indigobluerose:birdsquirrel:sixth-light:antisanity:carryonmysociallyawkwardson:jamesbarns:i hate...
indigobluerose:
birdsquirrel:
sixth-light:
antisanity:
carryonmysociallyawkwardson:
jamesbarns:
i hate when scientists are like ‘this planet cant have aliens on it because there’s no water! the atmosphere is wrong! theres not enough heat to sustain life!’ because dude theyre aliens, nobodys saying they need any of those things to exist
we’re so humanocentric it’s infuriating. just because we can’t live there doesn’t mean nothing can! like, never mind aliens, we do this with our own fucking planet! scientists used to think nothing could possibly live at the bottom of the oceans, because “all life needs sunlight to survive, of course!” yet what did we find when we invented submarines that could go deep enough? the barren wasteland the scientists were expecting? fuck no! the bottom of the sea is teeming with all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures even wackier than anything they ever came up with in star trek! when we discover aliens, we probably won’t even fucking realise it, because they’ll be so different from what we’re used to as ‘life’, we won’t even recognise them as living beings
things are heating up in the alien fandom
I promise you astrobiologists spend a lot of time thinking about whether our definition of life is too Earth-centric and how we can quantify habitability in a neutral way. Like. A lot. A LOT.
I don’t know about other scientists but they’re not as cool as we are, so.
#for serious I will cite you papers #the alien fandom does not fuck around #tbh we all mostly do this out of love nobody really gives you money to study it #except nasa thank you nasa you’re cool (via sixth-light)
Most of the scientists I have seen discussing this topic phrase the statement as “this planet could not support life as we know it.”
Which is a pretty reasonable guess for a planet with no water.
via http://ift.tt/2a0h8SH
birdsquirrel:
sixth-light:
antisanity:
carryonmysociallyawkwardson:
jamesbarns:
i hate when scientists are like ‘this planet cant have aliens on it because there’s no water! the atmosphere is wrong! theres not enough heat to sustain life!’ because dude theyre aliens, nobodys saying they need any of those things to exist
we’re so humanocentric it’s infuriating. just because we can’t live there doesn’t mean nothing can! like, never mind aliens, we do this with our own fucking planet! scientists used to think nothing could possibly live at the bottom of the oceans, because “all life needs sunlight to survive, of course!” yet what did we find when we invented submarines that could go deep enough? the barren wasteland the scientists were expecting? fuck no! the bottom of the sea is teeming with all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures even wackier than anything they ever came up with in star trek! when we discover aliens, we probably won’t even fucking realise it, because they’ll be so different from what we’re used to as ‘life’, we won’t even recognise them as living beings
things are heating up in the alien fandom
I promise you astrobiologists spend a lot of time thinking about whether our definition of life is too Earth-centric and how we can quantify habitability in a neutral way. Like. A lot. A LOT.
I don’t know about other scientists but they’re not as cool as we are, so.
#for serious I will cite you papers #the alien fandom does not fuck around #tbh we all mostly do this out of love nobody really gives you money to study it #except nasa thank you nasa you’re cool (via sixth-light)
Most of the scientists I have seen discussing this topic phrase the statement as “this planet could not support life as we know it.”
Which is a pretty reasonable guess for a planet with no water.
via http://ift.tt/2a0h8SH
