DailyDirt: Life Across The Universe
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Astrobiology is a field that doesn’t have a whole lot of experimental evidence, but it’s interesting to entertain the possibilities of life that might exist elsewhere in the universe. So far, we’ve been looking for ET biology that’s similar to our own, but there’s nothing that says biology must be based on DNA/RNA/proteins/etc. Here are just a few more links on possibly finding life on other worlds.
- Stars in our galaxy generally travel only a few hundred miles per second relative to their peers, but some hypervelocity stars traveling at hundreds of thousands of miles per second might escape our galaxy — and spread life across the universe. It could happen theoretically, but no one has yet observed this phenomenon directly. [url]
- Data from the Kepler mission suggests possibly-habitable planets exist near a significant fraction of all stars — providing better estimates for values in the Drake equation. However, we’re still probably very far away from our nearest neighbors (if they even exist). [url]
- How tough is DNA? Tough enough to survive on the outside of a rocket going to space and also re-entry from orbit. Presumably, this also means that it’s not impossible for ET DNA to arrive on the tons of meteorites that hit our planet every day.[url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: alien, astrobiology, dna, drake equation, et, exoplanet, extraterrestrial, habitable, kepler, life
Comments on “DailyDirt: Life Across The Universe”
Go Big.
I’d bet all my Quatloos that we’d do better by looking at more sterile environments where next-gen life would probably want to be. Suppose for a minute you could do a 100% redesign of all your bodily systems, live comfortably in a far wider range of environments than your current meat suits; would you really want a high oxygen atmosphere that corrodes your gizmos, the risk of having some biologic screw with your circuits, or have any desire to physically depend on the drippy, oozy life systems of a planet such as Earth? Probably not. FYI- you Earthlings would be shocked to know just how many shots are needed to come here.
Re: Go Big.
Doesn’t sterilization kill life?
Re: Re: Go Big.
Carbon units are not true life forms.