Space Anomalies

[PHANTASM]

Another Buzz Aldrin (astronaut who walked on the moon) vid. This one is about the Phobos Monolith and the Soviet alien encounter near Phobos in 1989.

 

[unlawfulsniper]

@Rainier

 

That was a genius post you made about life evolving to its metabolic pathway. I like to learn things. You would be a good teacher. Are you a chemist or something?

 

 

@Phantasm

 

Jeez geniuses come in pair I guess. I bet you are good at chess.

 

 

Life:

My opinion is there is life in the universe, but it is limited. Earth is in the Goldilock's zone of our solarsystem. Its just right. This cannot be said for nearly all of the +250 (as of nov.2009) known planets in our galaxy. Most of which are Jovian sized or greater, thus unlikely for life. We have a magnetosphere to shield cosmic rays. Jupiter's gravity protects us from stray asteroids, sling-shotting them around us. Okay, so future planet surveys by Kepler sat. and others will find Earth sized planets. But how far away? Thousands of light years would be optimistic maybe. What is a good definition for life, that would be a good starting point. And next, intelligent life. Miller-Urey experiment proved amino acids could spontaneously form in the right conditions (some basic molecules and lightning). But how to assemble them? By sheer chance after a googleplex of interactions, do basic amino acids in a primordial pool form a RNA or DNa molecule? Then after another googleplex of interactions do RNA and DNA form ribosomes and proteins? I'm no chemist, no physicist, and I may have my order wrong, yet how can such giant jumps in the evolution of life occur without being themselves intelligently manipulated? I'm as agnostic as the next guy beside me with a rational mind, no ego and no conditioning, but still, how can we believe this all happened by chance and the sheer force of nature's drive towards complexity. Haha, I'm a skeptic about aliens, but maybe we were planted, or maybe I'm just pissed that my brain can't understand such things as how life emerged from blind chemical reactions.

 

 

 

Aliens:

That video was pretty amazing phantasm. Wtf were those flying orbs?. Its not conclusive enough for me because I didn't notice any of the orbs deviating from a straight path, meaning imo, they could be any natural phenomena that we don't know about in space. Maybe some curved and I missed it, dunno. Life generally curves. I would seriously doubt there are aliens visiting Earth, despite seeing nearly every video of ufos on the net. Its just not good enough to be convinced of such a huge claim. Videos can be faked, ufos can be military and I'm a skeptic with an open optmism towards be wrong. Personally, I would put a higher value discovering cold fusion, or superconductivity at high temperatures, above knowing if there are aliens watching us or nearby. But it would be really cool to know for sure. Especially if they would lend us some cool technology to play with.

[Connection]

there were alot of problems with the miller-urey experiment, for example they assumed that there was no oxygen in the atmosphere, but 50 years of progress in geology reveals that the early earth ( according to currently accepted models ) was in fact oxygen-rich. they only produced about 2% of the amino acids found in life, at very very low concentrations, and that was only after revamping their experiment after several failures so that it selectively isolated and nurtured individual amino acids, instead of allowing them to form randomly in the 'soup.' even the amino acids they formed where not folded correctly - there are 100's of millions of ways to fold a single protein and only one way works for life.. but of those 100's of millions half are right-handed ( clockwise ) and half are left handed ( counter clockwise ). life ONLY uses left handed folds, and they had mostly right-handed proteins come out.

 

basically they rigged the experiment after several failures, but still came out with way too few proteins, only the very simplest of the 20, they were in the wrong concentrations and they weren't even folded right.

 

it's like tossing 1000 scrabble boards on the floor and noticing that 3 or 4 two letter words were spelled, then claiming that it is proof that Moby **** could have been written by exploding a chef boyardee factory.

 

 

no, the more we learn about organic chemistry, the less likely it seems that life can arise randomly. the chances of all 20 amino acids forming in the first place and folding correctly is orders of magnitude larger than the computational space of the universe -- even if all the universe were set to work on the problem for the entire age of the universe, there are so many possible outcomes that the chances of the universe solving the problem even once is so vanishingly small that you wouldn't expect it to happen for another 2 or 3 ages of the universe.. and then we have to get all 20 of the amino acids together in the right concentrations and make them form molecules ridiculously more complex...

 

forming the amino acids is just the first of a long long series of np-complete problems -- problems that may be solvable, but would take so long to solve by random process that they are totally intractable.

