Could invisible aliens exist among us?

The Earth might be crawling with undiscovered alien creatures whose biochemistry is very different from life as we know it. An astrobiologist explains:

They probably won’t look anything like this. Image via Martina Badini/ Shutterstock/ The Conversation.

By Samantha Rolfe, University of Hertfordshire

Life is pretty easy to recognize. It moves, it grows, it eats, it excretes, it reproduces. Simple. In biology, researchers often use the acronym MRSGREN to describe it. It stands for movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, reproduction, excretion and nutrition.

But Helen Sharman, Britain’s first astronaut and a chemist at Imperial College London, recently said that alien lifeforms that are impossible to spot may be living among us. How could that be possible?

While life may be easy to recognize, it’s actually notoriously difficult to define and has had scientists and philosophers in debate for centuries – if not millennia. For example, a 3D printer can reproduce itself, but we wouldn’t call it alive. On the other hand, a mule is famously sterile, but we would never say it doesn’t live.

As nobody can agree, there are more than 100 definitions of what life is. An alternative (but imperfect) approach is describing life as a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution, which works for many cases we want to describe.

The lack of definition is a huge problem when it comes to searching for life in space. Not being able to define life other than we’ll know it when we see it means we are truly limiting ourselves to geocentric, possibly even anthropocentric, ideas of what life looks like. When we think about aliens, we often picture a humanoid creature. But the intelligent life we are searching for doesn’t have to be humanoid.

Life, but not as we know it

Sharman says she believes aliens exist and

… there’s no two ways about it.

 Furthermore, she wonders:

Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It’s possible they’re here right now and we simply can’t see them.

Such life would exist in a shadow biosphere. By that, I don’t mean a ghost realm, but undiscovered creatures probably with a different biochemistry. This means we can’t study or even notice them because they are outside of our comprehension. Assuming it exists, such a shadow biosphere would probably be microscopic.

So why haven’t we found it? We have limited ways of studying the microscopic world as only a small percentage of microbes can be cultured in a lab. This may mean that there could indeed be many lifeforms we haven’t yet spotted. We do now have the ability to sequence the DNA of unculturable strains of microbes, but this can only detect life as we know it – that contain DNA.

If we find such a biosphere, however, it is unclear whether we should call it alien. That depends on whether we mean of extraterrestrial origin or simply unfamiliar.

Silicon-based life

A popular suggestion for an alternative biochemistry is one based on silicon rather than carbon. It makes sense, even from a geocentric point of view. Around 90% of the Earth is made up of silicon, iron, magnesium and oxygen, which means there’s lots to go around for building potential life.

Silicon is similar to carbon; it has four electrons available for creating bonds with other atoms. But silicon is heavier, with 14 protons (protons make up the atomic nucleus with neutrons) compared to the six in the carbon nucleus. While carbon can create strong double and triple bonds to form long chains useful for many functions, such as building cell walls, it is much harder for silicon. It struggles to create strong bonds, so long-chain molecules are much less stable.

What’s more, common silicon compounds, such as silicon dioxide (or silica), are generally solid at terrestrial temperatures and insoluble in water. Compare this to highly soluble carbon dioxide, for example, and we see that carbon is more flexible and provides many more molecular possibilities.

Life on Earth is fundamentally different from the bulk composition of the Earth. Another argument against a silicon-based shadow biosphere is that too much silicon is locked up in rocks. In fact, the chemical composition of life on Earth has an approximate correlation with the chemical composition of the sun, with 98% of atoms in biology consisting of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. So if there were viable silicon lifeforms here, they may have evolved elsewhere.

That said, there are arguments in favor of silicon-based life on Earth. Nature is adaptable. A few years ago, scientists at Caltech managed to breed a bacterial protein that created bonds with silicon – essentially bringing silicon to life. So even though silicon is inflexible compared with carbon, it could perhaps find ways to assemble into living organisms, potentially including carbon.

And when it comes to other places in space, such as Saturn’s moon Titan or planets orbiting other stars, we certainly can’t rule out the possibility of silicon-based life.

To find it, we have to somehow think outside of the terrestrial biology box and figure out ways of recognizing lifeforms that are fundamentally different from the carbon-based form. There are plenty of experiments testing out these alternative biochemistries, such as the one from Caltech.

Regardless of the belief held by many that life exists elsewhere in the universe, we have no evidence for that. So it is important to consider all life as precious, no matter its size, quantity or location. The Earth supports the only known life in the universe. So no matter what form life elsewhere in the solar system or universe may take, we have to make sure we protect it from harmful contamination – whether it is terrestrial life or alien lifeforms.

