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In other words...TROLLS!|
Originally Posted by McNum
They actually mentioned that specific example as something that suddenly became a lot more plausible and worth looking into now that the substitution of one element for another has been observed.
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Just whatever you do, don't mention their lichen.
This just in - one of the scientists studying the arsenic-based microbes spilled a bottle of antibacterial soap on his desk and wiped out the entire species. 
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
It is not Arsenic-Based life.
Arsenic-based means that arsenic is the primary building block.
What was revealed is that 1 one the 6 basic building blocks can be replaced with a different element. Which means that there are now 7 basic building blocks of life that we know of. 5 of them shared by every creature we know of.
In some ways it means very little, in others it is a very important thing. For example, we could say it's not very important because it's not the primary building block and when we're searching for life we not looking for either of those elements anyways...
But on the other hand... depending on how pervasive arsenic and phosphorus are as elements it could mean the difference of 1 planet in 100 and 2 planets in 100 that could contain life and thats a huge leap.
That's for exobiology which is cool and all, but to me, not really something NASA should be announcing as it's not really important at this stage in the game for them.
That all being said, what does this mean for us? Besides being cool and a rewriting of a few lines in books...
A new hazard to kill ourselves with or be our potential savior. The primary way that they described it's benefits is that as we try to create green fuels/bio-fuels and expanding out population we are using up our phosphorus deposits. If we could bio-engineer a plant that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus we could potentially get our needed crops of food, have the phosphorus last several times long, and have "green" fuel, that is dependent on fertilizer that isn't dipping into and causing more problems with our food.
Yay, sounds great...right? But what happens if those arsenic plants get mixed in the phosphorus ones? will they be easy to tell apart? Will it cause problems if we eat it? And what about when we burn it? Yeah, we're not putting horrible green house gases in the air, but will we be putting all that arsenic in the air and how will that work out for us? I'd think that would get out of control before we knew what happened.
So for me this is more of a...
Yay, cool another cool thing that could potentially kill ourselves with.
P.S. Cynical_Gamer, if that existed out there I'd prefer knowing about it and staying far away than not knowing about it and accidentally stumbling into its territory.
I think the find just reiterates what many people have already said: We have no idea what to expect in alien life. Right now, we found one microbe that changes out one basic element. Next? We'll find an alien species that replaces all the basic elements.
Okay, maybe not next, but soon.
@Rylas
Kill 'em all. Let XP sort 'em out.
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As I recall the Tholians were energy beings or least that's all we saw of them on the viewscreen when they communicated with the Enterprise. However you may be thinking of the Horta that could tunnel through rock with the same ease that we move through air and lays silcon nodules that are actually eggs.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
Weren't Star Trek Tholians supposed to be silicon based? After all Star Trek is a SCIENCE-fiction show... Doesn't that have enough SCIENCE in it to be taken as established certainity?
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The tholians are a crystaline type alien that I think was silicon based, but I don't remember if it was ever specified whether it was ever said they were based on something else or not...they however were crystaline|
Originally Posted by Nericus
As I recall the Tholians were energy beings or least that's all we saw of them on the viewscreen when they communicated with the Enterprise. However you may be thinking of the Horta that could tunnel through rock with the same ease that we move through air and lays silcon nodules that are actually eggs.
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Horta is just a rock eater type creature you described...
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Scientifically, warp drives are actually possible. One guy's already come up with the formula. What we lack is the technology to "make it so". |
Originally Posted by Lothic
The fact that we see fundamental rules of science are "redefinable" gives me hope that other nagging rules like "can't go faster than the speed of light" will also be overcome at some point. We simply need to build engines that run on Dark Energy/Matter.
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Also, to my knowledge, it's not possible to to make anything work using mythical elements.
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Quote:
Yes but Kirk and Spock wounded the Horta and McCoy had to use a silcon based mix they use for emergency shelters as a bandage for it since the Horta was rock/silcon based life. |
Originally Posted by Durakken
The tholians are a crystaline type alien that I think was silicon based, but I don't remember if it was ever specified whether it was ever said they were based on something else or not...they however were crystaline
Horta is just a rock eater type creature you described... |
All I remember from the Tholians was that we saw them on the viewscreen when they communicated with the Enterprise while Kirk was fading in and out of our dimension and the crew was slowly going cookoo crazy due to that region of space. Maybe the Tholians were indeed crystalline/silcon based, but the Horta definitely was. Also there was the rock creature on that planet in the episode when they came across Abe Lincoln in space......(just exactly WHAT was the writer on when they thought of THAT?....please share cause it must have been some good stuff)
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I don't think it's said exactly what Tholians are based on. Here's the Memory Alpha article.
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Originally Posted by Nericus
Yes but Kirk and Spock wounded the Horta and McCoy had to use a silcon based mix they use for emergency shelters as a bandage for it since the Horta was rock/silcon based life.