 

we aren't talking about flipping coins until we get 7 heads in a row when we talk about abiogenesis - we're talking about flicking a stone into a pond and seeing the water droplets form a perfect model of the taj mahal... then doing it a million more times and getting the same result.

 

oh yeah, and pretend theres no such thing as entropy. doh.

 

 

now this line of logic doesn't exclude the fact of life - i mean hey, i'm alive, so life must be possible. it's just immeasurably improbable.. so much so that we should absolutely not be here given what we understand about the way the universe works. my existence doesn't refute the cold math, it just makes it that much more miraculous for us to be in the position we are in.

 

 

so, given that there IS life in the universe ( us ), there are two possible explanations for it's origin: we are the product of an accident on the scale of the entire continent of africa spontaneously quantum-tunneling to the moon, or of some selective manipulation of initial conditions. it should be noted that miller-urey failed miserably at the first approach, and only had the smallest success in the loosest of terms after a great deal of selective manipulation.

 

i'm gonna have to go with selective manipulation here, and obviously whatever process selected for life here was a great deal more clever than anything we can come up with.

 

 

i don't want to spoil this thread too much, but i wouldn't say that the miller-urey experiment proved spontaneous amino-acid production is possible by any means. what it proved is that even when we rig the experiment we still can't make it happen.

 

 

what does that say about ET and UFO's?

 

i guess that if there is other intelligent life, it is far more likely to have common origin with ourselves than to be another statistical anomaly, or that there is an outside force we don't understand that selects for the formation of life. in either case it is immeasurably precious on a cosmic scale.

 

let's pretend that all the UFO sightings are real and let's not forget occaam's razor. if another race evolved, learned to fly between the stars and spent 100's or 1000's of years traveling to our solar system ( mysteriously leaving their planet and heading our way long before our radio signals could possibly have reached them ), when they get here, why do they have dozens of differently shaped ships, come in dozens of shapes and sizes, and instead of making formal contact, they just zip around the sky a bit and maybe pick someone out of a trailer park so they can insert some anal probes. . . ? sort of seems to me like these "intelligent visitors" are acting more like some teens out drunk-driving and getting into trouble. not the sort of thing you might expect from a race with the technology for interstellar travel and the prescience to have launched for earth at a subjective time while the only life on earth was single-celled muck.

 

weird.

Edited January 24, 2010 by Connection

[Connection]

guess what!!

 

i just threw some fruit loops in the blender and i got a perfect scale model of the hagia sophia!!!

 

 

 

 

j/k

[unlawfulsniper]

A flagellum requires dozens of tiny motorized proteins to work together. The flagellum is useless if any one protein is missing. How did the whole thing evolve at once? Why would this happen?

 

 

I think the silly zen answer is that it didn't happen a trillion-trillion-trillion times before it did. I evoke the Many Worlds Interpretation. I guess its like a Goldilock's Universe we live in and we are stuck comfortable in the middle.

 

Bees and flowers example is too simple imo, because flowers can use butterflies too. There would simply not be as much pollination and consequently flowers in the world. No flowers, bees die? Dunno on that one, I failed bee class.

 

 

 

@ Connection

Hahaha. That was brilliant. I learned many insights from your post.

Question on amino acids... I thought Miller-Urey created the simplest amino acid, glycine, not a protein (I suspect u made a typo confusing amino acid with protein). For sure you cannot fold glycine in 100 million ways. It is tiny and its conformations very limited due to electrostatics (i wanted to use a big word). As for 100s of millions of ways to fold a protein and f*** up a couple and its useless... well, useless to current life based on the pattern of folds we have evolved to become used to. As you say, left-handed, but more. I suspect this pattern is unique to all life on our Earth since it originated from the same 'warm pond' and no oxygen atmosphere (haha, ya i said it!)

 

That scrabble board and moby **** analogy was hilarious. The Taj Mahal pond ripple one too.

