7 ms·

NASA to Hold News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery

130 points by scdlbx 16y ago

Keyframe 16y ago
Considering Streptococcus mitis already survived a period of 3 years on the Moon, and amino acids were found in soil retrieved by the Apollo astronauts, my hopes are high. edit - source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1998/ast01sep98_1/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1998/as...
iwr 16y ago
Likely scenario: they found ancient life forms in lake Vostok, deep below the Antarctic ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
- j_baker 16y ago
  ...or they didn't. :-) Though I am curious: why are they announcing this via a press conference? It seems as though they would publish a paper to be peer-reviewed or something first.
  - 27182818284 16y ago
    > It seems as though they would publish a paper to be peer-reviewed or something first They did. The link mentions that it is under embargo until the time of the conference. It says "Science Journal" so I'm guessing that is an odd way of referring to the journal Science. The italics are a bit off to me. Maybe they meant "Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 11 a.m. PST On Dec. 2"
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    "Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 11 a.m. PST On Dec. 2"
  - robryan 16y ago
    The past track record though on these things seems to indicate though that these press conferences fall more into the very interesting discovery for scientists and those who follow it, rather than ground breaking discovery that hits the front pages in general publications. Although saying that if something truly ground breaking were discovered it wouldn't surprise me if it were announced in the same way.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
zoomzoom 16y ago
Maybe they will be announcing that Roswell has some secrets, after all.
amichail 16y ago
Would the discovery of microbial extraterrestrial life have any significant impact on your life?
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Yes.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - darwinGod 16y ago
    wow, I didnt get how 33 people blindly agree and upvote a one-word answer, offering no perspective at all , to a very valid question on how a successful outcome to SETI would influence an average guy's life!! Surely, this is not a open-and-shut question. Let me dampen some spirits who are gleefully waiting to see breaking news of extra-terrestrial life. Think about the budget and investment into this grand objective.Think whether the money invested has/would have a respectable ROI-would it have been better spent on less-glamorous, but more useful ventures like funding projects with more "tangible benefits, and issues", like OLPC. Think of world hunger,lack of access to drinking water. Not glamorous-but plenty of scope to advance technology to change the world we live in. And then think of romanticizing on "Are we alone" , la Jodie Foster,Contact or NASA news conferences.
    - khafra 16y ago
      My guess at the reason for the upvotes is that amichael's question was not at all novel, and most people have already decided which way they stand on it; so they upvoted to express agreement.
    - forgotAgain 16y ago
      Think Marv Albert the basketball announcer: "Yes!".
    - noonespecial 16y ago
      There are no doubt higher roi projects currently in the works as well. Perhaps the money devoted to this type of research could be better spent, but then, when I consider how much money human beings waste each year on football, a hearty "yes" seems entirely appropriate. My life will be changed a great deal more by whatever they announce than by who wins the superbowl.
ANH 16y ago
Perhaps they've sussed out something about what we should expect to see in extraterrestrial life at the molecular (e.g. DNA) level. The biggest clue is the list of participants. One of them specializes in research on non-standard biology. I'm guessing the announcement will be something along the lines of, "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it", and it's right here on Earth!
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
checoivan 16y ago
I'm really hoping to officially hear we're not alone :)
- kbatten 16y ago
  Just make sure Will Smith is on alert.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    He covers the Alien/Robot/Zombie/Steampunk market, so I feel fairly secure.
- berntb 16y ago
  As long as it is not Cthulhu presenting a paper on its dark matter(?) based biology! :-) Could there be some analysis of Mars rover data? Or of Mars meteorites? Telescopes aren't good enough yet to get absorption spectra for relatively complex molecules in atmospheres?
phreeza 16y ago
Perhaps a good moment to re-read this: Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf tl;dr: "Because it means life is not incredibly unlikely (after all, it occurred on two planets in our own solar system); ergo what must instead be incredibly unlikely is the ability for life to progress to the point where it can spread across the galaxy (after all, no other life form has contacted us); ergo we are doomed."
- PostOnce 16y ago
  The other theory being that galaxy-spanning life is incredibly common, it's just that we're too immature/uninteresting to bother coming to visit. How often do you stop and try to communicate with the queen of a particular anthill?
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    The article mentions this theory, it says that if life is incredibly common, it would only take one civilization to be curious and come visit us.
    - jacobn 16y ago
      What if interstellar travel is just really hard (= no advanced life form has figured it out, and it might just be impossible/not economical), and whatever signals their civilizations generate just aren't strong enough to be picked up by e.g. SETI? It wouldn't spell "doom" unless you count the sun running out of juice/going supernova. The universe might be packed with life, each such patch effectively isolated to it's own little corner.
    - blhack 16y ago
      I feel like I'm playing into a cliche by even giving this response, but: Would we recognize it? Would we even know that it had happened? Consider that if there is a civilization capable of traveling across inter-stellar distances, they very likely have got a very different sort of life-span that people on earth. Because of this, their language (if they have something we would recognize as language) could be dramatically different than ours. Honestly their brains, or "mechanism of creativity" as I guess you could call it, could be something that we would never be able to communicate with. There are biochemical reasons why extra-terrestrial life would probably be similar to ours, but I can think of no reason why they would be neurologically or psychologically anything like us. Think about the ants again. Ants have communications, sure, but it's not language, at least not in the human sense. Ants very probably don't have thoughts, and because they don't have thoughts, they don't have a reason to abstract them to words. This hasn't prevented ants (or bees) from building incredibly interesting and complicated physical and organizational structures. We've contacted bees. Do you suppose that they realize it?
nhebb 16y ago
I keep seeing stories pop up here that NASA has some upcoming announcement, but I never remember to follow up on the announcement day to find out what the hubbub was about. I'm starting to get annoyed that a government agency thinks it needs to save "the big reveal" for a press conference. Why not just make the announcement?
- ANH 16y ago
  * Because they want to make sure people are listening. * The media outlets can assign people to cover it. * It's fun for the researchers.
- ugh 16y ago
  That’s the contrarianism you are going to pick? A bunch of scientists having a for the general public probably harmless but for the scientists in the field no doubt somewhat exciting announcement? You are not the target audience. This is a press release. Before the existence of the web you would have never heard about the announcement unless you are a science journalist. (The vast majority of people will never hear about this announcement. Reading HN or other places where this announcement might conceivably pop up is clearly not normal.) You really shouldn’t be annoyed about something that is not even directed at you.
teejae 16y ago
This sounds very much like the plot of Deception Point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_Point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_Point
juiceandjuice 16y ago
The Andromeda Strain!
pjy04 16y ago
They figured they should talk about their discoveries of life on other planets before Wikileaks says it first
cloudwalking 16y ago
Jason Kottke looked at the speaker list and thinks it's photosynthesis using arsenic. See this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228
losethos 16y ago
Does God count? I don't see the big fuss.
dnautics 16y ago
mars is the result of an oxygen catastrophe where, unlike the earth, life did not survive.