So could aliens be among us? I don’t believe that we have been visited by a life form with the technology to travel across the vast distances of space. But we do have evidence for life-forming, carbon-based molecules having arrived on Earth on meteorites, so the evidence certainly doesn’t rule out the same possibility for more unfamiliar life forms.

Samantha Rolfe, Lecturer in Astrobiology and Principal Technical Officer at Bayfordbury Observatory, University of Hertfordshire

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: An astrobiologist suggests that Earth may be crawling with undiscovered creatures with a different biochemistry from life as we know it.
https://flipboard.com/article/could-invisible-aliens-exist-among-us/a-5ZLBdHdNSC-3eCrGdd_eoQ%3Aa%3A987847798-8bd4bb01e9%2Fearthsky.org

Aliens definitely exist and they could be living among us on Earth, says Britain's first astronaut:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/uk/helen-sharman-aliens-exist-scli-scn-gbr-intl/index.html

Bloomberg attacks Trump in his safe space

Fox & Friends aired a commercial by the former New York mayor hitting Trump, then interviewed Bloomberg's campaign manager.

Mike Bloomberg is attacking President Donald Trump in his safe space.

On Thursday morning, the Democrat premiered his newest ad attacking the president on “Fox & Friends,” Trump’s favorite program that frequently lavishes praise on him. Adding insult, the show also interviewed Bloomberg’s top presidential campaign adviser, Kevin Sheekey.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/23/bloomberg-attacks-trump-102723

Trump Disrespects Our Troops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izkONjZM9zI

Fox & Friends Airs Brutal Bloomberg Ad Highlighting Trump’s ‘Erratic and Out of Control’ Attacks on the Military

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-friends-airs-brutal-bloomberg-ad-highlighting-trumps-erratic-and-out-of-control-attacks-on-the-military/

The Plot to Overthrow FDR

A 6-minute NPR broadcast from 2012 is highly relevant to America's polarized politics today. The language people used was apocalyptic about the end of America and the Constitution. There was a real plot to overthrow FDR as president and replace him with a dictator.

The broadcast includes this introduction:

“It was a dangerous time in America: The economy was staggering, unemployment was rampant and a banking crisis threatened the entire monetary system. The newly elected president pursued an ambitious legislative program aimed at easing some of the troubles. But he faced vitriolic opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. ‘This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty,’ one senator wrote to a colleague. ‘The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not merely signed the death warrant of capitalism, but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom.’” -- Republican Sen. Henry D. Hatfield (R-WV) criticizing FDR’s policies, 1933

Frontline Documentary: America's Great Divide

As the partisan hate and distrust publicly boil over in the Senate impeachment trial, it is worth considering some recent history to get a feel for why and how we got here. Where we are now is a place where inconvenient facts, truths and logic are lies for probably most conservatives and populists. Worse, that is where essentially all elected GOP politicians now stand.

The right and conservatism believed it face an existential threat with the election of Obama. Obama crystallized the hate, fear, and anger that had been building among many Americans for decades.

The left is divided and fragmented, but at least most of them, most of the time will still grudgingly accept inconvenient facts, truths and logic to some non-trivial extent. Those days may be coming to an end. Social partisan anger is rising and I feel it myself sometimes even though I don't have a left or right 'side' in this war. If full-blown reason and reality detachment happens on the left, it is easy to imagine the American experiment ending in some form of corrupt, bigoted authoritarian Christian theocracy, probably preceded by a period of social violence.

The basis for civil, rational discourse is basically gone. Essentially all cross-party trust is gone. The two Frontline documentaries are well worth the four hours. They remind us of why and how we got into this sad, dangerous mess.

For myself, I see a longer timeline than Frontline covers. Mine dates back to at least the 2nd Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1955. In essence, that decision said to the states, desegregate public schools as soon as you can. The nationwide conservative backlash against that has never fully gone away, but it has morphed and additional complaints are swept in, e.g., illegal immigration, rising secularism, etc.

So, if you have some time, these two are well worth it.






My thanks to Susan, the primal one, for bringing these outstanding documentaries to my attention. 😊

Capitalism's Moral Crisis?