 

I've never bought into the whole, UFOs are not aliens because aliens would not cruise around our skies teasing us just to get their willies on. Because Aliens who could travel this far, would be wayyyy more mature. Hahaha that really sounds like human logic. I think the only rules for Aliens would be to eat when hungry, to maintain homeostasis and to procreate. That's all you need to survive and ensure survival, in my books anyhow. All other parts of life are just the trim. Alien logic about us may be, how can humans discover the power of splitting an atom and still burn coal. Surely if you could unleash the power of a single atom, you would have the brains not to burn coal and create greenhouse gases which may one day kill you all. Surely? I think we will find in a billion years from now, that all civilizations in the Universe, historically speaking, will have always had a large gap between technology and the moral responsibility or using such technology. After all we don't usually plan out social structures for things that have not been invented or discovered yet. Ok, that just sounded like rambling, I should quit now.

[RainierWolfcastle]

I think the silly zen answer is that it didn't happen a trillion-trillion-trillion times before it did. I evoke the Many Worlds Interpretation. I guess its like a Goldilock's Universe we live in and we are stuck comfortable in the middle.

 

Bees and flowers example is too simple imo, because flowers can use butterflies too. There would simply not be as much pollination and consequently flowers in the world. No flowers, bees die? Dunno on that one, I failed bee class.

 

@Flagella Motor: This intricate system of motility evolved around the same time when microorganisms evolved better energetic metabolisms, especially to move towards oxygen rich environments. Some scientists speculated that the flagella motor could have evolved earlier than aerobic respiration, however it would be difficult for an organism to expend precious energy from its anaerobic metabolism to move quickly. There are examples in the lab where protozoa had mutations in their flagella motor development, and were helpless little guys just sitting. This mutation does happen naturally, as natural as how protozoa can also have mutations producing short of a good aerobic metabolism.

 

@Bees and Flowers: Angiosperms, after the fall of dinosaurs, evolved to cohabitate with insects and a variety of small organisms to spread their seeds and pollen in an environment that was changing from the jungle bliss that was the previous norm. I wouldn't say it was just bees that cohabitated with them, but a genuine large amount of animals did right down to humans cultivating them. I mean hey, could you ignore a big piece of fruit in the middle of desolate environment and not eat it? It's stored energy and a major attractant for food too at the cost of dispensing some fibrous seeds out the rear. lol

 

@Co-evolution. Eukaryotes including you, dogs, cats, plants, amoeba, any cell with a nucleus is an example of co-evolution and the perfect union of evolving symbiosis that became 1 macroorganism. 2 billion years ago, in a rich toxic oxygen atmosphere, some nuclear cell went over to engulf smaller microorganisms much as it had been doing as a consumer, until it found the perfect companions; Cyanobacteria and Parracoccus denitrificans. These microbes coevolved with the symbiotic nuclear cell and shared some of their circular DNA with their new nuclear host to become a co-evolved organism. Whether the nucleus functioned as a symbiotic center is not completely clear, but nevertheless, parts of these newly acquired co-evolving companion microbes gave parts of their DNA to become integrated as a larger and versatile organism that had never existed before.

 

In the plant world, Cyanobacteria became the essential autotrophic microbe functioning as chloroplasts, and Parracoccus denitrificans became the essential aerobic respirator functioning as the mitochondria. In essense, plants are comprised of 3 organisms, and animal cells including fungi are comprised of the same minus the cyanobacteria. If one of these microorganism "organelles" were removed, the symbiotic cell would not function as the co-evolved organism that it was and die. Hence a new macro-organism evolved and habitated its environment as either consumer or producer much as it has been millions of years before but with the added benefit that it could evolve to a much larger and complicated organisms. Co-evolution can explain evolution or we would not see the vast variety of macro animal and plant life that has continued to evolve and dominate this planet.

[PHANTASM]

hey who deleted my last post?

 

nice explanation Rainier. I didn't think of coevolution that way. Still not sure how the flagellum evolved though.

[RainierWolfcastle]

wtf.... seriously who did?

 

I can explain to you the evolution of the flagella motor, but it depends if it is eukaryotic flagella or prokaryotic flagella since they evolved different mechanisms of mobility.

 

 

For example in Eukaryotic cells, all cells have a skeletal array inside to hold the cell into shape much like a skeleton of animal. However, this skeletal array is made out of microtubules and foms the basic cytoskeleton of the cell. These micortubules are visible say when a cell divides (mitosis) or when an animal cell moves in its environment like amoeba crawling. These microtubules are used for the eukaryotic production of flagella and do not rotate like prokaryotic flagella. Instead they swat back and forth.

