NASA about to announce Existence of Aliens

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They've announced that they're going to announce it next week.

Great news, hope its true.

We are using expensive, chemical rockets, in a time of shortage, to cross an unsurmountable, physical gap.

I consider it more feasible, to say that extraterrestrial life exists at a different frequency, or plane of existence, that is not reached by blunt force.

I think this impending announcement is linked to the earth like planets located by the Kepler telescope. Light from the orbit from one of the aforementioned 10 planets may indicate the presence of chorophyll a, a plant based pigment that is easily detected on our own earth if you were sitting on a planet milllions of light years away...

Of course bio-signatures from other planets collected as light using spectroscopy don't necessarily have to have green chlorophyll
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/ne ... lants.html

If it was very sciency-sounding would it be able to garner public support.

Respectfully, under the prevailing theory, that light is the cosmological constant, the plant material would be millions of years old. They are not publicly addressing the issue of how to reach that time and place.

It's still a thought experiment, to assume that life exists, and I felt that NASA is setting the bar, very low -- for instance, mixing reagents and soil, and reporting a gas. If it looks like plants, that would be noteworthy.

It just feels like false advertising, when pop culture has you believing in Babylon 5, Dune, and that bar from Star Wars.

Before anyone gets their hopes up too much about contacting new alien civilizations, we might just be talking about alien mold here.

I felt that calling it alien mold would still be interesting, to academical-kinds of people, without being so emotionally-triggering.

chances are, that if ET life is found [or it finds US], that it will be as far beneath or above us in development, as we are above amoeba and below them- if the latter, they'd likely be Kardashev scale II at least.

So did they find my home planet yet?

Operative word: "Assuming."

For all the speculation about "primordial ooze" spontaneously generating even single-celled life, we have yet to recreate that phenomena in the laboratory, meaning we don't know all the requirements for making it happen - or if it can happen at all. All our assumptions about the origin of life may be wrong.

Therefore, it is IMPOSSIBLE to create a mathematical formula for predicting the odds of this (so far mythical) process occurring on other planets.

What we do know, is that for life to even survive on THIS planet, over 250+ absolute requirements exist - including exact distance from the host star, liquid oxygen atmosphere, a spinning molten core to create a magnetosphere for protecting fragile life from solar radiation, nearby gas giants to absorb and deflect incoming asteroids, etc, etc.

As with so much of modern "scientific knowledge," this is nothing but speculation, based on previous speculation, with zero empirical evidence to back it up. "There must be life out there, 'cause look at all the stars" is not science, it is fantasy.

We have no way of knowing whether such a thing is even possible, much less likely, because we still don't KNOW how it happened here. Ultimately, belief in alien life as much an act of faith as believing in God.

Speculating about invisible living organisms based on fluctuating methane levels is like Man Made Climate Change - using science fiction and speculation to promote a political agenda. Like it or not, as far as we know, we may well be alone in this universe.

But while we're talking SciFi, if you find 'em, by all means, bring 'em on back for study - it worked so well in Aliens.

I certainly hope this is true although I remain skeptical and I won't be getting hyped before any official announcements.

I thought that the Drake equation is pure speculation, because, at present, none of these factors can be falsified --
N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L

N = The number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.
R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.
fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.
ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.
fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.
fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.
fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Astrobiologists have already discovered algae-like fossils in fragments from a meteor that landed in Sri Lanka.

Also, the only form of life WE recognize is based on carbon. Life based on silicon is theoretically possible. Such a silicon life form might exhale silicon dioxide, i.e. sand. We could even now be surrounded by alien life and never even recognize it was there.

True, and I do believe that the prospect of this planet being the only one in the universe with live is absurd but there have been many times when people thought they discovered alien life but it turned out to be a signal from a satellite orbiting Earth or something ordinary like that. This would be one of the most monumental discoveries ever so I don't plan on jumping the gun on it.

I should point out that "mold" and plants are actually a higher type of life form than what NASA are speculating about. Fungi/mold/plants are eukaryotes which are a cell line that leads to the evolution of humans. I think NASA are more hopeful of picking up more simple photosynthetic prokaryotes such as cyanobacteria which are able to use simple CO2 and sunlight as an energy source producing abundant oxygen as a byproduct. The detection of water vapor and O2 will be a strong pointer to the existence of simple P/S life forms