Caviar on toast points

The Washington Post writes on the current meeting in Davos Switzerland of billionaires, oligarchs, kleptocrats and other titans of business and commerce, e.g., some of the best people the president works with who are not in jail or under indictment. Even the president will pop in today for a quick whatever he wants to do there. The WaPo notes that this year's meeting seems to have an unusual concern attached to it -- the morality of capitalism is under scrutiny. Past Davos soirees and caviar on toast points have been celebrations of, as WaPo puts it, “an almost Promethean belief in the virtues of liberalism and globalization, anchored in a conviction that heads of companies can become capable and even moral custodians of the common good.”

Wait, what? Moral custodians of the common good??? Something is definitely seriously amiss in Davos this year. WaPo writes:

“Financial crises, surging nationalist populism in the West, China’s intensifying authoritarianism and the steady toll of climate change have convinced many that there’s nothing inexorable about liberal progress. A new global opinion poll of tens of thousands of people found that more than 50 percent of those surveyed now think capitalism does “more harm than good.” 

Klaus Schwab, the forum’s octogenarian founder and executive chairman, is convinced that the current moment needs more Davos, not less. In the run-up to this week’s meetings, he announced a new “Davos manifesto,” calling on companies to “pay their fair share of taxes, show zero tolerance for corruption, uphold human rights throughout their global supply chains, and advocate for a competitive level playing field.” Such an ethos, Schwab contends, will go a long way to redressing the world’s inequities and may help governments meet the climate targets set by the 2015 Paris agreement. 

“Business leaders now have an incredible opportunity,” Schwab wrote in a column published last month. “By giving stakeholder capitalism concrete meaning, they can move beyond their legal obligations and uphold their duty to society. 

In a study timed in conjunction with the World Economic Forum, Oxfam found the world’s billionaires control more wealth than 4.6 billion people, or 60 percent of humanity. “Another year, another indication that the inequality crisis is spiraling out of control. And despite repeated warnings about inequality, governments have not reversed its course,” said Paul O’Brien of Oxfam America in an emailed statement. ‘Some governments, especially the U.S., are actually exacerbating inequality by cutting taxes for the richest and for corporations while slashing public services and safety nets — such as health care and education — that actually fight inequality.’”

The morality of business seems to be a concern that is slowly creeping into the minds of at least some business people. A few months ago, some CEOs in the Business Roundtable group signed a non-binding statement of corporate principles[1] that at least paid lip service to concerns other than profit, e.g., concern for employees and customers, whatever that means. It was aspirational and vague, but it was at least something. Sort of. Maybe.

Anyway, something seems to be amiss in the stronghold of capitalism and amoral market thinking. Whether the unsease will translate into something significantly different remains unknowable. But if past performance is any predictor future activities, not much is going to change. Companies will continue to lobby to not pay taxes. They will continue to lobby to privatize and trickle profits up to owners, while socializing costs, risks and human and environmental damage. And, in terms of moral politics, Facebook will probably continue to resist calls to shut down politicians who use Facebook to lie to and deceive the public. Facebook asserts lying to the public is good because it is based “on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.”

Actually the principle that demands lies to be allowed is profit, i.e., if Facebook shuts lying politicians down as they spread their hate and poison, Facebook might get regulated. Or far worse, taxed. As the Business Roundtable folks say, their core principles still includes generating long-term value for shareholders. Therein lies the real, enduring corporate moral value -- money talks and everything else walks.



Footnote:
1. Here’s the core of the Business Roundtable corporate purpose statement:
“While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders. We commit to:

•  Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations. 
• Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. It also includes supporting them through training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world. We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect. 
• Dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers. We are dedicated to serving as good partners to the other companies, large and small, that help us meet our missions. 
• Supporting the communities in which we work. We respect the people in our communities and protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses. 
• Generating long-term value for shareholders, who provide the capital that allows companies to invest, grow and innovate. We are committed to transparency and effective engagement with shareholders.

The last point is probably something that will remain the top priority. 

Is Donald Trump the Anti-Christ? What do the Prophets and Bible Codes Say?

A VERY LONG READ!

Is Donald J. Trump the Beast of Revelation? Why does the number 666 keep turning up ― over and over again ― where Trump and his family are concerned, as documented extensively on this page? 

http://www.thehypertexts.com/donald%20trump%20666%20mark%20of%20the%20beast.htm



Donald John Trump's real name in German is Donald Johann Drumpf and each name has six letters = 666.



Another Trump Fifth Avenue property, the famous Trump Tower, is 203 meters tall according to multiple reports. And 203 meters = 666 feet

MUCH MUCH MORE - ACTUALLY WORTH YOUR TIME TO PERUSE:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Donald%20Trump%20666%20Mark%20of%20the%20Beast.htm