The universe being a simulation sure would explain:
Quantum length
Spooky Action at a distance
Every to comparability of physics, maths, and physical observation
Why the universe it too cheap to collapse unobserved waveforms.
cats
other things probably.
Or we could just say a wizard did it.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
Quantum tunneling, because collision detection is a PITA, so we'll just pop things out of other things when anyone looks at it.
Anyone who's ever written a sinple physics simulation has also seen this one happen: something moves quick enough and it'll go through anything because there's no 2 frames of animation where it's touching or partially collided.
How do you simulate something that, as far as we know/don’t know, is going to grow infinitely
Don’t you need an infinitely-sized computer?
Only if you want to simulate it infinitely. Eventually the study will end and either be shut down or enter a terminal phase where any safeguards are turned off to see if the computer crashes from it.
Alternately the simulation is actually just Earth and the universe beyond our reach is outside data streamed in as a skybox.
Edit: the holographic principle doesn't help this argument. Every time legitimate research progress is done into hologram theory the media equates hologram with a holodeck or matrix style simulation.
What it actually means (heavily dumbed down because fuck trying to understand quantum) is that the universe we perceive is the projection in 3 dimensions of a lot of far crazier shit happening in a higher number of dimensions, much like shadow puppets are a projection in 2 dimensions of something much more complex happening in 3.
How do you simulate something that, as far as we know/don’t know, is going to grow infinitely
Don’t you need an infinitely-sized computer?
Big Crunch, perhaps?
But yeah, we run potentially "infinite" simulations all the time as-is, we just cut them off at some point when they become unmanageable or we've gotten all the info we've needed or whatever. You could just let that flyer in The Game of Life just fly away forever, or maybe you could restart the program once it starts repeating itself and it becomes obvious that it's just going to continue doing what it's doing.
How do you simulate something that, as far as we know/don’t know, is going to grow infinitely
Don’t you need an infinitely-sized computer?
Well, in our world, the complexity of the system is necessarily less than the complexity of the computer. So in order to simulate the universe you need a computer larger/stronger than the universe.
Buuut.
1) The universe may not actually be infinite. We have no way to know because of how limited we are in our ability to perceive. As far as we know the edge of the universe is just the light horizon, not an actual edge.
2) time is a funny thing and running a simulation at half speed vs full speed would not be noticable to those in the simulation. So if you have more time in the simulating universe then the simulated universe works just fine on lower power.
3) there is no guarantee a simulating universe would be subject to then same rules ours are
Edit: buut there is also no reason that the coincidences of our universe and our simulations would suggest we are a simulation
The universe being a simulation sure would explain:
Quantum length
Spooky Action at a distance
Every to comparability of physics, maths, and physical observation
Why the universe it too cheap to collapse unobserved waveforms.
cats
other things probably.
Or we could just say a wizard did it.
Naw, if we manage to prove the universe is a simulation, we can do new science.
I mean, we have a universe where until we observe something, the universe is simulating all the other possibilities, and then it collapse those down when we observe a particular one.
There's a real possibility, if we figure out enough, we can escape our sandbox. Speculative execution is surprising hard to secure.
How do you simulate something that, as far as we know/don’t know, is going to grow infinitely
Don’t you need an infinitely-sized computer?
Well, in our world, the complexity of the system is necessarily less than the complexity of the computer. So in order to simulate the universe you need a computer larger/stronger than the universe.
Buuut.
1) The universe may not actually be infinite. We have no way to know because of how limited we are in our ability to perceive. As far as we know the edge of the universe is just the light horizon, not an actual edge.
2) time is a funny thing and running a simulation at half speed vs full speed would not be noticable to those in the simulation. So if you have more time in the simulating universe then the simulated universe works just fine on lower power.
3) there is no guarantee a simulating universe would be subject to then same rules ours are
Edit: buut there is also no reason that the coincidences of our universe and our simulations would suggest we are a simulation
Second law of themodynamics dictates that the amount of memory needed to simulate the universe is an increasing function of time. And to be clear, this is simply to store any given state of the universe, which defeats your #2. Hence memory leak.
How do you simulate something that, as far as we know/don’t know, is going to grow infinitely
Don’t you need an infinitely-sized computer?
Well, in our world, the complexity of the system is necessarily less than the complexity of the computer. So in order to simulate the universe you need a computer larger/stronger than the universe.
