Could the discovery of Synthetic life or other forms of life be
"just around the corner?"
And why not, since Astronomers have been finding and confirming more and more extrasolar planets almost daily recently.
I think the number will exceed almost 2000 very soon, with an
increasing number said to be within the habitable zone...meaning Earth-like, I presume?
I dont think it will be too long before we determine if at least some of these extrasolar planets have a life sustaining atmosphere, if any, when they transit or line up with a star we
will be able to analyse the gasses surrounding them.
We are told that there are great clouds of water vapour in the Universe.
So H2o + oxygen detected in an extrasolar planets atmosphere should bring a smile to all those who believe there is some kind of life out there?
I remember getting so excited 16 years ago, when President Clinton announced that
a Martian meteorite recovered in Antartica, may have held some primitive life from Mars?
Pity, it turned out to be some mineralic inclusion.
Craig Venter, who's company first showed how mankind was created using DNA
(forget created...I better use formed, so as to not upset too many people) said he had
created a Self replicating synthetic bacterial cell.
Wrong that turned out that its genome was based upon some obscure
DNA synthesis with PCR? amplification.
Life, aliens, and Flying Saucers, Does mankind feel so alone in this infinite universe, and so insecure that we need to ensure our mental future by conjuring up Aliens, Flying Saucers, while looking for Life, and hoping to find a Life-Messiah, (for want if a better word?) out in the Universe?
Still, we need be careful what we allow our scientists get up to down here on Earth.
Because....and I'm serious about this....it must be easier to
produce a group of molecules that could self-duplicate themselves indefinitely.
Than something as complicated as the living material we call life.
How about a self replicating molecule that used water plus chemicals?
A molecule that turned water into somthing like thick water, or jelly water, self duplicating itself forever, or until the ajacent chemicals that it fed upon, were exausted.
No more liquid oceans, maybe no more rain? No more civilization as we knew it.
Well is it so far fetched?
No...for it is much easier to produce a group of self replicating molecules than actual life. Much much more simpler, don't you think?
Ok, forget water, there must be other more likely molecular groups that could be paired and conjured up......how about something similar to Germs, something that uses animal or human life forms to feed and multiply on......prehaps a molecular litchen or moss, that multiplied, strangling the ground or prehaps other simple animal life?
I suppose a new life form can arise either directly from chemistry,
or spun off from some other past biology?.
If life arose from chemistry, as is thought to have occurred on our primitive Earth.
Then it must have began with heritable bits and organized itself into a bit-generating duplicating system.
But if life arose from another life system....brought here to Earth, like Panspermia, on the back of slushy Comets etc.
then our life on Earth here should be considered to have had a privileged beginning, don't you think?
So I don't want anybody in some chemical laboratory, go and mess it all up, trying to produce designer Molecules that replicate ....as a substitute for life.
Prehaps after all I should wait for my future flying saucer to land here upon Earth, and just be content with that Messianic feeling.