130 points by scdlbx 16y ago

Considering Streptococcus mitis already survived a period of 3 years on the Moon, and amino acids were found in soil retrieved by the Apollo astronauts, my hopes are high. edit - source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1998/ast01sep98_1/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1998/as...

iwr 16y ago

Likely scenario: they found ancient life forms in lake Vostok, deep below the Antarctic ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok

j_baker 16y ago
...or they didn't. :-) Though I am curious: why are they announcing this via a press conference? It seems as though they would publish a paper to be peer-reviewed or something first.
- 27182818284 16y ago
  > It seems as though they would publish a paper to be peer-reviewed or something first They did. The link mentions that it is under embargo until the time of the conference. It says "Science Journal" so I'm guessing that is an odd way of referring to the journal Science. The italics are a bit off to me. Maybe they meant "Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 11 a.m. PST On Dec. 2"
- VladRussian 16y ago
  "Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 11 a.m. PST On Dec. 2"
- robryan 16y ago
  The past track record though on these things seems to indicate though that these press conferences fall more into the very interesting discovery for scientists and those who follow it, rather than ground breaking discovery that hits the front pages in general publications. Although saying that if something truly ground breaking were discovered it wouldn't surprise me if it were announced in the same way.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

zoomzoom 16y ago

Maybe they will be announcing that Roswell has some secrets, after all.

amichail 16y ago

Would the discovery of microbial extraterrestrial life have any significant impact on your life?

Vivtek 16y ago
Yes.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- darwinGod 16y ago
  wow, I didnt get how 33 people blindly agree and upvote a one-word answer, offering no perspective at all , to a very valid question on how a successful outcome to SETI would influence an average guy's life!! Surely, this is not a open-and-shut question. Let me dampen some spirits who are gleefully waiting to see breaking news of extra-terrestrial life. Think about the budget and investment into this grand objective.Think whether the money invested has/would have a respectable ROI-would it have been better spent on less-glamorous, but more useful ventures like funding projects with more "tangible benefits, and issues", like OLPC. Think of world hunger,lack of access to drinking water. Not glamorous-but plenty of scope to advance technology to change the world we live in. And then think of romanticizing on "Are we alone" , la Jodie Foster,Contact or NASA news conferences.
  - khafra 16y ago
    My guess at the reason for the upvotes is that amichael's question was not at all novel, and most people have already decided which way they stand on it; so they upvoted to express agreement.
  - forgotAgain 16y ago
    Think Marv Albert the basketball announcer: "Yes!".
  - noonespecial 16y ago
    There are no doubt higher roi projects currently in the works as well. Perhaps the money devoted to this type of research could be better spent, but then, when I consider how much money human beings waste each year on football, a hearty "yes" seems entirely appropriate. My life will be changed a great deal more by whatever they announce than by who wins the superbowl.