Buuut.
1) The universe may not actually be infinite. We have no way to know because of how limited we are in our ability to perceive. As far as we know the edge of the universe is just the light horizon, not an actual edge.
2) time is a funny thing and running a simulation at half speed vs full speed would not be noticable to those in the simulation. So if you have more time in the simulating universe then the simulated universe works just fine on lower power.
3) there is no guarantee a simulating universe would be subject to then same rules ours are
Edit: buut there is also no reason that the coincidences of our universe and our simulations would suggest we are a simulation
Second law of themodynamics dictates that the amount of memory needed to simulate the universe is an increasing function of time. And to be clear, this is simply to store any given state of the universe, which defeats your #2. Hence memory leak.
Actually the total opposite: statistical entropy is about reducing the number of macrostates while increasing the number of microstates.
Which is to say, the increase of entropy ensures compression algorithms are more efficient for the simulated universe: if one area is the same as another then both can be stored as aliases provided you're not too concerned what the microdetail is like. At the heat death of the universe the entire thing will be able to be stored as whatever the fundamental constants are + an integer for how much energy was put in to start it.
I also fail to see why the number of states would increase. The limiter is the amount of matter and its states (and any ability to compress that into a less complex description) not the amount of space that exists or the amount of past states.
Since matter is conserved the simulation should take at most the same amount of memory/power per unit of run time as prior
How do you simulate something that, as far as we know/don’t know, is going to grow infinitely
Don’t you need an infinitely-sized computer?
Well, in our world, the complexity of the system is necessarily less than the complexity of the computer. So in order to simulate the universe you need a computer larger/stronger than the universe.
Buuut.
1) The universe may not actually be infinite. We have no way to know because of how limited we are in our ability to perceive. As far as we know the edge of the universe is just the light horizon, not an actual edge.
2) time is a funny thing and running a simulation at half speed vs full speed would not be noticable to those in the simulation. So if you have more time in the simulating universe then the simulated universe works just fine on lower power.
3) there is no guarantee a simulating universe would be subject to then same rules ours are
Edit: buut there is also no reason that the coincidences of our universe and our simulations would suggest we are a simulation
Second law of themodynamics dictates that the amount of memory needed to simulate the universe is an increasing function of time. And to be clear, this is simply to store any given state of the universe, which defeats your #2. Hence memory leak.
Actually the total opposite: statistical entropy is about reducing the number of macrostates while increasing the number of microstates.
Which is to say, the increase of entropy ensures compression algorithms are more efficient for the simulated universe: if one area is the same as another then both can be stored as aliases provided you're not too concerned what the microdetail is like. At the heat death of the universe the entire thing will be able to be stored as whatever the fundamental constants are + an integer for how much energy was put in to start it.
So you are basically saying the universe might work like a Bethesda game where if no one in particular is looking closely at something it just throws up a flat 2d billboard and calls it a day?
Does this mean if we get good enough observational equipment and spread humanity far enough across space we could crash the universe by making it render too much detail?
How do you simulate something that, as far as we know/don’t know, is going to grow infinitely
Don’t you need an infinitely-sized computer?
You only need to simulate the observable universe, which is gonna max out soon.
Think of it like only rendering pixels on screen, but anything off screen is not rendered in order to save on RAM.
Pretty sure it's already past the max? Every day the amount of stuff you'd need to simulate becomes less.
Kinda.
While dark energy is already causing those galaxies to move away from us faster than the speed of light, the light that already left those objects billions of years ago is still traveling towards us and will make it before space is expanded enough to prevent that.
We have around 2 billion-ish years before the light we can observe starts to actually recede from our perspective. So if we are in a simulation, you still need to render the graphics of what we can detect until the expansion of space no longer allows us to gather information.
Edit: Imagine you are playing one of those space simulations. You set the perspective to Earth, but remove the Sun. How much longer would the game have render graphics of the sun? About 8 minutes.
So even if distant objects are no longer physically there, the graphics engine still needs to render them in space-time to the observer.
Mild Confusion on
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The Opportunity and Curiosity rovers have taken several pictures of 15 mushroom-shaped specimens growing larger and emerging from beneath the soil over a course of three days.
Obviously there is heavy skepticism on the two scientists submitting the study to the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science. The study has been peer reviewed by fourteen other scientists and editors and only three have rejected the study while the other eleven approved it to be published, but are not currently stating it’s conclusive proof of life on Mars.
