Space geekout. In case you haven’t heard, NASA discovered an alien life form in California.
I was following the buzz around the conference from the day it was announced. There have been some expectations that NASA would refer to something they found around Saturn. But that would have been highly unlikely. NASA pretty much doesn’t have anything anywhere that could deliver unambiguous evidence for life – except on Earth. And if they had found ambiguous evidence, they wouldn’t make a press conference about it.
The finding is nothing short of spectacular. I’m reminded of an article I read once about how there are slight but fundamental variations on how some organisms store and retrieve information in DNA. If DNA is a language all organisms speak, it seems like some organisms are using a dialect.. or rather some custom letters. Already back then it struck me that these organisms already could considered to be aliens.
Of course, having a life form with a major difference in it’s entire biochemistry is even more radical. I’m pretty sure that as we continue improving our technology to study life at a molecular level, we will discover even more aliens on this planet.
But on the other hand, the press conference did come with a sting of disappointment. It’s NASA doing the press conference. Shouldn’t they be talking about stuff they found in space? Why do I feel like all the great achievements of space exploration are in the past? Instead of getting closer, the final frontier seems to recede from us day by day. News like troubles with the Space Shuttle (euthanize this junk!) and Falcon 9 aren’t exactly inspiring either.
DISCLAIMER: I’m not a biologist. I’m doing some serious out-of-my-ass-talking here. In the quite probable case I misrepresented something here, please let me know.
