Alien life

[Moontanman]

Lots of lip service has been given to aliens visiting the earth and everyone thinks of space ships or some sort of artifact of hi-technology but what is the most likely way we could detect alien life? Could we detect alien microbes? If aliens had once visited the earth they would more likely have left behind microbes than an alien Ipod. How would we detect such microbes if they existed.

[Not half- but whole!]

In theory there would be a few ways to do it, but the reality of our understanding of "terrestrial" bacteria is so minor that variances have no real baseline to be compared with and thus would be indiscernible from say, extremeophiles. Outside of vastly unique biology or biochemistry they would be hard to spot.

 

This could ignore the most obvious sign, life; via panspermia.

[Moontanman]

In theory there would be a few ways to do it, but the reality of our understanding of "terrestrial" bacteria is so minor that variances have no real baseline to be compared with and thus would be indiscernible from say, extremeophiles. Outside of vastly unique biology or biochemistry they would be hard to spot.

 

This could ignore the most obvious sign, life; via panspermia.

 

Actually alien life would be harder to find the further it was from what we know. All current test only detect life like ours, DNA like ours, alien microbes if they were different wouldn't show up at all in any current tests. We would have to devise tests to detect nucleotides different from the four we use or test for other differences. so far all we look for is "us"

[belovelife]

YouTube - Clifford E. Stone on Extra-Terrestrial Life Forms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2DNSEKx1aM

 

i wonder who this guy is

[mynah]

Interesting article:

 

Strongest evidence yet of life on Mars?

 

Finding life in any form - no matter how primitive - elsewhere would be extremely interesting, as it would cast light on alternative biochemistry and genetic blueprints. If, for example, a Martian microbe has genetic material similar to our DNA it would imply that either it shares a common ancestry with life on earth, or ribonucleic acid is the "default" genetic material of life in general. Finding a totally different form of genetic material would indicate that life could arise in many different ways. Each of these findings would, in its own way, be of enormous scientific importance.