The distinct shape and growth of the specimens possibly suggests a form of lichen, but it could also be hematite, a form of iron oxide. However, hematite can also form biologically and doesn’t normally look like mushrooms.
Here’s one of the pictures from the rovers:
Keep in mind those shapes weren’t always there, but grew in over a course of three days. Also remember this isn’t the first time scientists have been mistaken on evidence for life on Mars (I’m never gonna forget that Martian meteor).
Personally, I’m excited.
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
... well. Huh. I was gonna say they look like iron deposits but if they weren't present previously, and then were... Iron deposits don't really wander around. Unless they were uncovered by a dust storm or something?
https://youtu.be/DyGLE0usN_I
In this video, his end product are those little iron prills in the thumbnail. Could a natural geological process form similar shapes? There's lots of iron on Mars, certainly.
I WANT THOSE TO BE ALIEN FUNGI SO BAD I CAN'T STAND IT THO
If those are Martian life how do we prevent contamination? I have never looked into just how clean the various things we have sent there are. I assume if we could get some samples back to Earth we could verify with biochemistry if they are of Earth of not.
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
If those are Martian life how do we prevent contamination? I have never looked into just how clean the various things we have sent there are. I assume if we could get some samples back to Earth we could verify with biochemistry if they are of Earth of not.
If those are Martian life how do we prevent contamination? I have never looked into just how clean the various things we have sent there are. I assume if we could get some samples back to Earth we could verify with biochemistry if they are of Earth of not.
One thing I’ve always wondered about if we ever found other life in the Solar System, is do we share any DNA with them?
Rocks and shit from Earth that are blown out into space due to meteor strikes and volcanos, sometimes land on the other celestial bodies. Same with objects from other planets and moons sometimes landing on Earth.
So it’s possible life originated on a different planet and then migrated here. Also possible for life to originate on Earth and then migrate elsewhere. Or each planet could have developed their own individual biospheres. Or both, and Mars has both Martian life and Earth life that could have survived the trip.
If we can ever get our hands on some alien life, I’d be practically salivating to see the DNA results.
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There are some pretty weird things that minerals can do, so I'm going to not hold my breath.
I have to be honest I feel like a scientific discovery of that magnitude would do a lot to boost my mood. It feels like things are going to shit every where on Earth and this would be amazing. So I remain hopeful, but sceptical.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
The Opportunity and Curiosity rovers have taken several pictures of 15 mushroom-shaped specimens growing larger and emerging from beneath the soil over a course of three days.
Obviously there is heavy skepticism on the two scientists submitting the study to the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science. The study has been peer reviewed by fourteen other scientists and editors and only three have rejected the study while the other eleven approved it to be published, but are not currently stating it’s conclusive proof of life on Mars.
The distinct shape and growth of the specimens possibly suggests a form of lichen, but it could also be hematite, a form of iron oxide. However, hematite can also form biologically and doesn’t normally look like mushrooms.
Here’s one of the pictures from the rovers:
Keep in mind those shapes weren’t always there, but grew in over a course of three days. Also remember this isn’t the first time scientists have been mistaken on evidence for life on Mars (I’m never gonna forget that Martian meteor).
Personally, I’m excited.
I wouldn't get too excited. That site is basically a tabloid and they routinely publish pseudoscience and exaggerated, misleading bunk.
There are some pretty weird things that minerals can do, so I'm going to not hold my breath.
I have to be honest I feel like a scientific discovery of that magnitude would do a lot to boost my mood. It feels like things are going to shit every where on Earth and this would be amazing. So I remain hopeful, but sceptical.
It would be great, but I'd like to not watch people erode their own hope because of click bait.
The Opportunity and Curiosity rovers have taken several pictures of 15 mushroom-shaped specimens growing larger and emerging from beneath the soil over a course of three days.
Obviously there is heavy skepticism on the two scientists submitting the study to the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science. The study has been peer reviewed by fourteen other scientists and editors and only three have rejected the study while the other eleven approved it to be published, but are not currently stating it’s conclusive proof of life on Mars.
The distinct shape and growth of the specimens possibly suggests a form of lichen, but it could also be hematite, a form of iron oxide. However, hematite can also form biologically and doesn’t normally look like mushrooms.