All I remember from the Tholians was that we saw them on the viewscreen when they communicated with the Enterprise while Kirk was fading in and out of our dimension and the crew was slowly going cookoo crazy due to that region of space. Maybe the Tholians were indeed crystalline/silcon based, but the Horta definitely was. Also there was the rock creature on that planet in the episode when they came across Abe Lincoln in space......(just exactly WHAT was the writer on when they thought of THAT?....please share cause it must have been some good stuff) |
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Quote:
Warp drive is only the first part. We'd also need:|
Originally Posted by Night-Hawk07
Scientifically, warp drives are actually possible. One guy's already come up with the formula. What we lack is the technology to "make it so".
Also, to my knowledge, it's not possible to to make anything work using mythical elements. |
1. navigational deflector dish to sweep space debris out of the ship's path, otherwise a collision at warp speed....well......force = mass times acceleration.... (ref. ST: Motion Picture, when they were in the wormhole with that inbound meteor, glad they blew it up in time.
)2. some serious radiation shielding for the entire ship and constant monitoring of the shielding and structural integrity in general.
3. can said ship land on planets and launch again under its own power? If not, will it have shuttlecraft or automated probes to launch as I seriously doubt we'd have a transporter
4. what about weapons? Space may be the final frontier, but I doubt every alien race we'd find would welcome us with open arms.....or whatever passes for arms.
5. Communication back to Earth or starbase or whatever.
and who knows what else I'm not thinking of at the moment.
Long ways to go
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Yeah, I know. I would imagine any warp-capable ships we ever build wouldn't be desigined with landing in mind and need to use shuttlecraft of some type to land on other planets. Could be a good use for this thing being tested by the Air Force. As far as weapons, I don't think this would work in space, but I'm sure in the near future we could have something similar that would.|
Originally Posted by Nericus
Long ways to go
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Now for the rest of that, I don't have an answer...yet, lol. We're closer than we were 50-60 years ago though.
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True. Still until there is a definite profit to be shown for exploring space, I don't see governments or businesses accelerating our space tech development. Sad too since the main profit would be the continuation of the human race by colonizing other planets. |
Originally Posted by Night-Hawk07
Now for the rest of that, I don't have an answer...yet, lol. We're closer than we were 50-60 years ago though. |
A season 1 episode of Babylon 5 said it best that one day our sun will be gone and it will take Earth and every human living and that ever lived or will live unless we go to the stars.
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Yep. The problem is no one's concerned about that because they all know that's ~5 billion years away. Knowing humanity, should it exist that long on Earth, they won't worry about it until 4.999 billion years from now. Anything else that could end us sooner is a "maybe" and so everyone sees it as "maybe it won't happen while I'm alive". Cause we all know, time in the outside world stops when you're dead....
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Originally Posted by Nericus
True. Still until there is a definite profit to be shown for exploring space, I don't see governments or businesses accelerating our space tech development. Sad too since the main profit would be the continuation of the human race by colonizing other planets.
A season 1 episode of Babylon 5 said it best that one day our sun will be gone and it will take Earth and every human living and that ever lived or will live unless we go to the stars. |
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Quote:
Current theory has it that Earth will be uninhabitable, at least on the surface, in 1 billion years due to an increase in solar temperatures.|
Originally Posted by Night-Hawk07
Yep. The problem is no one's concerned about that because they all know that's ~5 billion years away. Knowing humanity, should it exist that long on Earth, they won't worry about it until 4.999 billion years from now. Anything else that could end us sooner is a "maybe" and so everyone sees it as "maybe it won't happen while I'm alive". Cause we all know, time in the outside world stops when you're dead....
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Anyone who thinks humans will still exist (or at least in this same form) in 1 billion years...
If we are still only on this world in 1 billion years, we'll have completely failed as a species.
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Only if we haven't weaponized the planet and are terrorizing the galaxy with our planet-sized war machine.
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Originally Posted by Dark One
If we are still only on this world in 1 billion years, we'll have completely failed as a species.
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Branching Paragon Police Department Epic Archetype, please!
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I just had a picture in my mind of Slim Pickens sitting up on the North Pole with reins going down around the equator, riding the Earth down into a gas giant...
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Originally Posted by Cynical_Gamer
Only if we haven't weaponized the planet and are terrorizing the galaxy with our planet-sized war machine.
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Ironically based on our current understandings things like Dark Matter and Dark Energy are closer to being generally accepted by the scientific community as real things than the idea of a warp drive. Of course we would probably have real warp drive long before we have any technology that could make use of Dark Energy/Matter - thus the humor of my statement. |
Originally Posted by Night-Hawk07
Quote:
Also, to my knowledge, it's not possible to to make anything work using mythical elements. |
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Ummm dark matter, dark energy, and warp all exist...
Dark Energy is the energy that exists everywhere that drives the expansion of the universe
Dark Matter is the matter that we have thus far not "seen" but have seen the gavitational effects of it and can map where it is on the galactic scale.
Warp has been done to a very small degree... I don't have the source of where I heard this but it has already been done on a very small scale.
A NASA spokesperson has officially announced . . .
"Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
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Uhmm, did you actually read what I said before you responded to my post? |
Originally Posted by Durakken
Ummm dark matter, dark energy, and warp all exist...
Dark Energy is the energy that exists everywhere that drives the expansion of the universe Dark Matter is the matter that we have thus far not "seen" but have seen the gavitational effects of it and can map where it is on the galactic scale. Warp has been done to a very small degree... I don't have the source of where I heard this but it has already been done on a very small scale. |
I said Dark Matter and Dark Energy are pretty much accepted. Still somewhat theoretical, but at least the theory behind them is much more widely accepted than the possibility of practical warp drives. How many warp drives do we have stored in warehouses waiting to be fitted to starships right now?
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Now if they'll just admit the answer is 42... |
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
A NASA spokesperson has officially announced . . .
"Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." |
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That last one actually does sound familiar, now that you mention it. However, I've yet to see sufficient evidence to convince me that dark matter/energy exists, or at least is as described. I stopped giving it much credit when I saw an article saying that scientists believed that DM was similar to a neutrino in that it passed through us and the Earth all the time with no noticeable effect.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
Ummm dark matter, dark energy, and warp all exist...
Dark Energy is the energy that exists everywhere that drives the expansion of the universe Dark Matter is the matter that we have thus far not "seen" but have seen the gavitational effects of it and can map where it is on the galactic scale. Warp has been done to a very small degree... I don't have the source of where I heard this but it has already been done on a very small scale. |
They then attempted to detect it by embedding sensors in the ground that were designed to "not detect the things we already know", so if they were pinged it would either be 1) dark matter or 2) something we don't know about yet (tachyon, graviton, etc). So far, they've only been pinged twice.
So you mean to tell me that some particle that's supposed to make up 90% of the matter in the universe, passes through us every second without any noticeable effect, pings sensors designed to detect it only twice, is capable of moving galaxies? Forgive me if I'm not so quick to jump on that bandwagon. At this point, I'm more inclined to believe someone fudged up their calculations and doesn't want to admit it. People need to take a step down and realize that the universe is much bigger than us, and that it won't conform to our puny equations. Our equations have to conform to it.
I will gladly admit it if/when I'm proven wrong, however.
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Quote:
Two quick points:|
Originally Posted by Night-Hawk07
That last one actually does sound familiar, now that you mention it. However, I've yet to see sufficient evidence to convince me that dark matter/energy exists, or at least is as described. I stopped giving it much credit when I saw an article saying that scientists believed that DM was similar to a neutrino in that it passed through us and the Earth all the time with no noticeable effect.
They then attempted to detect it by embedding sensors in the ground that were designed to "not detect the things we already know", so if they were pinged it would either be 1) dark matter or 2) something we don't know about yet (tachyon, graviton, etc). So far, they've only been pinged twice. So you mean to tell me that some particle that's supposed to make up 90% of the matter in the universe, passes through us every second without any noticeable effect, pings sensors designed to detect it only twice, is capable of moving galaxies? Forgive me if I'm not so quick to jump on that bandwagon. At this point, I'm more inclined to believe someone fudged up their calculations and doesn't want to admit it. People need to take a step down and realize that the universe is much bigger than us, and that it won't conform to our puny equations. Our equations have to conform to it. I will gladly admit it if/when I'm proven wrong, however. |
A) According to the expectations of those Dark Matter experiments you mentioned the scientists involved actually expected they'd only get 2 or 3 detections given the amount of time they were taking samples, and the ones they got fell within the expected thresholds that would rule them out as any other known type of matter.
B) Many respected physicists around the world either accept or at least don't strongly refute the theories of Dark Matter/Energy based on several decades of worth of work. Now obviously at some point in the future new theories might be devised that better reflect the nature of the observed universe, but until that happens it's hard to dismiss out of hand the combined knowledge and acceptance of the world's top cosmologists. I don't know what YOUR background is to be more credible in your beliefs than they are, but I'm willing to give the experts the benefit of the doubt here.
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1) And even then, the scientists said those two pings "kinda sorta maybe could have been" dark matter. That isn't even a "most likely", which would've been more convincing than what they did say.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
Two quick points:
A) According to the expectations of those Dark Matter experiments you mentioned the scientists involved actually expected they'd only get 2 or 3 detections given the amount of time they were taking samples, and the ones they got fell within the expected thresholds that would rule them out as any other known type of matter. B) Many respected physicists around the world either accept or at least don't strongly refute the theories of Dark Matter/Energy based on several decades of worth of work. Now obviously at some point in the future new theories might be devised that better reflect the nature of the observed universe, but until that happens it's hard to dismiss out of hand the combined knowledge and acceptance of the world's top cosmologists. I don't know what YOUR background is to be more credible in your beliefs than they are, but I'm willing to give the experts the benefit of the doubt here. |
2) I'm a backyard/armchair astronomer, thank you very much.
However, next fall I'll be going for my physics/astronomy degree, so I can have a piece of paper to back up my knowledge. 
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