time later).

~~~
EgeBamyasi
Second that.

Altough

"There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that
I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that
have also come up stump."

makes me a little curious. I'm not a biologist, so someone who is, how often
do you find organisms/fossils completely different from known organisms?

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araneae
This was published in a crockpot journal and is likely fake:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2294516>

~~~
waterlesscloud
The "analysis" presented there is heavily laden with emotion, which reduces
its own credibility in short order.

I know nothing about the Journal Of Cosmology, but the tone of this blog entry
prevents me from accepting it as useful information, it comes across more as
axe-grinding.

But let's assume JoC is a crackpot journal. Why is a NASA scientist publishing
there?

Did he decide that NASA's credibility on alien life discoveries has not been
damaged enough and he wanted to make it worse?

~~~
damoncali
NASA employs many people. I worked there once myself. That there are crackpots
and other less-than-credible folks working there is not only not surprising,
but something I witnessed first hand. Despite popular culture's imagery, NASA
is not some elite group of the world's finest intellects. It is really no more
big a deal than working for a giant military contractor. In fact, most of the
workers at NASA _do_ work for a giant military contractor.

That said, I have nothing to offer on the actual subject at hand - the
validity of the claims.

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bhickey
Ever get the impression that NASA is doing a disservice to the scientific
process with these sensational media pushes? Arsenic based life anyone?

~~~
tyng
Second that, the so called "astrobiology" is one of those fields which we
don't know if the study is at all scientific or meaningful until we meet the
alien in person. I remember watching a video of the 80's featuring a Professor
of "Supernatural Studies".

These are, as one may call the study of "unknown unknowns"

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chalst
In older news, the Journal of Cosmology is going out of business:

[http://daviddobbs.posterous.com/journal-of-cosmology-
going-o...](http://daviddobbs.posterous.com/journal-of-cosmology-going-out-
with-big-bang)

David Dobbs's Wired article on the "meteorite life" story is worth reading:

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/aliens-riding-
mete...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/aliens-riding-meteorites-
arsenic-redux-or-something-new/)

~~~
jnotarstefano
Please submit this! I'd love to read qualified commentary on many claims this
blog post makes.

~~~
chalst
I submitted the Wired story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2293947>

and then realised that was probably not the link you meant, since it was not
the blog post. If you are wondering about the validity of the press release, I
trust David Dobbs to quote a press release correctly; I'm guessing the journal
is making another go of things.

------
Groxx
> _“Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100
> experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from
> the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical
> analysis ... No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a
> thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the
> scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an
> important research paper before it is published.”_

Seriously? That seems... sad. Borderline pathetic, that they're apparently
that insular.

~~~
nopassrecover
It does say "before it is published". Presumably you would want to vet a paper
with trusted colleagues before releasing it even semi-publicly.

~~~
Groxx
But once it's published, it's (seemingly) most-often behind a paywall,
blocking further access to those who could analyze or benefit from it.

~~~
robryan
Journal of Cosmology is open access on the internet. Given the field though, I
doubt anyone that could really add to these findings is going to be held back
by a subscription, I assume it's very hard to get access to these rocks and
without the evidence to experiment on your just taking the authors word
really.

Very different from say an algorithms paper where anyone can implement and run
the code and possibly find improvements.

------
billswift
Robin Hanson has an interesting take on (and links to) some criticisms of the
paper, from evidence and philosophy of science pov, here,
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/03/alien-life-info-but-
no...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/03/alien-life-info-but-not-status-
found.html).

------
nazgulnarsil
this is bad. If we're the only life in neighborhood it is evidence that life
is rare and we might already be past the great filter. If life is relatively
common it makes the fact that the sky is silent fucking terrifying.

~~~
ramblerman
elaborate please, I'm not following entirely

~~~
nazgulnarsil
you'd be better served looking at Hanson's posts on the subject.

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/at-least-two-
filters.h...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/at-least-two-filters.html)

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/03/very-bad-news.html>

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/beware-future-
filters....](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/beware-future-filters.html)

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/brain-size-is-not-
filt...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/brain-size-is-not-filter.html)

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/12/berserker-
breakout.htm...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/12/berserker-
breakout.html)

~~~
JeremyBanks
Off-topic but I'm not sure where else to ask: Does Overcoming Bias have any
organized index of posts remotely similar to LessWrong's sequences[1]? I'll
probably just dive in and navigate via tags, but a more directed approach
would be preferable.

[1] <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences>

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InclinedPlane
I'm not impressed. The evidence backing the Martian microbe claims for
meteorite ALH 84001 were far, far more robust than these seem to be and yet at
the end of the day succumbed to the onslaught of criticism.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claiming that you've
found life inside a rock that has sat in a stew of micro-organisms (the Earth)
for thousands of years is one thing, claiming that such life must be extra-
terrestrial in origin is another thing entirely and requires a higher standard
of evidence.

~~~
jarin
From what I've read, CI chondrites are extremely fragile and don't last very
long on exposure to liquid water, which is why about half of the recovered CI
chondrites on Earth have been witnessed falls (with the other half found in
Antarctica). The two he analyzed for the paper were witnessed falls from 1864
and 1938.

I'm not saying this isn't just a case of pareidolia (it probably is), but the
meteorites haven't been sitting in a stew of microorganisms for "thousands of
years".

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dr4ke
if they were sure bout that, they would post it on nasa.gov i guess

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aquarin
I hope that it is really true and that this is only the first of such
discoveries.

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payothl
So, in a few centuries we will have finally opponents and maybe then we will
stop to kill ourselves.

