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[KaelGotDwarves]

SCIENCE!

So maybe we're all illegal aliens. 42. Whatever.

Discuss!

[Jackrabbit]

That's exciting! I managed to get infected by Carl Sagan via symphony of science, so I'm gonna be incredibly optimistic and ecstatic about this discovery.

[Aqizzar]

Welp, there's your proof of life on other planets.  Sure, it would be a mathematical anti-miracle if Earth was the only planet in the entire universe with organic life, but theory only counts for so much.  For a meteorite to have elements of nucleotides, that means it had to originally been part of another planet that already had life.  That it's apparently about the same age as the Earth itself, means it came from a planet that probably formed a few billion years earlier than that (since the surface of the Earth would have been totally inhospitable to any "life" for it's first couple billion).

I find it funny that they talk about such organic material being important to the development of life on Earth, since that stuff still would have had to originate spontaneously somewhere else.  And if life developed on Earth as it did without any help from meteorites, that would mean that this extraterrestrial one is a strong hint that the chemical process of Earth life is common through the cosmos (although it doesn't really mean anything).

[Angel Of Death]

This is quite interesting. I wonder when we'll find another planet like Earth.

[Kay12]

Welp, there's your proof of life on other planets.  -snip-

Uh, hadn't they found bacteria in Mars already? And some scientist was sure that the life on earth originated from "imported" bacteria although I don't think he had any real proof...

[kaijyuu]

This doesn't prove life exists elsewhere unless they're organized into a DNA strand. If it's just random nucleotides, then it just means other places have the building blocks of life too. Whether they've assembled into life yet is still unknown.

Not to downplay this or anything, as it's pretty nifty, but you need a cell for life, not just the building blocks of one.

[counting]

Kepler already found several super earth-sized planets (2-3 times heavier), and still more to be found on the mission. And interesting thing is that they are probably all quite different from Earth, not in a not-sustainable life kind of way, but just way more alien. (Pure water covered, none rotational, etc.) The earth sized planets are about to be founds, and they are destine to be more bizarre.

[Jackrabbit]

This doesn't prove life exists elsewhere unless they're organized into a DNA strand. If it's just random nucleotides, then it just means other places have the building blocks of life too. Whether they've assembled into life yet is still unknown.

Not to downplay this or anything, as it's pretty nifty, but you need a cell for life, not just the building blocks of one.

But the fact that they have that much is pretty exciting. I mean, how cool is this? We live in a time where we're visiting other worlds, where the starts of life fall out of the sky into the hands of our best and brightest. In a dozen generations, who knows where we'll be? I just know it'll be exciting as hell.

[counting]

We all thinking too Earthlings. Why life has to be on a planet? spectrum analysis already told us that there are complex molecular in gas clouds floating in space. Why life can't lived between planets in space? This only confirms that these molecular were brought to Earth by meteors at the time when Earth just formed.

It will be truly amazing to know that we are not only the child from the stars, but also been taken cared of by our parents from the stars. Why thinking we are alone and confined on a single tiny planet surface only? Billions of years in evolutions can evolves many amazing life. Why shouldn't there be inter-planetary life evolutions happening? And we humans are just pre-adolescent species ready to procreate into next planet?

[Kay12]

Life is currently defined from a very conservative viewpoint, which is problematic because life is one of those things that is widely considered to be sacred. If there's life in space, I don't care whether they're complex sentient machines or complex sentient organisms. Or even sentient at all.

[Virex]

We all thinking too Earthlings. Why life has to be on a planet? spectrum analysis already told us that there are complex molecular in gas clouds floating in space. Why life can't lived between planets in space? This only confirms that these molecular were brought to Earth by meteors at the time when Earth just formed.

That depends on how you define life. It is highly unlikely that anything capable of actively reacting to outside stimuli could develop in gas clouds, the density of those is too low for complex molecular structures to form. If however the criteria for life would be reduced to consumption of resources and reproduction, extending our definition of life to include things like viruses, rust and titanium oxide, then it's very possible that there's life in gas clouds.

[ChairmanPoo]

For a meteorite to have elements of nucleotides, that means it had to originally been part of another planet that already had life. 

Not necessarily, organic compounds can form spontaneously. It could be the case here

[DrPoo]

Holy shit, so we actually are shoggoth child?

Damn according to our current theory, we all originate from one kind of bacteria or something right? Wich didnt do much other than being. Just like shoggoths.
Lets turn to slimes again!

[eerr]

welp, nucleotides came before life... that means they form naturally, on more things than just a space-asteroid.

...

[Phmcw]

To clarify : this does not suggest extra terrestrial life AT ALL.
This only show that the raw material of DNA exist in space and may be imported.

An analogy would be that metallic Iron can be found in meteorites, the same that has been used for spear and arrow-point by the Inuit. That does not suggest that there are arrow point in meteorites.