 

 

But when it comes to prokaryotic flagella, it's different. There are protofilaments that grow from the flagella end down to the base, which is opposite of eukaryotic flagella production, and the evolutionary process of the motor is believed to have come from the bacteria's own secratory system given that the basal body of the motor is a hollow rod like plug.

 

Here's a similar thought for the rotary mechanism of the motor. Think of the flagella motor as similar to the pinwheel-like metabolic wheel house found in the aerobic metabolic processes of microbes (ATPase), but where ATPase turns and confroms ADP to ATP using a proton, there is a long flagella tail on the axle of this pinwheel that rotates when this proton pushes through.

[Saizou]

Out of all those theories about life out there in the universe it's hard to pick most plausible one, let alone correct one if there is any. However I do have the feeling that people (partially including myself) generally think there is someone more advanced then us and we have to wait for them to find/contact us. What if we are the ones that have to make the first step and go out to space and search for life and make contacts? For now it's kind of pretentious to make that kind of question as we don't even have remotely required technology, and only few countries in the world have space exploration programmes, but if we ever make it to Mars, that question will start to make some sense.

 

In the end, as someone said before it would be just plain sad if we were alone in the universe.

 

EDIT:crap confused two topics, that's why original post could have seemed confusing

[unlawfulsniper]

@Flagella Motor: This intricate system of motility evolved around the same time when microorganisms evolved better energetic metabolisms, especially to move towards oxygen rich environments. Some scientists speculated that the flagella motor could have evolved earlier than aerobic respiration, however it would be difficult for an organism to expend precious energy from its anaerobic metabolism to move quickly. There are examples in the lab where protozoa had mutations in their flagella motor development, and were helpless little guys just sitting. This mutation does happen naturally, as natural as how protozoa can also have mutations producing short of a good aerobic metabolism.

 

@Bees and Flowers: Angiosperms, after the fall of dinosaurs, evolved to cohabitate with insects and a variety of small organisms to spread their seeds and pollen in an environment that was changing from the jungle bliss that was the previous norm. I wouldn't say it was just bees that cohabitated with them, but a genuine large amount of animals did right down to humans cultivating them. I mean hey, could you ignore a big piece of fruit in the middle of desolate environment and not eat it? It's stored energy and a major attractant for food too at the cost of dispensing some fibrous seeds out the rear. lol

 

@Co-evolution. Eukaryotes including you, dogs, cats, plants, amoeba, any cell with a nucleus is an example of co-evolution and the perfect union of evolving symbiosis that became 1 macroorganism. 2 billion years ago, in a rich toxic oxygen atmosphere, some nuclear cell went over to engulf smaller microorganisms much as it had been doing as a consumer, until it found the perfect companions; Cyanobacteria and Parracoccus denitrificans. These microbes coevolved with the symbiotic nuclear cell and shared some of their circular DNA with their new nuclear host to become a co-evolved organism. Whether the nucleus functioned as a symbiotic center is not completely clear, but nevertheless, parts of these newly acquired co-evolving companion microbes gave parts of their DNA to become integrated as a larger and versatile organism that had never existed before.

 

In the plant world, Cyanobacteria became the essential autotrophic microbe functioning as chloroplasts, and Parracoccus denitrificans became the essential aerobic respirator functioning as the mitochondria. In essense, plants are comprised of 3 organisms, and animal cells including fungi are comprised of the same minus the cyanobacteria. If one of these microorganism "organelles" were removed, the symbiotic cell would not function as the co-evolved organism that it was and die. Hence a new macro-organism evolved and habitated its environment as either consumer or producer much as it has been millions of years before but with the added benefit that it could evolve to a much larger and complicated organisms. Co-evolution can explain evolution or we would not see the vast variety of macro animal and plant life that has continued to evolve and dominate this planet.

 

 

Very fascinating Rainier. You are teaching me many things about evolution here. Can you recommend a good book on this. Something not too dense not too sketchy. Like a year 1 university level or so... Thanks you f***en genius you.

[RainierWolfcastle]

Very fascinating Rainier. You are teaching me many things about evolution here. Can you recommend a good book on this. Something not too dense not too sketchy. Like a year 1 university level or so... Thanks you f***en genius you.

 

 

Hmmm, I had to read at least several books to get that comprehensive, but here's a good starter for you unlawful to get some good mental discipline.

 

 

and any books that have good diagrams of cellular membranes should help you visualize how these little guys interact their environments.

