Alien rights-When we meet, it won’t be a friendly encounter nor a conquest: it'll be a gold rush

Aeon Blog ^ | June 11, 2015 | Lizzie Wade, Latin America correspondent for Science

[2ndDivisionVet]

It wasn’t the Martians’ fault their planet died. If they existed – once – Martians were likely microbes, living in a world much like our own, warmed by an atmosphere and crisscrossed by waterways. But Mars began to lose that atmosphere, perhaps because its gravity wasn’t strong enough to hold onto it after an asteroid impact, or perhaps it was gradually blown away by solar winds. The cause is still mysterious, but the ending is clear: Mars’s liquid water dried up or froze into ice caps, leaving life without its most precious resource. Any Martians would have been victims of a planet-wide natural disaster they could neither foresee nor prevent.

For Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, the moral implications are clear: we should help our neighbours. Earthlings might not have been able to intervene when Martians were dying en masse (we were just microbes ourselves), but now, billions of years later, we could make it up to them. We’ve already figured out an effective way to warm up a planet: pump greenhouse gases into its atmosphere. McKay imagines a not-too-distant future in which we park machinery on Mars that converts carbon and fluorine in the Martian soil into insulating chlorofluorocarbons, and spews them into the planet’s puny atmosphere like a protein shake designed to bulk it up. ‘On Earth, we would call it pollution. On Mars, it’s called medicine,’ McKay told me in an interview. On his calculation, Mars would be warm enough to support water and microbial life within 100 years.

The practice of making a dead world habitable is called terraforming. In science fiction, Earthlings terraform other planets in order to occupy them, usually after trashing Earth. Think of the TV show Firefly (2002), where humans use terraforming technologies...

[Alex Murphy]

We’ve already figured out an effective way to warm up a planet: pump greenhouse gases into its atmosphere. [Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California] imagines a not-too-distant future in which we park machinery on Mars that converts carbon and fluorine in the Martian soil into insulating chlorofluorocarbons, and spews them into the planet’s puny atmosphere like a protein shake designed to bulk it up....The practice of making a dead world habitable is called terraforming. In science fiction, Earthlings terraform other planets in order to occupy them, usually after trashing Earth.

RIPLEY: That the atmosphere processor?
BURKE: Uh-hunh. One of thirty or so, all over the planet. They're completely automated. We manufacture them, by the way.

[dp0622]

This is all too deep for me. I still dont understand how the first cells turned into so many different animals and plants. First with dinosaurs, which must have come from single cell creatures, and then humans.
How the heck did the earth create two such different set of creatures?

[21twelve]

Even Francis Crick (co-discoverer of DNA) realized that it was too complicated to have “just happened”. So he figured it must have been engineered and created. He figured it was aliens - that sent out the DNA.

I agree with the created part. But not by aliens.

Just last year some folks discovered that the DNA has a shadow or reverse information within it as well - so TWICE as complicated as originally thought:

http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/12/12/scientists-discover-double-meaning-in-genetic-code/

[dp0622]

read the article. Understood a little. But I do know that it is so complex that there was a creator.

It would be like aliens finding a barren earth except for computers, and thinking they were created on their own, and evolved into better and better ones.

[Vermont Lt]

Wouldn’t aliens capable of such efforts be considered gods by the inhabitants?

And, intelligent design could be far older than we imagine.

[Caipirabob]

Gold rush...as in exploitation...

And today stocks have taken a stellar leap as it was learned that humans produce a protein that inhibits the symptoms of “andromeda’s disorder” Astor-pharmaceutical stocks are on a 800 year high as speculators leap into to reap profits from harvesting human proteins. As humans have been declared to be non-intelligent, low level life forms by a recent court ruling, there appears to be nothing to prevent immediate access to current wild populations...

[showme_the_Glory]

“In space, no one can hear you scream!”

[Apple Pan Dowdy]

What we know about DNA absolutely proves life on earth is engineered and created. Some of us know who the Creator is, but the powers-that-be want us to think "aliens" did it. The interesting part is WHY they want us to think it was aliens.

Watch a Christian's perspective on all of this and the best explanation of how intelligent design can be proved, and evolution discredited, and then why global elitists need for us to believe specifically that "aliens" did it. ..... it's long but well worth the time.... "Theory of Everything" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtBz1roiQR8

[dp0622]

Thanks. I will watch it today. Sounds interesting.

[Apple Pan Dowdy]

2ndDivisionVet, meant to copy you on my post #9 above.
Watch the video and let me know what you think of what this guy is saying. I would value your opinion on it.

[The Antiyuppie]

There was an interesting lecture I caught on Netflix by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is a very good promoter of science. So, within 100 million years of it being possible (temperature), life started on Earth. Every form of life on Earth can be traced back to this beginning, all life is made of the same chemistry, the same DNA structures. So, if it happened within 100 million years of it being physically being possible - WHY hasn’t it happened again in a different way? Why hasn’t it happened MANY TIMES since then in a different way? Just luck? Or something else?

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

“It wasn’t the Martians’ fault their planet died.”

Bush! (White guy).

[tanknetter]

It’s funny to have conversations along those lines with athiests. Suggested to one I know that we and the universe are just some advanced alien species teenager’s highschool science project. The athiest enthusiastically bought into the concept as a possibility.

Then I pointed put that, from our perspective, that alien teenager would be industinguishable from God.

Athiest got real quiet.

[rikkir]

I like your analogy.

Why couldn’t God and/or Jesus be an alien species? The idea of Heaven or Hell be a parallel universe?

I think Science, and Religion go hand in hand whether the atheist scientist believe it or not.
Just as an example, look at the astronomical odds against Earth not only supporting life, much less a thinking reasoning species. No way it happened by accident.

Some people will call this heresy (on both sides), but as a college trained scientist, everyday I see more examples of God putting a force in play that allows things to progress naturally. No one can deny we are not the same beings we were 2000 years ago. Plants adapt to surrounding. Animals adapt to surrounding. But the jump from Chimp to Man? Maybe if you dropped a bunch of chimps in NY City, they might be able to find food in 6 mos. Change into humans, can’t happen.

[GeronL]

If I met aliens I would ask for all first publication rights to all of their words, works and images

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.

For Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, the moral implications are clear: we should help our neighbours. Earthlings might not have been able to intervene when Martians were dying en masse (we were just microbes ourselves), but now, billions of years later, we could make it up to them.

Microbial life on Mars was detected by Lewin's experiment on the Viking lander. It should be studied, not least because it might be the key to producing Earthlike conditions on Mars, y'know, with some patience on our part. It's a healthier attitude IMHO than that of Bob Zubrin, who was quoted as saying "that's insane" regarding holding up the (at best problematical) human colonization of Mars over native microbial life. A two-list ping! First off, it's one of *those* topics, but in a different way.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.

For Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, the moral implications are clear: we should help our neighbours. Earthlings might not have been able to intervene when Martians were dying en masse (we were just microbes ourselves), but now, billions of years later, we could make it up to them.

Microbial life on Mars was detected by Lewin's experiment on the Viking lander. It should be studied, not least because it might be the key to producing Earthlike conditions on Mars, y'know, with some patience on our part. It's a healthier attitude IMHO than that of Bob Zubrin, who was quoted as saying "that's insane" regarding holding up the (at best problematical) human colonization of Mars over native microbial life. A two-list ping!

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[Army Air Corps]

I had not heard about the “shadow”, so I appreciate you sharing the article.

[Army Air Corps]

Bring an intergalactic copyright attorney with you.