Post by auntym on May 22, 2012 11:58:17 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/05/alien-cosmology-how-much-like-us-would-our-alien-kindred-be/#more-11177
Alien Cosmology: How Much Like Us Would Our Alien Kindred Be?[/color]
May 21st in UFO Phenomenon by Micah Hanks
As we know it, the modern UFO era began first with the famous “Foo Fighters” seen by both Allied and Axis pilots amidst the heat of conflict during the Second World War. Shortly after the conflict had ended, reports of strange, “saucer like” objects skipping like stones through the open sky were being reported by the likes of Kenneth Arnold and others; within a month of the Arnold sighting, what became an infamous incident, where exotic wreckage was recovered from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, left little question in the minds of many Americans: the Saucers, it seemed, were about to land.
More than half a century later, we still have a surprising lack of information about the origins of UFOs, though it is widely believed by many in both the civilian and even the higher academic circles that the enigma might be attributed to strange encounters with extraterrestrial visitors. This idea, however, is a theory that is surprisingly void of a lot of hard evidence; though many in the UFO camp are angered by this sort of sentiment, I should be clear: while UFOs may be aircraft from other parts of the universe, scientific processes have little to base such determinations on, with regard to collected evidence. And yet, for many, the ET hypothesis still manages to comprise nearly the entire basis of the UFO mystery, when taken at face value.
Whether or not alien beings are visiting Earth–and for all we know, this may indeed be the case–we can still speculate about what kinds of life might exist elsewhere out there… the problem, however, is determining whether aliens would even be recognizable as such!
Universe Today recently featured an article on the varieties of life that may exist in other parts of the deep regions of space, and in what manner such “life” might differ greatly from that which we know on Earth. “Truly new ‘alternative life’ would be life of a different biology,” says Gerald Joyce, a Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the Scripps Research Institute. “It would not have the information in it that is part of the same heritage of our life form.”
If such were indeed the case, might we posit that there could exist life in other parts of the universe that we would be virtually unable to recognize entirely as life at all? This notion has prompted my use of the expression “life (not) as we know it” for such beings, which could possibly stretch the very boundaries of physical formation as we might conceive. Dr. Joyce’s paper, “Bit by Bit: the Darwinian Basis for Life,” discusses the differences between what he calls “true” biology, versus simple chemistry, and how things like DNA are capable of taking chemical functions and “remembering” them, thus capable of passing this stored information along to an organism’s eventual progeny.
CONTINUE READING: mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/05/alien-cosmology-how-much-like-us-would-our-alien-kindred-be/#more-11177
Alien Cosmology: How Much Like Us Would Our Alien Kindred Be?[/color]
May 21st in UFO Phenomenon by Micah Hanks
As we know it, the modern UFO era began first with the famous “Foo Fighters” seen by both Allied and Axis pilots amidst the heat of conflict during the Second World War. Shortly after the conflict had ended, reports of strange, “saucer like” objects skipping like stones through the open sky were being reported by the likes of Kenneth Arnold and others; within a month of the Arnold sighting, what became an infamous incident, where exotic wreckage was recovered from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, left little question in the minds of many Americans: the Saucers, it seemed, were about to land.
More than half a century later, we still have a surprising lack of information about the origins of UFOs, though it is widely believed by many in both the civilian and even the higher academic circles that the enigma might be attributed to strange encounters with extraterrestrial visitors. This idea, however, is a theory that is surprisingly void of a lot of hard evidence; though many in the UFO camp are angered by this sort of sentiment, I should be clear: while UFOs may be aircraft from other parts of the universe, scientific processes have little to base such determinations on, with regard to collected evidence. And yet, for many, the ET hypothesis still manages to comprise nearly the entire basis of the UFO mystery, when taken at face value.
Whether or not alien beings are visiting Earth–and for all we know, this may indeed be the case–we can still speculate about what kinds of life might exist elsewhere out there… the problem, however, is determining whether aliens would even be recognizable as such!
Universe Today recently featured an article on the varieties of life that may exist in other parts of the deep regions of space, and in what manner such “life” might differ greatly from that which we know on Earth. “Truly new ‘alternative life’ would be life of a different biology,” says Gerald Joyce, a Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the Scripps Research Institute. “It would not have the information in it that is part of the same heritage of our life form.”
If such were indeed the case, might we posit that there could exist life in other parts of the universe that we would be virtually unable to recognize entirely as life at all? This notion has prompted my use of the expression “life (not) as we know it” for such beings, which could possibly stretch the very boundaries of physical formation as we might conceive. Dr. Joyce’s paper, “Bit by Bit: the Darwinian Basis for Life,” discusses the differences between what he calls “true” biology, versus simple chemistry, and how things like DNA are capable of taking chemical functions and “remembering” them, thus capable of passing this stored information along to an organism’s eventual progeny.
CONTINUE READING: mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/05/alien-cosmology-how-much-like-us-would-our-alien-kindred-be/#more-11177