News Briefs 07-03-2011

Re: Alien life discovered in a meteorite? Don't put your party hat on just yet: there's no shortage of skeptical responses throwing doubt on the claim.

I have no problem with a bit of honest doubt. In truth, without a measured dose of it, you can find yourself being led down RPJ's rabbit hole and stepping in all sorts of s**t.

Where I draw the line... and often get more than a little irritated, is when skepticism becomes its own school of thought; where it is applied in place of consideration and possibility.

It is at that point when healthy skepticism becomes malignant denial and like a cancer, kills discovery.

Bacteria evolving in rocks the size of a school bus is really unlikely. Cyano-bacteria evolving from something else in dust floating in space is even less likely.

So assuming that these are remains of bacteria, how did they get in the rocks?

Well, perhaps the rocks did not always drift in space in the small chunks we see now. Maybe they were part of that disintegrated planet.

Or maybe they were brought there from another planet, or some big moon. Naturally, or by another space faring civilization that preceded us.

The only way to make sure is to go and look at some asteroids.

First off, props for Alejandro Jodorowsky and Alan Moore being on the list. Secondly, with his passing Kenneth Grant will sadly have to leave the list. Also, maybe I'm just ignorant but Oprah at #8? Above Ken Wilber? Wow. I might just be suffering from a lack of knowledge about a lot of these characters but I'm surprised to see so few artists on the list (that I recognize).

And for my honorable mentions in no particular order; Maynard James Keenan (or just TooL as a band), The RZA, Tori Amos, David Mack, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen LaBerge, Rick Strassman, Greg Taylor =P, Art Bell, David Lynch, and the Wachowski Brothers (if only for the immensely popular and amazing Matrix trilogy).

R.I.P. Glory and OCO

Two missions focused on global warming down the drain, better close up NASA.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/ne...

Two different news about space rocks today. Both might provide very interesting evidence about the origins of life on Earth, and its existence elsewhere.

And it's interesting to compare the reaction these two studies have caused in the Scientific community: both skeptical, but of a very different nature and tone:

For the meteorite who contained nitrogen and ammonia:

Dr Caroline Smith, a meteorite expert at London's Natural History Museum agrees the important element in the new study is the nitrogen, even though she would like to see similar results repeated in other meteorites.

"One of the problems with early biology on the early Earth is you need abundant nitrogen for all these prebiological processes to happen - and of course nitrogen is in ammonia.

"A lot of the evidence shows that ammonia was not present in much abundance in the early Earth, so where did it come from?"

And for the meteorite that *might* contain fossils of an extraterrestrial life form:

I'm looking forward to the publication next year of the discovery of an extraterrestrial rabbit in a meteor. While they're at it, they might as well throw in a bigfoot print on the surface and chupacabra coprolite from space. All will be about as convincing as this story.

Can you guess who wrote that last comment, BTW? ;)

Speaking of fractals, Have you seen this:

http://fractal.io/

via BoingBoing.

Good fun if you have the hardware to handle it.

Okay Why is Dan Brown (42) above Alan Moore (49) on the list of 100 most spiritually influential people?! Seriously?! Hell he's above Kenneth Grant too! Well that can't count now can it sadly!

In Soviet Russia,
doggie puts leash on YOU!

;)

Call me a psychic --or a sidekick, if you prefer-- but I kinda predict something like this will appear in one of this year's crop circles.

So basically the typical person is just the average representative of the most populous ethnicity on the planet?

It's a good thing we're all individuals.

I find it disgusting that Alejandro Jordowsky, and Alex Grey are below Oprah on ANY list.