 

[OnionKnight]

Hmmm, I had to read at least several books to get that comprehensive, but here's a good starter for you unlawful to get some good mental discipline.

 

 

and any books that have good diagrams of cellular membranes should help you visualize how these little guys interact their environments.

 

 

FACKKKKKKKKK I hate microbiology lol. I had two of those courses as prereq and I wanted to burn the text at the end of the course (too much memorizing lol)

[PHANTASM]

more UFO stuff:

 

In this video, Buzz Aldrin discusses the unidentified flying object that followed the Apollo 11 spacecraft on its way to the moon in 1969. The object was several miles long. There were many UFO sightings during the Apollo program. The astronauts used the codename "Santa Claus" on the radio with Houston Mission Control whenever they saw a UFO.

 

It is often speculated that these UFO encounters were one of the reasons why NASA stopped going to the moon after Apollo 17. My own opinion is that the presence of UFOs doesn't seem to discourage humans from exploring space. A lot of people in the UFO community would disagree with me here. It may have been budget cuts or the realization that the Moon doesn't have the resources needed for a self-sustaining base (they didn't know there was water at the poles back then).

 

Another possible reason we ceased going to the moon is that there is no military utility to having a moon base. Satellites close to the earth are far more useful for monitoring potential enemies and as a platform for space-based weapons that could be used against other nations.

 

Buzz Aldrin is a personal hero of mine. The guy walked on the moon in 1969, and now he stands up to the US government to try to get them to disclose information about UFOs.

 

[unlawfulsniper]

Hmmm, I had to read at least several books to get that comprehensive, but here's a good starter for you unlawful to get some good mental discipline.

 

 

and any books that have good diagrams of cellular membranes should help you visualize how these little guys interact their environments.

 

 

Awesome Rainier thanks buddy. That book looks really cool. Just the photos on the cover are fascinating. Hopefully, I can understand it. I know quite a decent amount about membrane channel, voltage potentials, neurotransmitters, ion exchangers, vesicles and such, so I'm hoping there is some overlap. What fascinates me about your posts is your mastery of how biological systems sequentially evolved and complexified (i make up a word lol). My dream would be to understand and follow human biology back down to protozoa and beyond. I want to understand how life evolved as far as we known so far. Its a lofty goal, but very doable.

[unlawfulsniper]

more UFO stuff:

 

In this video, Buzz Aldrin discusses the unidentified flying object that followed the Apollo 11 spacecraft on its way to the moon in 1969. The object was several miles long. There were many UFO sightings during the Apollo program. The astronauts used the codename "Santa Claus" on the radio with Houston Mission Control whenever they saw a UFO.

 

It is often speculated that these UFO encounters were one of the reasons why NASA stopped going to the moon after Apollo 17. My own opinion is that the presence of UFOs doesn't seem to discourage humans from exploring space. A lot of people in the UFO community would disagree with me here. It may have been budget cuts or the realization that the Moon doesn't have the resources needed for a self-sustaining base (they didn't know there was water at the poles back then).

 

Another possible reason we ceased going to the moon is that there is no military utility to having a moon base. Satellites close to the earth are far more useful for monitoring potential enemies and as a platform for space-based weapons that could be used against other nations.

 

Buzz Aldrin is a personal hero of mine. The guy walked on the moon in 1969, and now he stands up to the US government to try to get them to disclose information about UFOs.

 

 

Phantasm I love you, but you puzzle me. None of the footage you've posted so far is any evidence of ETs. UFOs sure, but that's a loaded word.

 

As I recall, very poorly I'm afraid, there was a some famous UFO footage exposed perhaps 10 years about by a Vancouver, BC satellite operator who piggybacked on one of nasa's shuttle's signal uploads to earth. The video he obtained showed the shuttle in orbit around earth, with what looked like an armada of perhaps a dozen white point-like objects in the background. Once zoomed onto, some of these objects ceased to look point-like, but were instead roughly hexagonal, greyish-white, with a hole in their center. This was the coolest footage I've ever seen about potential ETs, however, they never strayed from their straight line paths and exhibited no movements beyond their present inertia. Life is not inertial. It changes paths on a whim and is not entirely subject to the environmental physics at hand. It has a choice to curve, even when gravity says keep going straight. Please convince me of ETs. I sure would love to believe.