ANH 16y ago

Perhaps they've sussed out something about what we should expect to see in extraterrestrial life at the molecular (e.g. DNA) level. The biggest clue is the list of participants. One of them specializes in research on non-standard biology. I'm guessing the announcement will be something along the lines of, "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it", and it's right here on Earth!

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

checoivan 16y ago

I'm really hoping to officially hear we're not alone :)

kbatten 16y ago
Just make sure Will Smith is on alert.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  He covers the Alien/Robot/Zombie/Steampunk market, so I feel fairly secure.
berntb 16y ago
As long as it is not Cthulhu presenting a paper on its dark matter(?) based biology! :-) Could there be some analysis of Mars rover data? Or of Mars meteorites? Telescopes aren't good enough yet to get absorption spectra for relatively complex molecules in atmospheres?

phreeza 16y ago

Perhaps a good moment to re-read this: Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf tl;dr: "Because it means life is not incredibly unlikely (after all, it occurred on two planets in our own solar system); ergo what must instead be incredibly unlikely is the ability for life to progress to the point where it can spread across the galaxy (after all, no other life form has contacted us); ergo we are doomed."

PostOnce 16y ago
The other theory being that galaxy-spanning life is incredibly common, it's just that we're too immature/uninteresting to bother coming to visit. How often do you stop and try to communicate with the queen of a particular anthill?
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  The article mentions this theory, it says that if life is incredibly common, it would only take one civilization to be curious and come visit us.
  - jacobn 16y ago
    What if interstellar travel is just really hard (= no advanced life form has figured it out, and it might just be impossible/not economical), and whatever signals their civilizations generate just aren't strong enough to be picked up by e.g. SETI? It wouldn't spell "doom" unless you count the sun running out of juice/going supernova. The universe might be packed with life, each such patch effectively isolated to it's own little corner.
  - blhack 16y ago
    I feel like I'm playing into a cliche by even giving this response, but: Would we recognize it? Would we even know that it had happened? Consider that if there is a civilization capable of traveling across inter-stellar distances, they very likely have got a very different sort of life-span that people on earth. Because of this, their language (if they have something we would recognize as language) could be dramatically different than ours. Honestly their brains, or "mechanism of creativity" as I guess you could call it, could be something that we would never be able to communicate with. There are biochemical reasons why extra-terrestrial life would probably be similar to ours, but I can think of no reason why they would be neurologically or psychologically anything like us. Think about the ants again. Ants have communications, sure, but it's not language, at least not in the human sense. Ants very probably don't have thoughts, and because they don't have thoughts, they don't have a reason to abstract them to words. This hasn't prevented ants (or bees) from building incredibly interesting and complicated physical and organizational structures. We've contacted bees. Do you suppose that they realize it?

nhebb 16y ago

I keep seeing stories pop up here that NASA has some upcoming announcement, but I never remember to follow up on the announcement day to find out what the hubbub was about. I'm starting to get annoyed that a government agency thinks it needs to save "the big reveal" for a press conference. Why not just make the announcement?

ANH 16y ago
* Because they want to make sure people are listening. * The media outlets can assign people to cover it. * It's fun for the researchers.
ugh 16y ago
That’s the contrarianism you are going to pick? A bunch of scientists having a for the general public probably harmless but for the scientists in the field no doubt somewhat exciting announcement? You are not the target audience. This is a press release. Before the existence of the web you would have never heard about the announcement unless you are a science journalist. (The vast majority of people will never hear about this announcement. Reading HN or other places where this announcement might conceivably pop up is clearly not normal.) You really shouldn’t be annoyed about something that is not even directed at you.

teejae 16y ago

This sounds very much like the plot of Deception Point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_Point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_Point

juiceandjuice 16y ago

The Andromeda Strain!

pjy04 16y ago

They figured they should talk about their discoveries of life on other planets before Wikileaks says it first

cloudwalking 16y ago

Jason Kottke looked at the speaker list and thinks it's photosynthesis using arsenic. See this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228

losethos 16y ago

Does God count? I don't see the big fuss.

dnautics 16y ago

mars is the result of an oxygen catastrophe where, unlike the earth, life did not survive.