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[Lich180]

I do accept the time required, and yeah the universe is big and almost allows for an infinite amount of life, I just don't expect to find anything spectacular close to home.

I would like to see forms of life not based off of DNA made of phosphorous, like the reports of arsenic based life a few years ago that turned out to not be true. similar activity and reactions, so its logical that arsenic life forms exist

[alway]

Ah awesome! I apparently don't read enough of the right things, I've heard of those experiments but never had a decent summary of the results. Still a pretty big crapshoot to get the right things though.

Billions of years, millions upon millions (upon millions (upon millions(etc.))) of individual dice rolls. If it's happened once, the crapshoot is seriously in the favor of it happening more times. Space is just big, is all, and our ability to find things still relatively nascent in regards to sifting through it.

Don't forget the time periods involved. It took, what, 1.5 billion years before even the simplest life began to form on Earth? Considering that those protocells previously mentioned formed after only a few hours (in a lab setting yes, but still), there's clearly plenty of opportunities for beneficial adaptations to occur.

Space X Time = Pretty good odds of life being out there, actually.

And if we actually look at the time it took on Earth (which, to be fair, is a pretty small sample size), life is pretty darned easy. There's evidence of it pretty much as far back as you can get. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean#Hadean_rocks
It existed in a period so hellish it is literally called the Hadean, in which much of the surface still consisted of lava.

The real trick, apparently, is multicellular life. It took billions of years after it first formed before life first became multicellular, merely a billion years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution#Basic_timeline

Which is also why I suspect that we will find evidence of simple, single-cellular extraterrestrial life within my lifetime, but nothing more complex than that for another century or so.

[Helgoland]

I do accept the time required, and yeah the universe is big and almost allows for an infinite amount of life, I just don't expect to find anything spectacular close to home.

I would like to see forms of life not based off of DNA made of phosphorous, like the reports of arsenic based life a few years ago that turned out to not be true. similar activity and reactions, so its logical that arsenic life forms exist

Fully organic DNA seems more probable - you have proteins and sugars as purely organic macro-molecules, there's really no reason to expect that phosphorous is needed for DNA-like molecules.

[10ebbor10]

And another one out the category of cheap sciencefiction plots. Create Dinosaurs by devolving birds.

Link

[Putnam]

we already have dinosaurs

we call them birds

we really don't need the old ones back

[Frumple]

It might be somewhat amusing, I'unno. As is, and being fair, they're kinda' assholes enough already. Not sure making them bigger is the best of ideas.

Unless it turns out Utahraptor is even more delicious than chicken or something, in which case let's get this show on the freaking road. Entirely sorta' new species to enslave and consume. If you bring a species back from extinction, you get to eat some of them, right? That's how it works.

[Chaoswizkid]

Unless it turns out Utahraptor is even more delicious than chicken or something, in which case let's get this show on the freaking road. Entirely sorta' new species to enslave and consume. If you bring a species back from extinction, you get to eat some of them, right? That's how it works.

We fought our way to the top of the food chain so that we could resurrect the fallen and devour them once more!

[Lagslayer]

Unless it turns out Utahraptor is even more delicious than chicken or something, in which case let's get this show on the freaking road. Entirely sorta' new species to enslave and consume. If you bring a species back from extinction, you get to eat some of them, right? That's how it works.

We fought our way to the top of the food chain so that we could resurrect the fallen and devour them once more!

Nature truly is our bitch.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

1000 qbit computer get! Don't be mislead by the graph that says they'll do more than a conventional computer could do between now and heat death sometime in 2014, quantum computers are only good for certain problems.

[ChairmanPoo]

Don't be mislead by the graph that says they'll do more than a conventional computer could do between now and heat death sometime in 2014, quantum computers are only good for certain problems.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sergarr]

I'm pretty sure that even if we used the entire humanity to solve simple math problems non-stop, a single modern computer will be faster.

[10ebbor10]

Everything is going to freeze. Panic everyone.

[Dutchling]

I don't understand.

This is the science thread, yet you link to the Daily Mail.

[kaijyuu]

I think it was jokingly.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Everything is going to freeze. Panic everyone.

TOLD YOU GLOBAL WARMING WAS FAKE!

America will endure.