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Get your ass to Mars

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Juice, Oct 1, 2019.

  1. Juice

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    I thought about putting this in the space stuff thread, but it probably warrants its own.

    A NASA scientist says that the world may not be ready for the discovery of life on Mars.

    I think hes probably right. something like that would upend every single concept we have about life and existence, let alone every religion on the planet. As much as we think we would be prepared and it would be some Zefram Cochrane-like moment, I think it would take a decade for something like that to really settle in. And this is just the discovery of some dormant bacteria, not intelligent life.

    Focus: The article and implications of finding actual extra-terrestrial life.
     
  2. Improper

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  3. Clutch

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    It would be exciting, but I don't really think that reasonably knowledgeable people would freak out about it. It would most likely just mean that we spend the next few decades trying to figure out if it was contamination from earth or not.
     
  4. Nettdata

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    I'd be very interested to hear what percentage of the planet you think falls into that group?
     
  5. Crown Royal

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    I think there will be a lot of freak outs, because all it does it prove a lot of people wrong. And 99% of people simply will not admit that they are wrong anymore— religion, above everything and anything else. There’s too much money at stake to just close up shop.

    Your psychic abilities were revealed as a con? Simply sell water containing actual miracles in it.
     
  6. Rush-O-Matic

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    I don't follow your point or the "may not be ready" argument.

    I think there will be a few main groups:
    - shruggs, okay, cool. Moving on with life now. (75%)
    - whoa, no way! That is so cool! Let's study everything we can about it. What else will we learn?! (15%)
    - huh? or other (5%)
    - that was placed there by the Devil (4%)
    - currently in the hospital in a vegetative state, but would have been in one of the other categories (1%)

    I mean, I just don't think it changes much for anyone.
     
  7. Clutch

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    But it wouldn't actually prove very many of them wrong unless we also proved that it arose independently from life on earth. Finding definitive proof of life in another star system would be a big deal, but some single cell organisms can fairly easily be slotted into most people's worldviews as contamination from one of our probes, or maybe some particularly hardy germs that hitchhiked on a meteorite.

    The most depressing outcome would be if we proved that life was common in places where the right circumstances exist, as that would mean that the universe is teeming with life that we'll never be able to observe or interact with simply because it is too far away.

    The point of the article appears to be about smugly portraying their in-group as intellectually superior.
     
    #7 Clutch, Oct 1, 2019
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2019
  8. Jimmy James

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    There is a possibility that Mars was once was covered with liquid water. If, even if it was a few million years, Mars was able to sustain life, I have to believe that life would have existed, maybe even to a point where it became sentient. As the atmosphere was stripped away and the planet cooled down, I imagine the end of life on Mars looked a lot like after the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Except that instead of a warming period, the ensuing ice age froze anything left and then the ice evaporated.

    I believe that the discovery of a skeleton or fossil on Mars that couldn't be explained away, would cause a shitload of religious upheaval. Especially with Abrahamic religions. Being irreligious myself, it doesn't really matter to me if existence is the result of random chance and not God's will. But to fundamentalists? Or anybody that uses religion to control people? That could cause societal unrest. Especially where theocratic governments are a thing.

    On the plus side, this would give creationism a well deserved bullet to the head.
     
  9. Binary

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    Why does the discovery of life on Mars impact religion?

    I'm not religious, but isn't the theory that God(s) created everything? Why didn't God create Mars and the bacteria that exist there, too? I'm not aware that religions generally deny that Mars exists, so what am I missing?
     
  10. Juice

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    I guess it depends on how literal and fundamentalist a person is, but it begs questions around the uniqueness of human beings with regard to religious text, saviors/messiahs, etc. It’s not whether Mars or bacteria exists, but the idea that’s if there’s another being out there, there can be many, etc.
     
  11. Kampf Trinker

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    At this point all of these mythologies have been refuted so many times what does another nail in the coffin really matter? Some people will attempt to weave it in, others will just flat out deny it. I'm sure a lot of them won't take it well, but they're used to it by now.
     
  12. Revengeofthenerds

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    Less than 10 percent of the people who can access that information (that we found life on another planet). But if you take the entire population of Earth, including like tribes in Africa and South America that wouldn’t have immediate access to that info, the percentage of people who wouldn’t freak out has to fall below a single percent right?
     
  13. Rush-O-Matic

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    This is what I was asking.

    Doubtful. There are two types of creation (God did it) people:
    - God did it, in some way, and that doesn't limit Him to six literal days of creation like the Old Testament describes. Evolution is fine. That is part of God's creation.
    - God did it, exactly like the Old Testament describes, the Bible is inerrant, and the Devil placed all those dinosaur bones

    The first group won't be impacted in any way by Mars discoveries. The second group will just say the Devil placed stuff on Mars, I guess?
    I mean, there are already two creation stories in Genesis: the first version, Man is created on the 6th day with all the other animals; in the second, Man is created on days 1 and 2 before everything else. That's existed that way since as long as there have been fundamentalists, and they don't have any trouble reconciling that. I don't see Mars as a problem for them.

    Again, Fundamentalists have already set aside the science and logic that others use, either because they are crazy or they use faith to limit their views. Either way, Mars discoveries won't impact that.
     
  14. scotchcrotch

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    What if there are sentient beings out there that aren’t carbon based.

    Is that life?
     
  15. Juice

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    Havent they already found evidence of this on Earth? I remember something about arsenic-based life forms.
     
  16. Crown Royal

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    We have no idea what could be out there. There could be life forms we can’t grasp the concept of.
     
  17. Clutch

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    That turned out to be false, and the theoretical organisms proposed in that case were still carbon-based but using arsenic instead of phosphorous. Anything suitably complex to be called life would probably need to be based on carbon. There just isn't really any other element that forms complex molecules in the way carbon does.
     
  18. Jimmy James

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    Earth is God's plan. The implication then is that there isn't little green men on other planet somewhere. As far as I can remember, there isn't any mention of any other planets or potential life outside of Earth, other than being in Heaven after you die. The Bible says pretty specifically that God created Heaven and Earth. Not Heaven, Earth, and Omikron Persei VIII. For some people, this could call into question the divinity of God and everything associated with it, like Jesus, for example.
     
  19. Rush-O-Matic

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    So, the people that would now be impacted by discovery of life on Mars currently do not think that Mars exists? Because, if that's the case, those people all already crazy or stupid. And, once again, would be completed not impacted by new discoveries there, because they're too dumb or blind to understand them.
     
  20. scotchcrotch

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    Exactly, we can only measure the metrics we observe.

    You can delve into the dimensions and find all kinds of crazy shit.