No real time to pound out a major blog post today, so I thought I'd leave you with some kickass science news. More later.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
5 comments:
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Unlike much of the earth this new planet might actually have intelligent life.
ReplyDeleteI saw this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8389053.stm Maybe there is a glimmer of hope for intelligent life on this planet.
I love how the scientists are savvy enough to say "the planet is too hot to support life as we know it". This of course won't stop the not-so-fine-tuned IDiots from saying "But it duzn't hav lief on it lol!!11!"
ReplyDeleteI wonder what they mean by "life as WE know it" as Archae on earth are exotic extreamophiles that live only in absurd heats/colds/salinity etc.
ReplyDeleteIs it that hot that even archae life won't like it? Since some live in literal boiling superheated vents that would be very surprising.
If this planet is one big global ocean, too close to its sun to evolve the sort of life commonly found here, there's still no reason to think there couldn't possible be critters or simply microbial life squirming in the ocean depths. I'd say intelligent life is a longshot though. I suspect human-level intelligence would be an extremely rare commodity, even in a galaxy teeming with life. The dinosaurs were here 165 million years (about 165 times longer than we've been around) and never developed the grey matter needed for intelligence.
ReplyDeleteI will concede David's point that squirmy alien deep-sea shrimp would probably be smarter than a lot of people I've encountered.
I still have trouble wrapping my mind as "As WE know it". Does that mean most life people are aware of? Conditions optimal for life on THIS planet are so varied and exist well into extremes that I have trouble actually seeing how any life on such a planet wouldn't have analogues to extremeophiles of Earth.
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