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Spooge
The Nutter
Registered: 04/21/04
Posts: 5,189
Loc: Ice patches that last for...
Last seen: 11 years, 2 months
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Meteorite may hold secrets to life outside earth.
#6324422 - 12/01/06 01:36 PM (17 years, 2 months ago) |
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http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=technology_home&articleID=2468768
A meteorite that crashed in northwest Canada almost seven years ago might have been able to host the very earliest life forms, according to NASA researchers, which opens the door to the possibility that life could be present elsewhere in the universe.
Mike Zolensky, a cosmic minerologist at the NASA Space Centre in Texas, told CBC Radio the Tagish Lake meteorite is unlike any they have ever examined.
"We always knew it was a rare, very carbon- and water-rich meteorite - and they hardly ever fall on the Earth," said Zolensky. "But we've found since that it's even more unique than that. It's a totally unique meteorite."
Zolensky said tiny bubbles in the rock are organic globules where the universe's earliest life forms could have been able to live, an astonishing discovery from a meteorite thought to be 4.5 billion years old - older than the Earth.
"Perhaps these are like little condos arriving on earth and biology can move in later on," said Zolensky.
"They've survived somehow, intact on an asteroid for over four and a half billion years and where they come from, we don't know. But it's not from around here. It's from somewhere else."
Scientists have speculated life on earth began somewhere between 3.5 and 3.9 billion years ago.
The meteor first attracted attention when a dramatic fireball lit up the early morning skies of the Yukon, northern British Columbia, parts of Alaska, and the Northwest Territories on Jan. 18, 2000.
Fragments of the meteorite scattered across the Southern Lakes region of the Yukon. A week later, outdoorsman Jim Brook discovered a remnant on Tagish Lake between Atlin, B.C., and Carcross, Yukon.
Brook stored the meteorite in a freezer to keep it intact, a move that helped give researchers a chance to study it before it could be influenced by the environment on earth.
"This meteorite is unique because it was recovered frozen ... and some of these samples came to us still frozen," said Zolensky. "It's never happened before, may never happen again, and will always be a bonanza to science for that reason."
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Newbie
User of semicolons.


Registered: 07/18/04
Posts: 24,711
Loc: SoCal
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Re: Meteorite may hold secrets to life outside earth. [Re: Spooge]
#6324430 - 12/01/06 01:40 PM (17 years, 2 months ago) |
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I like that idea. It shows that life can definitely be possible should that meteorite collide with a planet capable of sustaining it. It also sheds more light on the argument that "We're alone" out here. Life could have evolved and adapted to another planet and reacted a completely different way, making the most intelligent life forms look nothing like humans, but biologically similar.
I hope they make some big Earthshattering discovery about our origins before I die though. I want to know where I came from before I know where I'm going.
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kosmic_charlie
Truckin' in style


Registered: 03/18/01
Posts: 5,203
Loc: Deep Elem
Last seen: 1 month, 13 days
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Re: Meteorite may hold secrets to life outside earth. [Re: Newbie]
#6324513 - 12/01/06 02:14 PM (17 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
NewbieShroomie said: I want to know where I came from before I know where I'm going.
I like that statement.
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Goin' where the water tastes like wine.
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browndustin
dustybuddy

Registered: 10/03/03
Posts: 2,957
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Re: Meteorite may hold secrets to life outside earth. [Re: Spooge]
#6324777 - 12/01/06 03:37 PM (17 years, 2 months ago) |
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Man, still like this gets my juices flowin'
I could sit and reach, watch or talk about this kind of stuff allllll day and night. In fact, I think some of my greatest, most fulfilling and nostalgic moments have been with best friends ranting about shit like this and passing doobies back and fourth.
Nice find! And to think, we scored that space shit basically in my backyard. Wooo!!
-------------------- When the stress burns my brain it's like acid raindrops maryjane is the only thing that makes the pain stop
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Spooge
The Nutter
Registered: 04/21/04
Posts: 5,189
Loc: Ice patches that last for...
Last seen: 11 years, 2 months
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Re: Meteorite may hold secrets to life outside earth. [Re: browndustin]
#6324837 - 12/01/06 03:59 PM (17 years, 2 months ago) |
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Mushroom spores are known to survive in space conditions and potentially could travel across space on meteorites and such. Mckenna had some cool theories on this. Just some cool links though...
http://terencemckenna.tribe.net/thread/c9da2bc7-1fa0-4857-9db8-5296b1fb2ac3
(i think that article seems somewhat related to terrence mckenna, but it's definetely not his theory's....i don't understand why the site name is such.)
A few more...
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/survive_space_021126.html
http://www.they-live.com/2006/08/12/microbes-mushrooms-from-outer-space/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/science/daily/daily/oct99/spacebugs4.htm
THE MUSHROOM SPEAKS - Terrence Mckenna
I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages I am from the stars. My home is no one planet, for many worlds scattered through the shining disc of the galaxy have conditions which allow my spores an opportunity for life. The mushroom which you see is the part of my body given to sex thrills and sun bathing, my true body is a fine network of fibers growing through the soil. These networks may cover acres and may have far more connections than the number in a human brain.
My mycelial network is nearly immortal--only the sudden toxification of a planet or the explosion of it's parent star can wipe me out. By means impossible to explain because of certain misconceptions in your model of reality all my mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyperlight communication through space and time.
The mycelial body is as fragile as a spider's web but the collective hypermind and memory is a vast historical archive of the career of evolving intelligence on many worlds in our spiral star swarm. Space, you see, is a vast ocean to those hardy life forms that have the ability to reproduce from spores, for spores are covered with the hardest organic substance known.
Across the aeons of time and space drift many spore forming life-forms in suspended animation for millions of years until contact is made with a suitable environment. Few such species are minded, only myself and my recently evolved near relatives have achieved the hyper-communication mode and memory capacity that makes us leading members in the community of galactic intelligence. How the hyper-communication mode operates is a secret which will not be lightly given to humans.
But the means should be obvious: it is the occurence of psilocybin and psilocin in the biosynthetic pathways of my living body that opens for me and my symbiots the vision screens to many worlds. You as an individual and Homo sapiens as a species are on the brink of the formation of a symbiotic relationship with my genetic material that will eventually carry humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations.
Since it is not easy for you to recognize other varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organism there lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benifits for both species involved.
Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own.
To secure an eternal existence down the long river of cosmic time, I again and again offer this agreement to higher beings and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millenia.
A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds to which all citizens of our starswarm are heir.
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