Here’s one of the pictures from the rovers:
Keep in mind those shapes weren’t always there, but grew in over a course of three days. Also remember this isn’t the first time scientists have been mistaken on evidence for life on Mars (I’m never gonna forget that Martian meteor).
Personally, I’m excited.
I wouldn't get too excited. That site is basically a tabloid and they routinely publish pseudoscience and exaggerated, misleading bunk.
I googled them before I posted, but the study seems legit even if it’s sensationalized in the article.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I would still recommend waiting for a more reputable source to report on it. This seems like pretty big news, so the fact that it's currently only being reported in a pair of tabloids is a big red flag.
If those are Martian life how do we prevent contamination? I have never looked into just how clean the various things we have sent there are. I assume if we could get some samples back to Earth we could verify with biochemistry if they are of Earth of not.
One thing I’ve always wondered about if we ever found other life in the Solar System, is do we share any DNA with them?
Rocks and shit from Earth that are blown out into space due to meteor strikes and volcanos, sometimes land on the other celestial bodies. Same with objects from other planets and moons sometimes landing on Earth.
So it’s possible life originated on a different planet and then migrated here. Also possible for life to originate on Earth and then migrate elsewhere. Or each planet could have developed their own individual biospheres. Or both, and Mars has both Martian life and Earth life that could have survived the trip.
If we can ever get our hands on some alien life, I’d be practically salivating to see the DNA results.
There was a talk a while back where an astrobiologist was talking about what they're looking for when they discover alien life. Things like the fermi paradox are interesting thought experiments, but for real data they're looking for a specific thing.
Basically he described it as "1, 2, ∞". The likelihood of life evolving on Earth is 1, it's already happened. The likelihood of it evolving independently on Earth and another planet, but only those two, is so astronomically small that it effectively proves that life has evolved on other planets as well.
So what they're looking for specifically is something that proves that life on another planet evolved separately. Something like left-handed DNA. All DNA on Earth, plants, microbes, humans, Keanu Reeves, all of it has a right-hand twist to it. It is literally impossible for left-hand twisted DNA to naturally evolve from Earth's life forms because it is so incompatible with right-hand twist DNA and everything that encodes and decodes DNA.
So, if scientists find life on another planet, they're going to look which way the DNA twists.
Keep in mind those shapes weren’t always there, but grew in over a course of three days. Also remember this isn’t the first time scientists have been mistaken on evidence for life on Mars (I’m never gonna forget that Martian meteor).
Personally, I’m excited.
This isn't a picture of the claimed "growth". The only pictures for that claim (Figure 8 in the above linked paper) are several objects laying in what is very clearly loose sand. The simple explanation being normal hematite nodules that are being exposed by the wind blowing the sand away.
The picture here can also be explained by erosion processes on the rocks with embedded hematite nodules. The rock layer is being worn away, but the harder hematite protects it's attachment point. That can make it wear away leaving sort of a neck between the nodule and the rest of the rock before it completely breaks off. The thin atmosphere on Mars means winds don't have a lot of force, allowing smaller structures to survive longer compared to Earth.
Also, their study was only to ask a bunch of fungus experts if they thought these were pictures of fungus, which is going to have an obvious bias if they do not also have the additional geology knowledge or awareness of hematite. I certainly wasn't aware "blueberries" were a thing even here on Earth prior to the Mars findings.
I'd love for it to be true, but their claims are pretty weak.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
The Opportunity and Curiosity rovers have taken several pictures of 15 mushroom-shaped specimens growing larger and emerging from beneath the soil over a course of three days.
Obviously there is heavy skepticism on the two scientists submitting the study to the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science. The study has been peer reviewed by fourteen other scientists and editors and only three have rejected the study while the other eleven approved it to be published, but are not currently stating it’s conclusive proof of life on Mars.
The distinct shape and growth of the specimens possibly suggests a form of lichen, but it could also be hematite, a form of iron oxide. However, hematite can also form biologically and doesn’t normally look like mushrooms.
Here’s one of the pictures from the rovers:
Keep in mind those shapes weren’t always there, but grew in over a course of three days. Also remember this isn’t the first time scientists have been mistaken on evidence for life on Mars (I’m never gonna forget that Martian meteor).
Personally, I’m excited.
I wouldn't get too excited. That site is basically a tabloid and they routinely publish pseudoscience and exaggerated, misleading bunk.
They have at least several "extinction asteroid on collision and course with earth" articles a month, and literally the only word in the headline that isn't a lie is "asteroid."
They are also the original source of the "scientists prove octopi came to earth as frozen eggs from space" bunk that came out of a study that ACTUALLY proved that cephalopods were much closer to other invertabrates than previously believed.
Edit: ok, so source here is some guy on YouTube, not NASA. He uses two pictures posted (not taken) three days apart. Not only did the "fungus" grow in three days, but the rocks moved around and changed shape.
Or more likely the before and after pictures aren't of the same thing.
Hevach on
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
If this is real and not some absolutely elaborate and very mean April Fool's prank, it is an absolutely spectacular discovery. There's a paper being published Monday (which, yeah, is April 1st) detailing a discovery of a massive fossil site in the Hell Creek formation that the authors believe was laid down on the day the dinosaur killer asteroid hit the Earth. It's a jumble of fossils, dinosaurs of all types and ages, feathers, charcoal, amber (70% of the world's forests are estimated to have burned as burning debris rained back down), both marine and freshwater fish, ant mounds, and even some mammal remains. Plus, lots of lots of tektites - little glassy balls formed when molten ejecta falls back to the surface, getting rounded from air resistance and cooling as it goes. There are fossils of fish with tektites in their gills (X-ray of that seen below),
lodged in as they struggled to breath as they were forced along, and tektites in amber, and even preserved impressions from where those tektites hit the ground.
The main hypothesis was that when the asteroid struck, massive seismic waves ripped out, causing magnitude 10 or more earthquakes. These set off seiches, which is kind of like an indirect tsunami. The impact tsunami still would've taken hours to go around the world, but this was set off in what's now North Dakota about six and a half minutes after the strike. The earthquakes caused a massive surge in the inland sea which rushed inland, causing a powerful flood that carried along everything in its path, leaving ammonites by ancient paddlefish on dinosaur remains, as the forests around burned and debris rained from the sky. Then the entire mess was just deposited down, with left nothing to scavenge it, and it was all left magnificently preserved.
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Or we could just say a wizard did it.
albert einstein
Anyone who's ever written a sinple physics simulation has also seen this one happen: something moves quick enough and it'll go through anything because there's no 2 frames of animation where it's touching or partially collided.
Don’t you need an infinitely-sized computer?
Alternate answer: time to link "A New Kind of Science"* !!
* never, ever read "A New Kind of Science"
Only if you want to simulate it infinitely. Eventually the study will end and either be shut down or enter a terminal phase where any safeguards are turned off to see if the computer crashes from it.
Alternately the simulation is actually just Earth and the universe beyond our reach is outside data streamed in as a skybox.
Edit: the holographic principle doesn't help this argument. Every time legitimate research progress is done into hologram theory the media equates hologram with a holodeck or matrix style simulation.
What it actually means (heavily dumbed down because fuck trying to understand quantum) is that the universe we perceive is the projection in 3 dimensions of a lot of far crazier shit happening in a higher number of dimensions, much like shadow puppets are a projection in 2 dimensions of something much more complex happening in 3.
Big Crunch, perhaps?
But yeah, we run potentially "infinite" simulations all the time as-is, we just cut them off at some point when they become unmanageable or we've gotten all the info we've needed or whatever. You could just let that flyer in The Game of Life just fly away forever, or maybe you could restart the program once it starts repeating itself and it becomes obvious that it's just going to continue doing what it's doing.
You only need to simulate the observable universe, which is gonna max out soon.
Think of it like only rendering pixels on screen, but anything off screen is not rendered in order to save on RAM.
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Well, in our world, the complexity of the system is necessarily less than the complexity of the computer. So in order to simulate the universe you need a computer larger/stronger than the universe.
Buuut.
1) The universe may not actually be infinite. We have no way to know because of how limited we are in our ability to perceive. As far as we know the edge of the universe is just the light horizon, not an actual edge.
2) time is a funny thing and running a simulation at half speed vs full speed would not be noticable to those in the simulation. So if you have more time in the simulating universe then the simulated universe works just fine on lower power.
3) there is no guarantee a simulating universe would be subject to then same rules ours are
Edit: buut there is also no reason that the coincidences of our universe and our simulations would suggest we are a simulation
Naw, if we manage to prove the universe is a simulation, we can do new science.
I mean, we have a universe where until we observe something, the universe is simulating all the other possibilities, and then it collapse those down when we observe a particular one.
There's a real possibility, if we figure out enough, we can escape our sandbox. Speculative execution is surprising hard to secure.
The hell I will rain down upon them...
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Second law of themodynamics dictates that the amount of memory needed to simulate the universe is an increasing function of time. And to be clear, this is simply to store any given state of the universe, which defeats your #2. Hence memory leak.
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Actually the total opposite: statistical entropy is about reducing the number of macrostates while increasing the number of microstates.
Which is to say, the increase of entropy ensures compression algorithms are more efficient for the simulated universe: if one area is the same as another then both can be stored as aliases provided you're not too concerned what the microdetail is like. At the heat death of the universe the entire thing will be able to be stored as whatever the fundamental constants are + an integer for how much energy was put in to start it.
Since matter is conserved the simulation should take at most the same amount of memory/power per unit of run time as prior
Pretty sure it's already past the max? Every day the amount of stuff you'd need to simulate becomes less.
So you are basically saying the universe might work like a Bethesda game where if no one in particular is looking closely at something it just throws up a flat 2d billboard and calls it a day?
Does this mean if we get good enough observational equipment and spread humanity far enough across space we could crash the universe by making it render too much detail?
Kinda.
While dark energy is already causing those galaxies to move away from us faster than the speed of light, the light that already left those objects billions of years ago is still traveling towards us and will make it before space is expanded enough to prevent that.
We have around 2 billion-ish years before the light we can observe starts to actually recede from our perspective. So if we are in a simulation, you still need to render the graphics of what we can detect until the expansion of space no longer allows us to gather information.
Edit: Imagine you are playing one of those space simulations. You set the perspective to Earth, but remove the Sun. How much longer would the game have render graphics of the sun? About 8 minutes.
So even if distant objects are no longer physically there, the graphics engine still needs to render them in space-time to the observer.
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But HOLY FUCK! They might have found life on Mars!
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1104520/life-mars-nasa-scientists-fungi-evidence-in-mars-curiosity-rover-photos/amp
The Opportunity and Curiosity rovers have taken several pictures of 15 mushroom-shaped specimens growing larger and emerging from beneath the soil over a course of three days.
Obviously there is heavy skepticism on the two scientists submitting the study to the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science. The study has been peer reviewed by fourteen other scientists and editors and only three have rejected the study while the other eleven approved it to be published, but are not currently stating it’s conclusive proof of life on Mars.
The distinct shape and growth of the specimens possibly suggests a form of lichen, but it could also be hematite, a form of iron oxide. However, hematite can also form biologically and doesn’t normally look like mushrooms.
Here’s one of the pictures from the rovers:
Keep in mind those shapes weren’t always there, but grew in over a course of three days. Also remember this isn’t the first time scientists have been mistaken on evidence for life on Mars (I’m never gonna forget that Martian meteor).
Personally, I’m excited.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
In this video, his end product are those little iron prills in the thumbnail. Could a natural geological process form similar shapes? There's lots of iron on Mars, certainly.
I WANT THOSE TO BE ALIEN FUNGI SO BAD I CAN'T STAND IT THO
PSN:Furlion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection
One thing I’ve always wondered about if we ever found other life in the Solar System, is do we share any DNA with them?
Rocks and shit from Earth that are blown out into space due to meteor strikes and volcanos, sometimes land on the other celestial bodies. Same with objects from other planets and moons sometimes landing on Earth.
So it’s possible life originated on a different planet and then migrated here. Also possible for life to originate on Earth and then migrate elsewhere. Or each planet could have developed their own individual biospheres. Or both, and Mars has both Martian life and Earth life that could have survived the trip.
If we can ever get our hands on some alien life, I’d be practically salivating to see the DNA results.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Yeah, it sucks that Opportunity and Curiosity can’t do more than just look at it.
Maybe they can nudge it with the camera or something and see if it grows back?
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I have to be honest I feel like a scientific discovery of that magnitude would do a lot to boost my mood. It feels like things are going to shit every where on Earth and this would be amazing. So I remain hopeful, but sceptical.
PSN:Furlion
I wouldn't get too excited. That site is basically a tabloid and they routinely publish pseudoscience and exaggerated, misleading bunk.
It would be great, but I'd like to not watch people erode their own hope because of click bait.
I googled them before I posted, but the study seems legit even if it’s sensationalized in the article.
Original study:
http://journalofastrobiology.com/Mars5.html
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
There was a talk a while back where an astrobiologist was talking about what they're looking for when they discover alien life. Things like the fermi paradox are interesting thought experiments, but for real data they're looking for a specific thing.
Basically he described it as "1, 2, ∞". The likelihood of life evolving on Earth is 1, it's already happened. The likelihood of it evolving independently on Earth and another planet, but only those two, is so astronomically small that it effectively proves that life has evolved on other planets as well.
So what they're looking for specifically is something that proves that life on another planet evolved separately. Something like left-handed DNA. All DNA on Earth, plants, microbes, humans, Keanu Reeves, all of it has a right-hand twist to it. It is literally impossible for left-hand twisted DNA to naturally evolve from Earth's life forms because it is so incompatible with right-hand twist DNA and everything that encodes and decodes DNA.
So, if scientists find life on another planet, they're going to look which way the DNA twists.
This isn't a picture of the claimed "growth". The only pictures for that claim (Figure 8 in the above linked paper) are several objects laying in what is very clearly loose sand. The simple explanation being normal hematite nodules that are being exposed by the wind blowing the sand away.
The picture here can also be explained by erosion processes on the rocks with embedded hematite nodules. The rock layer is being worn away, but the harder hematite protects it's attachment point. That can make it wear away leaving sort of a neck between the nodule and the rest of the rock before it completely breaks off. The thin atmosphere on Mars means winds don't have a lot of force, allowing smaller structures to survive longer compared to Earth.
Also, their study was only to ask a bunch of fungus experts if they thought these were pictures of fungus, which is going to have an obvious bias if they do not also have the additional geology knowledge or awareness of hematite. I certainly wasn't aware "blueberries" were a thing even here on Earth prior to the Mars findings.
I'd love for it to be true, but their claims are pretty weak.
They have at least several "extinction asteroid on collision and course with earth" articles a month, and literally the only word in the headline that isn't a lie is "asteroid."
They are also the original source of the "scientists prove octopi came to earth as frozen eggs from space" bunk that came out of a study that ACTUALLY proved that cephalopods were much closer to other invertabrates than previously believed.
Edit: ok, so source here is some guy on YouTube, not NASA. He uses two pictures posted (not taken) three days apart. Not only did the "fungus" grow in three days, but the rocks moved around and changed shape.
Or more likely the before and after pictures aren't of the same thing.
If this is real and not some absolutely elaborate and very mean April Fool's prank, it is an absolutely spectacular discovery. There's a paper being published Monday (which, yeah, is April 1st) detailing a discovery of a massive fossil site in the Hell Creek formation that the authors believe was laid down on the day the dinosaur killer asteroid hit the Earth. It's a jumble of fossils, dinosaurs of all types and ages, feathers, charcoal, amber (70% of the world's forests are estimated to have burned as burning debris rained back down), both marine and freshwater fish, ant mounds, and even some mammal remains. Plus, lots of lots of tektites - little glassy balls formed when molten ejecta falls back to the surface, getting rounded from air resistance and cooling as it goes. There are fossils of fish with tektites in their gills (X-ray of that seen below),
lodged in as they struggled to breath as they were forced along, and tektites in amber, and even preserved impressions from where those tektites hit the ground.
The main hypothesis was that when the asteroid struck, massive seismic waves ripped out, causing magnitude 10 or more earthquakes. These set off seiches, which is kind of like an indirect tsunami. The impact tsunami still would've taken hours to go around the world, but this was set off in what's now North Dakota about six and a half minutes after the strike. The earthquakes caused a massive surge in the inland sea which rushed inland, causing a powerful flood that carried along everything in its path, leaving ammonites by ancient paddlefish on dinosaur remains, as the forests around burned and debris rained from the sky. Then the entire mess was just deposited down, with left nothing to scavenge it, and it was all left magnificently preserved.
I especially like how one bot gets its job done and just shuts down for a break. Must be a union job.
Anyone else looking at those and going "That's a Bird"?
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I keep seeing them as like, ostriches for some reason. Robot Ostriches.
I'm pretty sure that's what the design is based off of.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain