Miscellaneous Topics

[Husky]

Not that anyone would read this, but putting the following retractions/corrections here as a matter of 'principle'.



Turns out - surprise surprise - that I was WRONG yet again: [color="#0000FF"]I was wrong about which moon had the pinkish streaks on the ice surface.[/color] I was actually right the first time when I claimed it was Jupiter: having dug out Cox again to look for confirmation, [color="#0000FF"]it's Jupiter's moon - Europa[/color] and not Io, btw, as everyone else would know, but my knowledge of moons is even worse than my knowledge of the nearby planets - that has the pink streaks after all. Europa also has liquid water - Cox actually noted this was salt water - and its pinkish surface streaks are thought to possibly be bacteria. Any Europans would then be our nearest extant cousins, proximity-wise, being in our planetary neighbourhood. (Although, as people would know, numerous famous physicists* think there's a possibility that early microbes on our planet could well have got to Earth by hitching a ride here from Mars or from further "out in space" :handwaving:, via space debris for example, and set up camp here on Earth once they got wafted/hurled over. *IIRC, one of whom described this possibility as indicating a larger "biological continuity" in our spatial vicinity and even used the old analogy of how it's "like exchanging spit" on this solar-system wide scale.)



[color="#0000FF"]I wasn't totally wrong about Enceladus[/color], however:

1. as per the recent reveal on the Cassini mission, Enceladus does indeed have liquid water.

2. and if it has liquid water, you know space biologists will be all over that one looking for life - starting with microbes - which is what they're indeed doing.

Since we're water-based life-forms on this here planet, Enceladus could therefore potentially harbour water-based life as well.

3. However, while Europa is subject to Orbital Resonance courtesy Jupiter, I am now not certain of remembering anyone stating that Enceladus is too, but since it has liquid water, surely something must be keeping its temperature up despite that distance, so Orbital Resonance may not be an impossibility. (Can't remember which moon was the one that had cold-looking geysers erupting. Perhaps it was Enceladus, but can't remember. However, if it were, then surely Orbital Resonance could be a prime suspect?)



Proof for the first 2 claims:

news.uk.msn.com/in-pictures/cassini-spacecraft-discovers-ocean-in-saturn-moon-25

Cassini spacecraft discovers ocean in Saturn moon

[color="#0000FF"]Slide 1: Nasa's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network have uncovered evidence that one of Saturn's moons contains a large underground ocean of liquid water.

Slide 2: The discovery on Enceladus extends scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extra-terrestrial microbes. It supports the belief that Enceladus is among the most likely places in our solar system to host microbial life.[/color]

Slide 3: Doppler Effect. Using the Doppler Effect and measurements from Cassini, scientists estimate an ocean about six miles (10km) deep, beneath an ice shell that is around 25 miles (40 km) thick.



[...]

(The 2nd picture in the slideshow shows that this rather beautiful moon, Enceladus, has more bluish-looking streaks on it.)



Please the Daoist Gods, let there be Enceladans. Microbes can't be underestimated as it will still prove the greatly-missed American space-biologist was right all along: the possibility of life on just one more planet is surely heavy indication for the thrilling possibilities of life (incl. intelligent, technologically advanced life) in the extended universe. We'll finally have definite evidence for what has so far been high statistical probabilities aka educated 'guessing'.



And if it turns out that there are indeed Enceladans and Europans (space bacteria) - besides all us Earthlings - then our own solar system just got even more exciting.



Correction to this too:

Caroline Porko (sp?) - who from interviews reminds me of the blueprint/the inspiration for the awesome Capt Kathryn Janeway; there's certainly some facial resemblance IMO - was on the team that did the preparations/planning for the Cassini mission, I believe.

The likeable physicist's name is [color="#0000FF"]spelled Caroline Porco.[/color]



Ooh, there's a link there to something else that's intriguing - okay, posting for purely gratuitous reasons (i.e. furry infant mammal pictures):

news.uk.msn.com/in-pictures/is-it-a-goat-is-it-a-sheep-no-its-a-geep291118

Is it a baby goat? Is it a baby sheep? No, it's a newborn 'geep'

Ewe what?! A rare birth of a goat-sheep on an Irish farm has led the animal to be crowned a 'geep'.



Stunned farm owner Pat Murphy said the arrival of the hybrid animal two weeks ago came as a "shock to the system" after generations of farming.

The cross-breeding was accidental but appears to have not hindered the happy and healthy young animal.

[color="#0000FF"]Pics[/color] at link. Looks lovely.





The important points in this post:

[color="#0000FF"]- I was wrong about which moon had the pinkish streaks (which are thought to be bacteria) on its ice surface and a liquid ocean underneath: that was Jupiter's moon Europa after all.

- But as per recent news reports, the Cassini mission has certainly found a subterranean ocean of liquid water on Enceladus and so scientists are indeed looking for microbes there.

news.uk.msn.com/in-pictures/cassini-spacecraft-discovers-ocean-in-saturn-moon-25[/color]

[Husky]

Supporting data for other stuff I mentioned here and there in the above. Not that I made any extraordinary claims, as it's long been stuff that atmospheric scientists, planetary geologists and space biologists etc have been stating, and hence [color="#FF0000"]the following is about 1.5 decades old[/color]. (Reason behind choice of source is that, despite the early date/despite there being far more recent stuff, quoting from a single source is easier than having to dig out multiple. Also, I remember stuff from that era better)

Could life have arisen on Europa? It's hard to guess until more is known about how life began on Earth. How easily did life emerge? Was it a miracle never to be repeated?

To answer that, you have to travel back in time to the beginning of Earth's history.



Steve Mojzsis: "Life must have arisen after the formation of the planet, about 4.5 billion years ago. But how soon after, how quickly after? These are questions that we are trying to answer from studying the geological record of the oldest rocks."



Steve Mojzsis is a geologist turned fossil hunter. To probe the earliest secrets of the planet, he travelled to Greenland, where a rare outcrop of ancient rock survives almost unscathed from when the Earth was young. In those rocks, he hoped to find microscopic traces of the most ancient life forms imaginable. During a field trip in 1995, he gathered a haul of sedimentary rocks, minerals that had formed at the bottom of the world's first ocean.



S Mojzsis: "The rocks that are the oldest sediments of all have been through everything you can do to a rock without quite melting it. They've been thrust up, regurgitated, ground up, heated, crushed..."

When he broke open the rocks, he found in them tiny mineral grains.

He suspected they might be the charred remnants of primitive microbes.



S Mojzsis: "It's a preserved kind of a time capsule, this little mineral."

Mojzsis put some grains into a machine called an ion-probe, which deciphers the precise make-up and age of the minerals. If the small lumps were once living things, they'd have a specific chemical fingerprint.

"We found out it was spot on. A veritable stamp ... of ... life that's unique to it."

But the real surprise was the age: the ion-probe showed that the fossils were nearly 4 billion years old.

"As far back as we can go, 3.9 billion years ago, there IS evidence of life, that life DID exist here. And it existed soon after the Earth formed. And that became something of a surprise to us."



It had been thought that the Earth was uninhabitable for nearly a billion years. But now it seems that life sprouted almost as soon as the Earth itself came into being.

[color="#0000FF"]"As long as life appeared here so quickly, then perhaps it's a kind of cosmic imperative, that life *should* appear as a chemical consequence of the evolution of a planet."[/color]



Life took hold *here* [color="#800080"](on early Earth)[/color], not in the temperate cradle of today's Earth, but when the planet was a steaming cauldron.

If life began so easily, then perhaps the Earth isn't so special after all.

If life began when the Earth was to all intents an alien world, what happened billions of years ago on the other planets? [color="#800080"](<- While it's largely speaking of our solar system in the specific context, the principle applies to any other solar system's planets too, of course.)[/color]



[...]

We now know that pieces of Mars have been raining down on Earth for billions of years. Could life have once travelled with them?



[color="#0000FF"]Chris McKay, NASA AMES Research Centre: "If life was present on Earth at the end of the formation of the Earth, well at that period, the impacts would have been much more numerous than they are today. And so material would've been constantly been/being knocked off the planets - all of the planets - and exchanging between the planets. So they could have carried organisms from one planet to another. The planets would Not have been biologically isolated. This material going back and forth would have been sort of like swapping spit between the planets."[/color]



(B-TP-7)

As the Sun continues to heat up [color="#800080"](over 2 or 3 billions of years from now, when the Sun is on its way to the Red Giant state)[/color], this little moon [color="#800080"](Saturn's moon Titan)[/color] will also come into its own.



Greek (?) scientist, Dr Athena Coustenis, Observatoire de Paris**: "It's the only other planetary object that looks like our own Earth. It's the only other object we know of that has an atmosphere of Nitrogen. And also we know that there is an organic chemistry taking place inside this atmosphere, and we have the creation of all those molecules that we find on earth. The only thing that is lacking is a little bit of temperature, a little bit of heat and a little bit of oxygen."

[color="#800080"][** IIRC, she came up with a way to work out the elements that made up a distant planet's atmosphere. Still spectroscopy, but the traditional technique used for starlight couldn't be applied directly, since planets don't tend to burn gas/don't tend to give off light of their own (we don't tend to see distant planets of other systems) unlike the light we see from stars/suns.][/color]



In Paris, Athena Coustenis and Chris McKay [color="#800080"][were][/color] studying some of the [color="#800080"][then-][/color]latest telescope images of Titan.

Chris McKay: "Right now it's very cold [color="#800080"](on Titan)[/color]. But it has all the ingredients to being a very nice place to live. In some sense it's like a pie frozen in the freezer, and when the sun gets more bright, it will warm up and bake, and have a nice water-rich environment, with a nitrogen atmosphere. And we know today that there is rich organic chemistry occurring in the haze in Titan's atmosphere. That organic chemistry could in fact be the seeds for life, so even if life from earth doesn't migrate to Titan, Titan could initiate life of its own when the Sun becomes bright enough to cook that pie."





Dr David Black, Lunar and Planetary Institute: [color="#0000FF"]"One of the things we've learned in astronomy is that all young stars have discs associated with them. Now we believe these discs are the precursors, the things out of which planets are formed."

How many of these discs of dust actually go on to form planets is unknown.[/color]

[...] [color="#800080"]<Planet Hunting segment. Back then they were apparently averaging one new planet discovered in our galaxy per month. Found from deduction/inference based on astronomical data, using method well-described long ago in CS-C.>[/color]



Dr David Black is chairman of the NASA "Origins" programme, a programme designed to search for the signs of life in space.

[color="#800080"]<Origins telescope - space telescope of NASA Origins programme - can show tiny images of planets, as dots>[/color]

But what can a dot of light tell us about another planet far away in the universe? Before the probe Galileo headed for Jupiter, it looked down on Earth to see if life could be detected from space.

[...]

Dr David Black, Lunar and Planetary Institute: "What Galileo [color="#800080"](NASA mission to Jupiter)[/color] showed us was that, in fact, these molecular signatures - that we think are indicative of life on the planet - were really there and you could separate them out, so it gave us some confidence that by looking for similar signatures when we look at the atmospheres of other planets, that we could maybe infer from those signatures that life was there as well."



The signs of life as we know it are universal. The combinations of chemicals on Earth could be repeated on any planet in space. And all of these chemicals are now identifiable from a distance.



[color="#0000FF"]Dr David Black: "And we'll be looking for things like signs of water in the atmosphere; carbon dioxide - which would indicate that it's got a substantial atmosphere; ozone, which says that there is oxygen in the atmosphere. And all these taken together, each one tells you something about the likelihood that the planet is either inhabited or maybe habitable.

If you can find methane, especially with oxygen in the atmosphere, it's a slamdunk - as we say in America in basketball - that you can conclude that life is on that planet."[/color]



And in the right place in a solar system, many now believe that the combination of these elements will almost certainly mean life.



Professor Geoff Marcy, San Francisco State University: "If you hand a biochemist [color="#0000FF"]a planet with a rocky surface[/color], with a temperature that's not too cold so that the water is frozen into ice, and not so hot that the water is evaporated into steam, but [color="#0000FF"]a temperature that[/color] - in the words of Goldilocks - [color="#0000FF"]is 'just right' for the liquid form of water, it will pool into lakes and rivers and streams and of course oceans. And the biochemists are unanimous that the laws of chemistry will take over. You'll end up with complicated organic molecules that we in fact would call life."[/color]



But we've yet to find a planet that falls within this Goldilocks zone, and is rocky and small enough to be suitable for life - like the Earth.



[color="#800080"]<IIRC, it here goes off into potential considerations like Jupiter's moon Europa? Forgot to check.>[/color]



(B-TP-8)

[Husky]

Can hopefully expect more of these in the future:



edition.cnn.com/2014/04/17/tech/space-earth-size-planet/

NASA discovers Earth-sized planet that may sustain life



By Josh Levs, CNN

April 18, 2014 -- Updated 0558 GMT (1358 HKT) |



An artist's rendering of Kepler-186f, the first discovered Earth-sized planet that may be habitable

STORY HIGHLIGHTS



* Researchers find an Earth-sized planet that may be habitable

* It "proves the existence of worlds that might be similar to our own," institute says

* Scientists are looking for emissions that could suggest extraterrestrial life

* Previously discovered worlds were larger than Earth



(CNN) -- It's like finding a needle in a universe-wide haystack. Researchers have located a planet roughly the size of Earth that could be habitable.



Designated Kepler-186f, the planet is 490 light-years away. But in the search for worlds similar to ours, nothing has come closer.



"This is the first definitive Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone around another star," said Elisa Quintana of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute at NASA. "Finding such planets is a primary goal of the Kepler space telescope."

Photos: Where life might live beyond Earth

Photos: 2011: Searching for life beyond Earth



"This discovery not only proves the existence of worlds that might be similar to our own but will undoubtedly shape future investigations of exoplanets that could have terrestrial surface environments," the institute said in an announcement Thursday.



After spotting it, the institute wasted no time searching for emissions that could indicate the presence of ETs. So far, no emissions have been found.



The size -- estimated to be 10% larger than Earth -- and distance from its star don't just make for interesting factoids. They give scientists hope that Kepler-186f might sustain life as we know it.



Of nearly 1,800 "confirmed exoplanets" that have been found, approximately 20 orbit their host stars within habitable zones, where it's believed surface water would not freeze or boil. In 2011, NASA announced that Kepler had observed five planets approximately the size of Earth and in the habitable zone.



But the "previously discovered worlds are larger than Earth, and consequently their true nature -- rocky or gaseous -- is unknown," the SETI Institute said in a written announcement on Thursday. "On the basis of the observed dimming of starlight from Kepler-186, the authors estimate that this newly discovered planet is roughly the same size as the Earth."



Theoretical models and observations tell scientists that planets the size of Kepler-186f likely have a composition of iron, rock and ice, like Earth, Quintana told reporters Thursday.



Even if Kepler-186f is rocky, it's not necessarily habitable, scientists warned Thursday. First, a lot would depend on the atmosphere, if it has one, Thomas Barclay of NASA's Kepler mission said. And scientists right now don't have the technology to know what the atmosphere is.



The star's size -- it's an M-dwarf star, smaller and less hot than our sun -- also could come into play. Because it is smaller, the habitable zone is closer, so radiation could prevent life if the atmosphere isn't dense enough, said Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington Virtual Planetary Laboratory.



But the Webb space-based telescope, now under construction, should be able to gather images of planets around closer dwarf stars and study their atmospheres.



Scientists are especially keen about checking dwarf stars because their habitable planets are more easily detectable, and because they are the most abundant type of star in our galaxy, Barclay said.



For researchers, the discovery of Kepler-186f is like a beginning. It's a first but "not a record we wish to keep," Quintana said. "We want to find more of these."



It's likely they will. Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Hawaii, using data from Kepler, estimate there are tens of billions of Earth-size, possibly habitable planets in our Milky Way galaxy.



CNN's Jason Hanna contributed to this report.

1. About this first:

Theoretical models and observations tell scientists that planets the size of Kepler-186f likely have a composition of iron, rock and ice, like Earth, Quintana told reporters Thursday.

I think they use both size and position of the exoplanet w.r.t. to its star/sun to determine this. Very large planets tend to be gaseous like our Gas Giants past the 4 planets of the inner solar system. The initial exo-planets found were all gas giants, albeit unexpectedly orbiting so close to their suns that they'd have obliterated or flung out (due to their gravity) any smaller rocky inner planets that might have existed. The explanation for gas giants existing so close to their sun was that they were thought to have formed far out in their solar system and then moved their orbit inwards, at which point they'd have knocked out any inner planets. At that early stage in the discovery of planetary systems, Debra Fischer of U of California, Berkeley, some 1.5 decades ago, was determined to seek out planetary systems/solar systems similar to our own: those with gas giants that remained at some distance from the sun, such that inner planets were left unperturbed and intact. These inner planets were then thought to potentially have the conditions necessary to - if not harbour have life as we know it on them - then to create environments we would consider habitable. Scientists are particularly looking for inner planets in that "goldilocks zone" were water can and does exist in its liquid state. Even back then, Debra Fischer had already detected a system with gas giants that were a promisingly significant distance away from its central star/sun, possibly implying the existence of smaller rocky inner planets nearer to that sun. (EOU-3)





2. And about this from the above CNN article:

Even if Kepler-186f is rocky, it's not necessarily habitable, scientists warned Thursday. First, a lot would depend on the atmosphere, if it has one, Thomas Barclay of NASA's Kepler mission said. And scientists right now don't have the technology to know what the atmosphere is.

The star's size -- it's an M-dwarf star, smaller and less hot than our sun -- also could come into play. Because it is smaller, the habitable zone is closer, so radiation could prevent life if the atmosphere isn't dense enough, said Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington Virtual Planetary Laboratory.

But I thought that a decent technique for working out the elemental/molecular composition of a distant planet's atmosphere was already devised by the Greek scientist, Athena Coustenis (of Observatoire de Paris)? Basically, they would use the principle that a solar wind of a sun/star - which consists of magnetically (?) or otherwise energetically charged particles emanating from a sun/star's surface - would blow out some of the atmosphere of any near planetary body into space. The light from the sun would presumably show up the atmospheric "tail" of the planet/its tail will interact with the light from the star or something, and then the astronomers would use the usual method of spectroscopy on the tail/its effect on the star's usual light to work out the tail's elemental/molecular composition, similar to how they analysed starlight itself. (BTP)



- Spectroscopy: With stars, it's easier to work out what they're composed of/what the fuel they're burning is composed of from starlight itself: all light from distant stars/suns that reaches our eyes/telescope is on account of that distant star burning its fuel and thereby producing its light, that we see. Each element [as in periodic table element] burns producing a colour that's at a different part of the light/colour spectrum range. So based on the range of colours of the light that's emitted by a star - including the colours produced after it explodes on death, such as with supernovae - we know what elements a visible star is composed of (which is how we know that the entire universe is made up of elements that we're rather familiar with here on earth, and that said elements originate in stars). (WOU)



- With planets, the problem is that we can't usually *see* exo-planets, that is, we can't see planets of other star (solar) systems. Not even our super telescopes could show us exo-planets since, unlike stars, planets don't *give* off light of their own, obviously, and they're obscured by the glare of their sun/the stars, which stars we do see. This is why detecting planets was by inference: planets exercise gravity on the stars/sun they orbit too, thus causing their sun to "wobble" (CS-C, BTP, EOU, STITU), especially noticeable with larger planets (e.g. Jupiter's gravity causes our Sun to move some IIRC million kilometres off its central position - EOU-3); plus, when a planet passes between our eyeball/telescope and the light of a star we are observing with our telescopes, the light of said star gets diminished due to the obstruction, as you'd expect. A third detection mechanism was that if a planet has atmosphere (as planets do, possibly by definition), then the solar wind of their star/sun will blow some of that atmosphere out into space (BTP-8), the way a comet's tail is caused by the solar wind blowing the comet's water vapour and some of its particles away from the sun's direction, which is why comet's tails are always in the opposite direction to a sun they are near to. Likewise, if a planet is aligned with respect to its sun such that the planet is between us and its star at the moment, then the planet's atmospheric tail will presumably be visible by somehow adding to/interacting with the light of its sun/the distant star. At least, that's as I understand it, since Coustenis was specifically working on using the principle of an atmospheric tail - that's made visible when an exoplanet is in such an alignment - as a means to work out the molecular composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere, again using spectroscopy.



:Or something:



Actually, here - note the following is from ~1.5 decades ago:

But how much can be found out about these other worlds? With Michel Mayor, Athena Coustenis [color="#800080"][Observatoire de Paris][/color] is looking at extraordinary new data from 51 Pegasus [color="#800080"][constellation or something where an early planet discovery was made][/color]. She has developed a new technique that identifies the chemical make-up of the star's planet, something that was previously thought impossible to measure from such a distance.



Michel Mayor: "Three years ago, we had absolutely no idea that we can have access to the chemistry of a planet. Sometimes science is exciting."

Athena Coustenis: "The idea we had was to use the star itself to push forward its planet and tell us something about what its planet is made of."



They cannot see the planet itself, but they can see changes in the light from the star.



Michel: "The interaction between the wind of the star [color="#800080"][its stellar/solar wind][/color] and the atmosphere of the planet create a big tail flowing away from the planet [color="#800080"][similar to comet tails][/color], and IF the line of sight goes through this tail, you have access to the chemistry of the planet."





By analysing the changing spectroscopy of light from the star, they hope to find out exactly what the [color="#FF0000"]atmosphere[/color] of the planet is made of.



(BTP-8)

Since Coustenis and Mayor some 1.5 decades ago already came up with what sounds to me like a reasonable method that could potentially tell us about the chemical composition of an exo-planet's atmosphere, is there a reason that - as per the CNN article further in this post - we don't know much/anything/sufficient info about the promising new planet's atmosphere and how habitable or not it may be for surface-dwelling earthlings?





And the news was:



edition.cnn.com/2014/04/17/tech/space-earth-size-planet/

[color="#0000FF"]NASA discovers Earth-sized planet that may sustain life[/color]



April 18, 2014 -- Updated 0558 GMT (1358 HKT) |



STORY HIGHLIGHTS



[color="#0000FF"]* Researchers find an Earth-sized planet that may be habitable

* It "proves the existence of worlds that might be similar to our own," institute says

* Scientists are looking for emissions that could suggest extraterrestrial life[/color]

* Previously discovered worlds were larger than Earth

[Husky]

Post 1/2



From the above:

Since Coustenis and Mayor some 1.5 decades ago already came up with what sounds to me like a reasonable method that could potentially tell us about the chemical composition of an exo-planet's atmosphere, is there a reason that - as per the CNN article further in this post - we don't know much/anything/sufficient info about the promising new planet's atmosphere and how habitable or not it may be for surface-dwelling earthlings?

Uh, the answer to my short-sighted question was already in the direct quote from Mayor that I pasted in the same post - yet another Duh moment:

Michel: "The interaction between the wind of the star [its stellar/solar wind] and the atmosphere of the planet create a big tail flowing away from the planet [similar to comet tails], and IF the line of sight goes through this tail, you have access to the chemistry of the planet."

Obviously our line of sight does not go through the tail of the latest potentially-habitable planet found. I.e. it does not transition around its star such that it comes in our "line of sight" from here on earth or our extended eyes in space (space telescopes). And which could explain why scientists concluded we don't yet know about its atmospheric composition.



Though we're too far away and our technology too backward to take us there in our lifetime (or for some thousands of years hence), knowing the "habitability" of other planets for forms of life such as our own, goes a significant way into proving that life could potentially evolve on other planets. Including intelligent life.**



BTW, have heard that they're going strike some missiles into Mars to rustle up some Mars-dust to check again for signs of life/molecular blue-print of life in Mars (such as under the crust).



** While Sagan was quite interested in contacting alien life, not all scientists share his optimism for encountering benign intelligent life. Some years back now, Hawking warned that we shouldn't be too eager to make contact. It was an intruiging argument. He spoke of how first contacts even in our own human experience weren't often the best of things for at least one of the parties involved, giving as an example European christians invading the Americas and making brutal repeat "contact". And that was a meeting between the same species, Hawking noted.

A fair argument I thought. Especially since he thinks a search for resources may be a driving force for alien civilisations as much as it is for our own. Rather than the argument in the film of Sagan's Contact about how superior alien civilisations would not gain by randomly destroy humans.



Hawking's point brought to mind something DA had stated in an interview: how humans have stopped evolving by natural selection aka natural rejection, seen in how "we [humans] no longer reject our children". He proceeded to repeat Dawkins that human evolution from here on is by memes. That got me worried about how the so-called "intelligent" life form on earth, the humans appear to be the only species on the planet that are prone to memetic diseases aka mindviruses like christoislamism. So the question that naturally follows when one thinks about it too long is whether other intelligent alien civilisations out there - who we can expect have also progressed past evolution by natural selection - also evolve by memetic transfer: transfer of ideas, which then implies the possibility of transfer of ideas by infection with mindvirus ideologies. And that's just a very freaky and scary thought.

Is there any other factor to govern evolution of intelligent species beyond memetic evolution? Will there at least be immunity to mindviruses in "highly evolved intelligent life forms"? Or is every such creature prone to infection by memetic diseases like missionary ideologies, the way every heathen nation - no matter how intelligent - has fallen one by one to the mentally-regressive christo-class mindvirus and proselytising of "Da Universal Truth" in general?





Because if it applies to all or even many intelligent life forms out there that we could come into contact with, I've decided I'd no longer want humans to meet with aliens (I used to get all excited about the prospect): we have enough memetic diseases on earth none of which we've ever learnt how to kill, don't want foreign mindviruses infecting our planet as well. Or the converse: humans infecting 'heathen' (un-infected) foreign aliens with christoislamoronism. If they are prone to memetic diseases as we are, then this remains a possibility. Soon we'll hear the story that jeebus was an alien from the stars sent by gawd to save all alien species not just humans. Etc. Etc.

Christos avidly reading the oxymoronic christian sci-fi (by Mormon madman and homophobe author of Ender's Game) already threatened - in a book review on an apologetic christo "sci-fi" work exhonerating Christopher Columbus by means of sci-fi time-travel to undo his genocidal mayhem in the new world and that which he spawned - christo readers already threatened that they are compelled by their religion to spread the word of gawd/babble aka "accepting jeebus" message to all and sundry, which means aliens too.



So there's the very real possibility that if we meet up with any 'intelligent' aliens that have an equal weakness for mindviruses, sooner or later some will get converted owing to the machinations of repeat attempts at conversion by initially-human missionaries. If the so-called 'intelligent' human species could fall for christo-class viruses, why can't other similarly intelligent species evolving by means memes also fall for it, no matter how obviously stupid these mindvirues are to the free insubvertible people.

After which initial sprees of conversions, said converted aliens will threaten the rest of the galaxy by wiping out any native heathenisms out there (memetic transfer works both ways: not just mindviruses/false ideologies, but the existence of locally-transferred native traditions after all, implying the existence of possibly very alien-seeming but yet natural heathenisms out there). Converted aliens may even double-back to earth and forcibly reconvert the last remaining heathens and other incovertibles like agnostics and atheists.

Scary, but a possibility.



Hawking was right. Not just a potential alien interest in resources but an equal propensity to be seized en-masse by mass-insanity could make contacting aliens a threat to humans and an enterprise that must be carefully considered and embarked on.

[Husky]

Post 2/2



Anyway. On to the actual thing I wanted to post.

Something that seemed quite interesting for many reasons:



bbc.co.uk/nature/26736688

2 April 2014 Last updated at 01:22



Modern lions' origin revealed by genetic analysis

By Matt Walker



Editor, BBC Nature

[image caption:] Not all lions are equal





Unravelling the history of the lion has been difficult. Animals living in tropical areas tend to leave fewer fossilised remains behind.



Lions have also been persecuted during their recent history, with whole populations being wiped out by human activity.



Such gaps in the fossil record, and in the distribution of lions, makes it difficult to reconstruct their past.





So an international team of scientists turned to the ancient DNA within lion specimens held in collections and museums around the world.



Led by Dr Ross Barnett of Durham University, UK, the team sequenced mitochondrial DNA from museum-held specimens, including from different subspecies, including the extinct Barbary lion of North Africa, the extinct Iranian lion, and lions from Central and West Africa.



The researchers compared these with genetic sequences drawn from other lions living in Asia, and across other parts of Africa, and then worked out how the different subspecies of lion evolved.



The study revealed that the single species of lion that persists today, Panthera leo, first appeared in Eastern-Southern Africa, supporting the conclusions of earlier research.



Around 124,000 years ago, in the Late Pleistocene, different subspecies began to evolve.





Around that time, tropical rainforests expanded across equatorial Africa, and the Sahara region turned to savannah.



Lions living in the south and east of the continent became separated from, and began to diverge from, those living in the west and north.



The genetic differences between these two groups of lions remain today.



[color="#0000FF"]Around 51,000 years ago, the continent dried and the Sahara expanded, cutting off lions in the west from those in the north.



At the same time, lions in the west expanded their range into Central Africa, which became more inhabitable.



Since then, Africa's great rivers, including the Nile and Niger, have helped keep these lions apart.



Another detail only revealed by the study of ancient DNA in specimens, is that modern lions began their exodus out of Africa just 21,000 years ago.



At the end of the Pleistocene, lions left North Africa, eventually reaching as far as India.[/color]



[color="#800080"][Refresher from wackypedia: "The Pleistocene (symbol PS[1]) is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's recent period of repeated glaciations."

whereas we're living in the subsequent, current, interglacial period:

"The Holocene /ˈhɒlɵsiːn/ is a geological epoch which began at the end of the Pleistocene[1] (at 11,700 calendar years BP) [2] and continues to the present. The Holocene is part of the Quaternary period. Its name comes from the Greek words ὅλος (holos, whole or entire) and καινός (kainos, new), meaning "entirely recent".[3] It has been identified with the current warm period, known as MIS 1 and based on that past evidence, can be considered an interglacial in the current ice age."][/color]



[color="#0000FF"]Much later, just around 5,000 years ago, another group of lions left the continent, reaching what is today Iran, in the Middle East. These lions are now extinct.[/color]



[color="#800080"](So having wandered all the way to India from Africa, some more wandered all the way to Iran from Africa again thousands of years later. But then, it's not like humans were the first to ever make such large treks. We just marvel at ours more.)[/color]



These discoveries may have important implications for the conservation of modern lions.



[color="#0000FF"]Fewer than 400 Asian lions (P. leo persica) survive, living on the Kathiawar Peninsula of India, with the subspecies listed as Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.[/color]

[color="#800080"](Did notice long ago that Indian lions look different - esp in terms of skull structure - to the usual kind of African lions I've seen in docos.)[/color]



[color="#0000FF"]"Lion populations in West Africa and Central Africa, which have drastically declined over the past few decades, are actually more closely related to the Indian lion than to lions in, say, Somalia or Botswana," Dr Barnett told BBC Nature.[/color]



Despite the large geographical distances between them, these lions also seem closely related to Iranian lions and the Barbary lions of North Africa.





"I was most surprised by the incredibly close relationship between the extinct Barbary lion from North Africa and the extant Asian lion from India," said Dr Barnett.





[color="#800080"]image caption:[/color] A possible Barbary lion once living in Leipzig Zoo, Germany.



The Barbary lion is one of the most enigmatic of all large predators, both due to its impressive appearance and uncertainty over its fate.



Once numerous across North Africa, the Barbary lion was the most physically distinctive type of lion, including those living elsewhere in Africa and Asia.



It had an extensive mane, and differences in the shape of its head included a more pointed crown and narrow muzzle. People at the time also talked of it being larger, with different coloured eyes to other lions, though it is unclear whether either difference was real.



It remains uncertain whether any Barbary lions exist today, and conservationists have talked of resurrecting the subspecies.



Circumstantial evidence suggested some may have survived in captivity, as part of a collection held by the royal family of Morocco.



But previous research and that by Dr Barnett's team suggests there were not in fact true Barbary lions.



If so, and Barbary lions are in fact extinct, then the new study suggests that closely-related Indian lions could be reintroduced to their habitat, as a way to best restore lions to North Africa.



"This has implications for any future attempts to reintroduce lions into North Africa," said Dr Barnett. "They could probably be re-seeded with Indian lions."

[color="#800080"](Hey, no kidnapping Indian lions to transplant them to Africa. Indian lions are rare themselves and need to be preserved/grow in numbers in their own homeland.)[/color]



Around a third of African lions are thought have disappeared in the past 20 years.



Of special concern, say Dr Barnett and colleagues, are West and Central African lions, which may be close to extinction in the wild, with around 400-800 and 900 lions living in each region respectively.



Relatively few lions of these subspecies are held within zoos for conservation.



"If you think of lion diversity as two distinct branches then the regions where lions are doing ok, in Eastern and Southern Africa, reflect only half the total diversity," said Dr Barnett.



"The other half is represented by the diversity in India, West Africa, and Central Africa.



"If the West and Central African populations were to slip away, that whole branch would only survive in the tiny Indian lion population."

The lions of London

Two Barbary lions once held in Britain's Tower of London have helped reveal the origin of modern lions.

The skulls of these lions were discovered preserved in the Tower's moat.

Dated as living in the 14th and 15th Centuries, they are the earliest recorded lions in the British Isles since the extinction of the Pleistocene cave lion.

Around just a dozen confirmed Barbary lions skulls are known anywhere in the world.

DNA from the two skulls helped scientists establish the close link between Barbary lions and those living in India.

biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/14/70

Research article

Revealing the maternal demographic history of Panthera leo using ancient DNA and a spatially explicit genealogical analysis

Ross Barnett19*, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi2, Beth Shapiro3, Simon YW Ho4, Ian Barnes5, Richard Sabin6, Lars Werdelin7, Jacques Cuisin8 and Greger Larson1



* Corresponding author: Ross Barnett drrossbarnett@gmail.com



Abstract

Background

Understanding the demographic history of a population is critical to conservation and to our broader understanding of evolutionary processes. For many tropical large mammals, however, this aim is confounded by the absence of fossil material and by the misleading signal obtained from genetic data of recently fragmented and isolated populations. This is particularly true for the lion which as a consequence of millennia of human persecution, has large gaps in its natural distribution and several recently extinct populations.



Results

We sequenced mitochondrial DNA from museum-preserved individuals, including the extinct Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) and Iranian lion (P. l. persica), as well as lions from West and Central Africa. We added these to a broader sample of lion sequences, resulting in a data set spanning the historical range of lions. Our Bayesian phylogeographical analyses provide evidence for highly supported, reciprocally monophyletic lion clades. Using a molecular clock, we estimated that recent lion lineages began to diverge in the Late Pleistocene. Expanding equatorial rainforest probably separated lions in South and East Africa from other populations. West African lions then expanded into Central Africa during periods of rainforest contraction. Lastly, we found evidence of two separate incursions into Asia from North Africa, first into India and later into the Middle East.



Conclusions

We have identified deep, well-supported splits within the mitochondrial phylogeny of African lions, arguing for recognition of some regional populations as worthy of independent conservation. More morphological and nuclear DNA data are now needed to test these subdivisions.



Keywords: Barbary lion; Panthera leo; Extinction; Mitochondrial DNA; Ancient DNA; Phylogeography

(Journal article then continues at link)







It is the "great white christian hunter" - as the colonial brits used to call themselves and are still called - that killed off many lions and tigers in Africa and Asia. And before the colonial christian invaders, the insane islamaniacs killed off lots of giant herbivorous and large carnivorous animals in India for "sport" too (like islamics made "sport" out of playing polo with the bloody bodies of expiring Hindu POWs in Afghanistan).



While Africans had the ability to kill large predator species, they didn't actually do this often. E.g. even in a famous DA episode that I watched, the Leopard was revered as a special and magical animal by the Africans and they had created some rather beautiful and moving poetry about this sacred animal of their world. They admired it and learnt from it.

Just like DA's discussion of wolves showed how native Americans respected wolves as their brother and teacher (the wolf is a totem animal!), and when some rare wolves came over from Canada to the US where they had been nearly extincted by the "great white christian settler hunters" of the US, local North American native Americans offered up even the much diminished lands of their reservations to house their animal brothers, the wolf. They interviewed a native American repeating for the record what he had said to the first wolf released back there: he looked into its eyes, referred to it as brother, and welcomed it and its kind back to their home, by offering to share the land with them as they had done afore.

Now, if I did something like that, nothing would happen and the wolf would think I was just another human moron. But traditional native Americans have a deep connection with their animals - and indeed all animals: they were able to communicate with horses, the way Europeans never could except with N-American's help*, despite horses not being native to the Americas. In this sacred skill of communicating with animals too, native Americans are like a Hindoo I knew once.



* Even today, the most famous "dog-whisperer" in the UK had to go all the way to America and learn directly from Native Americans how to commune with dogs. Then, after practising, the Brit wrote a book on it.



Having said that, I think David Attenborough himself - the best or among the best of the British - has a bond with other animals. Even if it's largely a one-way bond (from his direction to the animals), his sincerity and true appreciation of animals is endearing. And it is because of this appreciation that he recognises and values heathen populations' positive and close relationships with animals when he discusses this. Of course, the first thing one notices when one looks at DA is that he's a mammal that is keenly aware of being one, and so is happy to be a part of the animal world - which comes naturally to him as it does to heathens - rather than apart from it. (He doesn't think he's better, he doesn't feel more entitled.) I think this, more than anything else, proves that at some deep subconscious level DA is a heathen/has heathen tendencies himself.



He's a natural historian and an evolutionary biologist, with extensive field knowledge. In his case, it's his reverence for nature that spurred him to learn what he could unravel about it, and understand it and the creatures that are part of it (including his own kind) better. In a way, knowing the intricacies of the natural world was his means to forge a direct connection with nature. I think he's a pantheist in his way, that loves and wants to preserve nature by understanding it as best as he can. When he speaks in interviews, he is ... reverential - I really can't think of another word that fits as well - which I didn't quite expect. (I expected straightforward bio, which can be respectful and appreciative too, but not quite to his degree. He is dazzled by nature and protective of it too. And not for any selfish reasons but in its own right. It is close to his heart.) Watching him is like watching an animal (or heathens): produces the same response in me. Even the way he talks to animals - what he says to them - as he pets them (e.g. Rhinos), the very manner of his interaction, is very similar to the manner many elderly Hindoos interact with animals. Uni-directional or not, DA genuinely cares. I like that about him.

[Husky]

1. Most exciting news in recent memory.



CNN had a bit on how NASA has - or has possibly - found liquid water just below the surface of Mars.



Scientists say that Mars is now thought to have had (IIRC even surface) water for much longer than we knew and -(I think) that it was to have had this surface water until more recently than was thought before. <- Increased length of time means more time for life to have had a chance to evolve there. :Woo:



One of the conjectures by scientists may prove to be true: bacterial ancestors from Mars may have hitched a ride here on space debris, and landed on Earth and colonised earth, possibly early on, and been among the first earthlings. And if they didn't seed the planet with the bacterial life that existed back then, they could still have co-evolved with the native bacteria on our planet. The (A)AIT - (Actual) Alien Invasion Theory - could be true! Who knew.





Still a bit worried. Two words have sprung to mind again: "Martian Chronicles" and "Bradbury". ("But that's three words". OK, now's not the time to get all mathematical.) Hope we don't accidentally wipe them out or something... 'Cause you never know with earthlings.



If we can find some space bacteria, we can bring back some cultures to earth and then sequence their genes. We could see if there are any genetic sequences shared with "earthlings". And if there are .... core: -> long lost relatives.



Oh, for some space bacterial cousins. It could prove so much. Not only that we'll have neighbours at last. But also proof of the existence of many more neighbours out there (and making the case for other "intelligent" life like our own out there more likely).





2. There is another disturbing thing, besides Ray Bradbury's light fiction about humans accidentally wiping out Martian life. Way too many scientists have come out in just the year issuing dreary repetitive warnings about making contact. Apparently METI (sp?) - a.o.t. SETI (which only searches for intelligent alien life) - has been hoping to send "we're out here" messages in the direction of the increasing number of planets that are being found within the habitable zones (i.e. planets where life as we know it could exist). After Hawking's reluctance several years back to try to make alien contact, suddenly many scientists appeared on record far more recently repeating his arguments and discouraging METI and other endeavours from trying to actively contact intelligent alien life forms.



Sagan was right that intelligent life that's lasted sufficiently long need not necessarily be destructive: that they must have survived their own self-destructive phase and that means they might not be destructive towards others. (This view of Sagan was even summarised in the film Contact based on his book of that name.)



I don't want us to infect aliens with our mindviruses. But if they were to genocide humanity - including memorable ISIS/islamania, AmeriKKKa and christowest in general - that means the latter at least can't continue cannibalising the live body of everyone else. From the heathen POV, is extra-terrestrial alien devastation of heathenism that much worse than christoislamic/native alien devastation of heathenism? Surely there's no difference. But the first may be indiscriminate and hence offers the possibility of revenge, which the latter does not.

So, if any intelligent aliens needed earthly collaborators to bring down the earthly powers that be - christowest, US in particular - I'd sign up to sell the latter off without a second thought, whatever the consequences. First of all I have no solidarity with "all humans" and revenge is like the best invention since sliced bread. And if aliens go on a weedkilling rampage on Earth that accidentally avenges the native Americans, Africans, Asians and other dead heathens, will I *really* be sorry. Payback, after all, is totally worth it (SAAB's McQueen's quote on payback is from the victim's POV).



Light-hearted what-ifs aside, I really wonder why some scientists have been coming out in force, issuing statements to the press about why they don't want us to contact intelligent alien life forms out there. Clearly they all know that there is a reasonable chance of intelligent life. But the standard position of scientists is that intelligent aliens would not have harmful intentions. So why the sudden change of heart? It is everyone else who always predicts doom and gloom - the US military but also hollywood cinema (is that conditioning?) - not actual scientists.

And the other question is, there's a flaw in Hawking's argument - and hence in the arguments of other scientists seen discouraging alien contact more recently, as they're essentially parroting Hawking's alarmist projections, but offer no independent reasoning of their own. First, to reprise Hawking's position: aliens may want our resources or something and think we stand in their way.

The flaw in this thinking was already remarked upon by others: that any intelligent life that can come all the way to Earth from wherever they are, surely have the tech necessary to convert whatever space debris and resources out there to fuel their society/civilisation and hardly need the "resources" of planet Earth. Which resources are NOT unique (the same elements of the periodic table are found throughout the universe, and can hardly be magically more abundant on Earth than in every Nth planet in every Nth solar system. That is, at worst, there may be some scale of zooming out at our galaxy/universe at which we could see similar distributions of the same "wealth of resources" as seen on our planet.)

Again: An intelligent tech civilisation that can travel such great distances as to come all the way to earth to wipe us out, would have long ago been able to extract resources from various sources without having to set out to destroy other life as a deliberate "side-effect".



I seriously doubt they'd want to destroy life for the sake of destroying life. That's also something only hollywho can devise.



And fears of "enslavement" - another hollywho trope - can't be it either: tech civilisations can surely manufacture their own AI or lower-scale robotics to do their work.



If they want to recruit us as a tributary - voluntary or no - in their galactic empire "just 'cause we exist" (the way humans have been doing to each other), and end up stationing US bases I mean alien bases all over Earth to control the planet, it's no worse than the US doing the same and holding everyone under their thumb. But it seems unlikely any actually sane alien civilisation would bother to do that.



If they want to set back our space capabilities by claiming the space all around us, well, it's not like we have much of any space capabilities yet. And that's our fault: had it not been for christoislamania, we'd have been out there *centuries* ago.



And if they wanted to steal our unique adaptations to enhance their own (a la the Suliban in ST:E), well, we have NO extraordinary adaptations I can think that sets us widely apart from other species on the planet (and our brains won't compare to intelligent high-tech civilsations) - I mean, we don't even have a prehensile tail, when it would have been such a great advantage.

But even if for some magic reason we had something they wanted to genetically splice into themselves, how are humans going to stop them? Really.



They can't want our tech. We have no tech (mobile phone and ipad/iphone 'tech' from our prehistoric galactic backwater doesn't count, right?)

We have NO [generally available/generally documented] time travel technology - which admittedly would have been something others may want. [Not counting "remote viewing", which is somewhat dubious and as per adherents has only a 22% success rate.]

We have no Warp or even minimum FTI,

We have no advanced AI

No actual abilities with exotic particles to - I don't know - steal infinite energy from other universes

We have like...nothing. Nothing worthwhile. We're like cavemen from the POV of species with interstellar tech.

(I can't even see anyone bothering to make friends with paupers like humanity is at present.)



Oh, but we have heathenism. Except that is not quite genetic. As in: mindviruses can erase it. Besides, heathenisms are ethnic by default.

Oh, but there are heathens with very special heathen abilities (e.g. some heathens have the ability to see in two different directions in the 4th dimension - uh, time - which, while not quite time travel, may be novel to aliens) etc. But just as earthly alien demons have never acquired this from heathens, aliens are unlikely to "acquire" it either. Maybe aliens may want "magic". But like the likelihood of mindviruses existing (or the possibility of their rise) in all the intelligent lifeforms there may be, there's an equal chance of "magic" existing in ancient alien societies.

Like "the force" in Star Wars is based on Chi from Taoism, Jedi skills were specifically based on Taoist masters/Xian skills projected onto fictional alien characters in an alien setting. But there's nothing stopping out-of-left-field abilities of this class also existing elsewhere in the universe.



If aliens wanted to create hybrids using humans, well then, if aliens don't do it first, humans - despite often being xenophobic against miscegenation - may do so themselves one day, even if only to answer the questions of "what if". (Still can't help thinking about Dune and the "abomination" of interbreeding a royal house with the fremen to produce the God Emperor of Dune was it/Worm Hybrid.)



But that last brings me to one further possibility I can think of at present. While Earth is no Dune/no "spice" like unique and pivotal commodity here (unless it be biological rather than chemical, i.e. a unique life form, and unlikely to be us), we could get roped into galactic societal systems we don't want to be part of (:xenophobia. Perhaps one day to be even drafted into some inter-galactic war. But that is such an out there notion, based on possibility upon possibility upon minute possibility, that it seems to be too unlikely to worry about.



So the question remains: WHY are the scientists who've suddenly started vocalising, so pessimistic and discouraging? What *valid* reason do they have for not wanting us to make contact and find intelligent alien life forms out there? (Xenophobic Species 8472 wanting to "purify the galaxy" by genociding us is kinda... unlikely and like a sci-fi trope. Sounds too much like Sauron - evil for the sake of evil. On the other hand, an alien species who is disgusted by humanity destroying its own planet and other life forms here may legitimately see us as a threat and prevent our advancement into space and perhaps even wipe humanity out "for the greater good to preserve the other earthlings". But such an ethical species may be like documentarians refusing to involve themselves in interspecies conflict, however uneven the match. Or they may have their own prime directive against involvement.)

From what I can think of:

Only a Borg-type alien species may pose an actual nasty threat, and I suppose the Wraith - wanting to "harvest" life on Earth.

Time-altering species with temporal technology are not a threat to Earthlings, as far as I can tell humanity doesn't actually have an ancient and worthwhile civilisation to alter: no fundamental tech (like time-travel or space-travel) whose loss could change the course of our history and our solar system and advance that of others.

I suppose an alien species wanting to experiment on Earthlings for the sake of some galactic biological taxonomy - a la biologists who collect butterflies and dissect frogs - or for the purpose of finding a cure for some illness their species suffers from - a la human scientists into vivisection - may be a threat, but it would hardly be undeserved... I mean, let's face it: one planet's intelligent species may be another's guinea pig, and pecking orders seem to be a reality of nature. So if we find ourselves on the bottom of a galactic hierarchy, too bad. But this is, again, very far-fetched.



So again: what reasonable fear do the naysaying scientistss actually have? Is no one disturbed?

If they boo-ed and hissed at our infecting aliens with our mindviruses, I'd understand (but that's not the reason that Hawking or his recent parrots gave). The reverse is not so scary: humanity are already a self-destructing basket-case under christoislam. Adding any additional crazy memes to the mix can only hasten our demise, but can hardly be worse qua ultimate result?



Good that this was a private ramble. Thank the Taoist Gods no one visits IF. Then again, I don't have a reputation for deepness or seriousness to uphold.

(Channeling Julie Cox "But the saga of Dune was far from over..."





While the rest of the above were the mumblings of the avg person who reads and watches way too much sci-fi,



the only worthwhile part of this post was this next line:



CNN had a bit on how NASA has - or has possibly - found liquid water just below the surface of Mars.

[Husky]

This post is to some extent related to the spam series started in posts 138-140, and which was continued all through posts 144-151 of the Natural Religions thread.

In specific, this post is related to point 2 of post 146 of that thread. I.e. [b]on Simulation Theory, which has long been the dream (fantasy?) of those in AI[/b], whatever concerns they may pretend to have now.





1. express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/575653/The-Matrix-Universe-Planet-Earth-NASA-Scientist

Our universe may be a Matrix-like computer game designed by aliens, says NASA scientist

WELCOME to The Matrix. You've lived here all your life.



By Aaron Brown

PUBLISHED: 09:28, Mon, May 11, 2015 | UPDATED: 09:30, Mon, May 11, 2015





Everything you have ever done or will do could simply be the product of a highly-advanced computer code.



Every relationship, every sentiment, every memory could have been generated by banks of supercomputers.



This was the terrifying theory first proposed by British philosopher Nick Bostrom.

(Uh? Even considering all things western alone, the Matrix movie preceded the IIRC 2003 paper of Bostrom. Oh wait, I'm anticipating the article text



The shocking hypothesis was penned four years after Andrew and Lana Wachowski wrote and directed The Matrix, a film set in a dystopian future in which humans are subdued by a simulated reality.



In his paper, Dr Bostrom suggested a race of far-evolved descendants could be behind our digital imprisonment.



The futuristic beings – human or otherwise – could be using virtual reality to simulate a time in the past or recreate how their remote ancestors lived.



Sound crazy? Well, it turns out NASA thinks Dr Bostrom might be right.



GETTY: The Standard Model of Physics does not yet hold an explanation for the force of gravity



Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this



Rich Terrile, director at NASA



Rich Terrile, director of the Centre for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has spoken out about the digital simulation.



"Right now the fastest NASA supercomputers are cranking away at about double the speed of the human brain," the NASA scientist told Vice.



"If you make a simple calculation using Moore's Law [which roughly claims computers double in power every two years], you'll find that these supercomputers, inside of a decade, will have the ability to compute an entire human lifetime of 80 years – including every thought ever conceived during that lifetime – in the span of a month.



"In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they're being observed.



"Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this.



"One explanation is that we're living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it.



"What I find inspiring is that, even if we are in a simulation or many orders of magnitude down in levels of simulation, somewhere along the line something escaped the primordial ooze to become us and to result in simulations that made us – and that's cool."

(Wait, are they lamely ending with "We may not be the originals, but at least we're somehow connected to the originals via n degrees of separation"? Sad. Honestly, who cares about originality? Even back when we were certain we were not simulations - or didn't ponder the question - later generations were simply repeating the experiences of earlier ones. I think most of the chances for any 'originality' died a long time ago anyway. Very few original conceptions spooking around humanity's brain now. It's "been there, done that", or at least "imagined it a long time ago already".)



The idea that our Universe is a fiction generated by computer code solves a number of inconsistencies and mysteries about the cosmos.



GETTY: Professor Fermi known for achieving the first controlled nuclear reaction, leads a lecture



AP: Enrico Fermi outside an atomic energy plant in Newport in October 1957



The first is the Fermi Paradox – proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi during the 1960s – which highlights the contradiction between the apparent high probability of extraterrestrial civilisations within our ever-expanding universe and humanity's lack of contact with, or lack of evidence for, these alien colonies.



"Where is everybody?" Mr Fermi asked.



It could simply be that Earth and mankind truly is the centre of the universe.



Another mystery explained by Dr Bostrom's Matrix-like theory is the role of Dark Matter.



US theoretical cosmologist Michael Turner has called the hypothetical material "the most profound mystery in all of science".



Dark Matter is one of many hypothetical materials used to explain a number of anomalies in the Standard Model – the all-encompassing theory science has used to explain the particles and forces of nature for the last 50 years.



The Standard Model of particle physics tells us that there are 17 fundamental particles which make up atomic matter.





GETTY: A scientist works within the ATLAS control room, part of the Large Hadron Collider facility



GETTY: Scientists hope to prove the existence of Dark Matter within the CERN accelerator



The Higgs boson, which was first theorised by scientists during the 1960s, is amongst these 17 fundamental particles.



In summer 2012, scientists at CERN observed what is now believed to be the elusive "God particle".



But the Standard Model is as-yet unable to explain a number of baffling properties of the universe – including the fact that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing speed.



Dark Matter is believed to be a web-like matter that binds visible matter together.



If it exists, it would explain why galaxies spin at the speed they do – something which remains unexplained based only on what we can currently observe.



The Standard Model does not yet hold an explanation for the force of gravity.



The as-yet unproven existence of Dark Matter could be explained by a virtual universe.



But not everybody is convinced about The Matrix explanation.



Professor Peter Millican, who teaches philosophy and computer science at Oxford University, thinks the virtual reality explanation is flawed.



"The theory seems to be based on the assumption that ‘superminds’ would do things in much the same way as we would do them," he said.



"If they think this world is a simulation, then why do they think the superminds – who are outside the simulation – would be constrained by the same sorts of thoughts and methods that we are?

(I don't understand the argument. Because if "Superminds" were simulating less capable ancestors confined to a more limited context i.e. universe, maybe they do need to restrict their thinking to a limited number of n dimensions or whatever limitations are necessary to match the simulation's world. Isn't the [Ancestor Simulation] theory about how those who are running the simulation are looking backward (to their own more primitive pasts) and not looking forward in doing so? And if their past need not be as advanced as their present, the simulation would therefore not depict anything as advanced as what they're capable of, but just the minimum necessary to produce a reasonably realistic illustration of their more limited ancestors and the latter's more limited [perceptions of] the world/their setting?)



"They assume that the ultimate structure of a real world can't be grid like, and also that the superminds would have to implement a virtual world using grids.



"We can’t conclude that a grid structure is evidence of a pretend reality just because our ways of implementing a pretend reality involve a grid."

Related articles



Large Hadron Collider: World-changing Dark Matter could be discovered in just TWO MONTHS

Stunning RING of FIRE photographed in deep space was predicted by Einstein in 1915

Einstein RING of FIRE proves Dark Matter is NOT dark after all, claims new research

NASA tests WARP DRIVE capable of blasting ships from Earth to the Moon in just FOUR hours

(Woo. Tomorrow we'll be Building the Enterprise. The day after, Voyager.)



Professor Millican does believe there is worth in investigating the idea.



"It is an interesting idea, and it’s healthy to have some crazy ideas," he told The Telegraph.



"You don’t want to censor ideas according to whether they seem sensible or not because sometimes important new advances will seem crazy to start with.



"You never know when good ideas may come from thinking outside the box.



"This Matrix thought-experiment is actually a bit like some ideas of Descartes and Berkeley, hundreds of years ago.



“Even if there turns out to be nothing in it, the fact that you have got into the habit of thinking crazy things could mean that at some point you are going to think of something that initially may seem rather way out, but turns out not to be crazy at all."

Intriguing how the Matrix - which totally plagiarised several E Asian films (and in particular one) for visual and technical features and certain concepts, not to mention how it plagiarised the western film "Dark City" for other ideas - is now credited with the conception. When in reality, the Matrix creators didn't invent the notion but simply 'creatively' poached on the idea of the apparent cosmos and our existence/perception in it not being the true reality (having a veneer concealing the true reality, or else being an illusion/unreal in some sense) from a certain religion that shall not be named.



Which is why the unoriginality of the central theme of the Matrix was long ago discussed to death all over the internet.



E.g. answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080101040230AAYeqMI

(particularly point 2)



[True that the use of "Asatoma sadgamaya" in a track is not a random choice, not some mere generic religious symbolism the way it was in the BSG reboot.]





Anyway, the objection to the Simulation Hypothesis (incl Ancestor Simulation Theory) still stands: it's a conspiracy theory that by its very nature is not meant to find proof of itself. Being a conspiracy theory. Already explained in point 2 of post 146.





2. cityam.com/221721/does-actually-universe-exist-we-might-all-be-living-one-big-computer-game-scientists-say

Does the universe actually exist? We might all be living in one big computer game, scientists say

Share:

Shares: 307



by Sarah Spickernell



5 August 2015 4:59pm



Who's to say the universe isn't being controlled by aliens? (Source: Getty)



We always talk about the robots replacing humans, but what if we actually are robots, with brains that are programmed just like computers to think in a certain way?



Read more: Did the big bang happen? Scientists call theory into question



Our universe behaves suspiciously similarly to a simulated computer, obeying a series of mathematical formulas that all link up together, and according to some physicists this means the world as we know it may be one big lie.



Just as a computer is unaware of humans' superior existence, we might be unaware of a higher technological force controlling all that goes on in the universe, including our thoughts and actions.



Technology expert Ray Kurzweil told Space.com: "maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high school student in another universe."



Oxford University philosophy professor Nick Bostrom has a similar view, and compares human life to being in The Matrix:





Instead of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the brains themselves would also be part of the simulation.



It would be one big computer program simulating everything, including human brains down to neurons and synapses.





Unfortunately, the questions of what we are and where we come from are going to remain unanswered for the time being, as we currently have no way of finding out whether the universe is definitely real.





Did the big bang happen? Scientists call theory into question

Aliens will be discovered within 10 years, says Nasa scientist

Aliens hit South London

About aliens: the Vatican has recently predictably come out with their affirmation that they will baptise aliens. I.e. they will missionise/convert even aliens. And this sentiment isn't restricted to the catholics either: the christian faux sci-fi book on Columbus by the homophobic Mormon author of Ender's Game or whatever (have never read his junk) already attracted reviews by evangelical christians who were determined that any aliens we contact must be converted to jeebusism=christianism too. Apparently the gospel's "salvation message" (salvation from Adam and Eve's fall/original sin, note) is now for everyone, i.e. truly universal=catholic hence requiring evangelism of the gospel/spreading the 'good news'. And this despite the fact that christianism has yet to invent the backstory of how all aliens are now to have suddenly descended from Adam and Eve too, and hence are also to be tainted by original sin and thus need to accept jeebus to be saved. That story becomes lamer with every retelling/restructuring, can't believe it still sells.

The other reason for the announcement of the Pope & "astronomer" Jesuits on their belief in the possibility of alien life is merely to save face for christianism: by declaring it now 'in advance' - late though it is - they want to pretend by the time the actual first contact or first verification of alien existence comes around that christianism had always conceived of and considered the existence of aliens in the universe, despite the babble's infinite nonsense having precluded any such prescience (or even imagination) on christianism's part. The babble was famously the reason for christianism insisting that the earth was the centre of the universe. And so it remains in christian theology as seen by the Pope's declaration that even if aliens exist there is only one jeebus in the universe: one point of salvation and hence humanity as the first of christianism's "chosen people".





If the prospect of christoislamics of Earth going about converting all 'intelligent species' in the galaxy and eventually the universe - which dystopian vision was already fearfully predicted in post 343 of this thread* - if that isn't a reason to repeat or expand on Ripley and Hicks' statement of "I say we go into orbit and nuke the planet" (for the good of others in the universe), then I don't know what is.



* And where christoislam is concerned, the worst case scenarios are usually what come to pass.





3. On what Nick Bostrom hypothesised. Pasting just the abstract and conclusion. The full paper is at link.



simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

ARE YOU LIVING IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?

BY NICK BOSTROM



Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University



Published in Philosophical Quarterly (2003) Vol. 53, No. 211, pp. 243-255.



[simulation-argument.com]



pdf-version: [PDF]



ABSTRACT



This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.



[...]

A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.



If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).



Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation.

(Can't remember that I ever followed that argument of his.)





4. Bostrom strikes again. Has he joined the gang that's foreshadowing Terminator all over again?**



theguardian.com/science/audio/2014/aug/04/science-weekly-podcast-nick-bostrom-ai-artificial-intelligence

How super AI could end the age of humans – podcast

Professor Nick Bostrom discusses the existential threats posed by a superintelligent computer and why we will only get one chance to control such a powerful machine

Here's hoping humanity squanders that chance.

(Yeah, I'm still rooting for the machines. Is that... wrong? Does that make me a traitor? :evil grin:

Humanity is kind of a disappointment. Let's be honest.)





** Q: Why do some working in AI now start to pretend to the public that the future they envision of robots "taking over the evolutionary baton from humanity"* was not always their life-long dream and their (endorsed!) prediction?

* Paraphrased. But is it necessary to keep referring to "Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind" by Hans Moravec for almost a decade? Of course, that's from back when those in AI at least didn't pretend they weren't drooling all over the prospect.

Now it's all "Oh my gawd, what if we're building Skynet"?

Either it's just cold feet or they know more than they're saying.



Other news seen within the past weeks mentioned that some AI had recently passed the self-awareness test. And another had passed the Turing Test - for when humans can't tell a robot's a robot (i.e. when humans mistake it for a natural intelligence). Mwahahaha. The future's going to happen whether Elon Musk or whoever wants it or not. And if they now fear a mass genocide of humanity by the machines may be a plausible scenario, then, from a heathen perspective, being genocided by machines or by monotheists ultimately makes little difference to heathens. Plus the machines may be more ruthlessly efficient (e.g. as seen in Terminator) and thus less sadistic and rapist than the christoislamic menace.

Whereas BSG depicted the reality that humans may well (gang-)rape self-aware robots. If humans can conceive such behaviour - as the show creators did - then it must be so. I mean, let's face it, Game of Thrones is still one of the most popular programs in a significant part of the world (particularly the west) and each season has more deliberately controversial and sensational scenes than the previous ones (including more explicit rape scenes, as per more recent news again). Then there's ISIS that goes around raping and murdering. What all that says about the humans currently dominating visibility on the planet - i.e. the christoislam-infested humanity - is that humanity on the whole comes off as nasty and regressive. And so, if machines or some natural disaster did away with mindvirus-possessed humanity, then it's no real loss, objectively speaking (as from the POV of a third party).



I root for the heathens incl other animals/plants/etc first. But if the heathens can't win, I'd totally collaborate with whoever - be these aliens or machines - may want to destroy the christoclass mindvirus infested humanity. It is gangrene and should be destroyed. It's like the old comical adage that my cousin always referred to when we were about to enter into fisticuffs: "I may lose an eye, but you're going to lose both". Heathens may get extincted too - inevitable - but since they're going to go down, can make sure the christoclass virus (which exists by means of its carriers) does not survive either. Since if anyone of humanity ought to survive, it ought to be heathens alone, since they're the least threat: not being missionary, plus having always been more interested in keeping their environmental footprint to a minimum.



Hmmm, forgot that the BSG reboot - which is essentially about Ancestor Simulation Theory - has the machines/cylons as the monotheists and evangelical about it. Typical. Whether they took over the evolutionary baton from humans or not, christo-conditioned western society has already envisioned machines taking over the christoclass meme and passing it on, peddling it about. Just like christianism has already mentally prepared itself to convert any aliens humanity may come into contact with, as also seen reiterated in the Vatican's recent statement on this. (ibtimes.co.uk/vatican-observatory-aliens-may-exist-theres-only-one-jesus-entire-universe-1513974)

[Husky]

This could turn out to be a historic moment if true:



mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/nasa-discovered-life-mars-space-6520628

Has NASA discovered life on Mars? Space agency calls urgent briefing to announce major discovery about Red Planet



Updated 18:00, 26 Sep 2015

By Chris Richards



NASA is preparing to unveil a "major science finding" on Monday that has raised speculation we are closer to discovering LIFE ON MARS



Life on Mars? NASA is to announce that is has solved a major mystery about the Red Planet



Speculation is mounting among space watchers that Nasa is about to announce it has found life on Mars.



The US space agency is to host an urgent press conference at its Washington headquarters where it will announce that is has solved a major mystery about the Red Planet.



NASA has used previous briefings to announce ground-breaking discoveries - such as in July when it revealed the existence of the Earth-life planet Kepler-452b, outside our solar system.



Read more: 'Mars Henge'? Is mysterious stone circle found on Red Planet clearest indication yet of alien civilisation?



Jim Green, Nasa's director of planetary science and Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program, will be among the experts present at Monday's event.



It is believed the agency could announce that it has discovered microbial life on Earth's near neighbour or alternatively that it has found evidence of flowing water.



The latter theory is due in part to the fact that Lujendra Ojha, of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, will also be present at next week's press conference.





Scientist Mr Ohja first came up with the theory that Mars has liquid salt water flowing through it during its warmer months.



Until earlier this year, boffins thought there was ice on Mars but that it was too cold to host water.



However, in April NASA's four-wheel drive Curiosity Rover discovered that the soil was damp with liquid brine, which lowers the freezing point.



And last month the vehicle - which has been based on the Red Planet for the past three years - identified rocks a metre under the surface which contained up to four times as much water as previously thought .



A brief statement on the space agency's website read: "NASA will detail a major science finding from the agency's ongoing exploration of Mars during a news briefing at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 28 at the James Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in Washington.



"The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency's website."

Can't recall if the mirror is a tabloid or an actual source of news. Then again, most news agencies are tabloids, the difference is only the degree to which each one is so.



Anyway, I say combine the panspermia theory with Hawking's recent admission about black holes as being possible portals - "warp zones" for Mario fans - into other universes (already a longstanding conjecture even in sci-fi, as seen in e.g. the spiderwoman cartoons from the 1970s), and you get the possibility of life in multiple universes that can support it.

Actual scientists have come up with crazier theories than the Universal Panspermia theory I just stated (and possibly scientists have considered that one already too).



Great news about the possibility of bacterial cousins on Mars. Are they related and an ancestor to ancient bacterial life strains on earth, or are they cousins (both are possibilities with panspermia) or will they be "completely unrelated" and the product of localised natural chemical processes on Mars, regardless of if they appeared later or earlier than earth? Either way it won't necessarily disprove the panspermia theory as regards life on earth.

[Husky]

rbth.com/science_and_tech/2016/02/23/its-official-native-americans-and-siberians-are-cousins_569517

It's official: Native Americans and Siberians are cousins

February 23, 2016 Aram Ter-Ghazaryan, special to RBTH

After more than a century of speculation, an international group of geneticists has conclusively proven that the Aztecs, Incas, and Iroquois are closely related to the peoples of Altai, the Siberian region that borders China and Mongolia.





(Picture of cute and happy looking Siberian man with eagle-friend, and a very handsome N-American native American

cdn.rbth.com/468x312/0x0/1024x683/all/2016/02/17/altai_people_and_american_indians_b.jpg



...in late 2015 the famous Russian geneticist, Oleg Balanovsky, finally confirmed the theory. In addition, Dr. Balanovsky'sstudies also proved that some Native Americans have kinship with the indigenous populations of Australia.



The first study analyzed 48 people from Brazil. The second study analyzed 31 genomes from peoples in the U.S. and Siberia. Results from both studies confirmed that the ancestors of Native Americans left Siberia about 20,000-30,000 years ago.





After these publications Dr. Balanovsky decided to conduct a larger study

[....]



As a result, scientists proved beyond a doubt that Native Americans are closely related to the peoples of Altai. But during the study another discovery was made.



"Besides Siberian ancestors, some Native Americans showed a puzzling relation to the indigenous peoples of Australia and Melanesia in the Pacific Ocean,'' remarked Dr. Balanovsky. "This is astounding because they are located in an almost opposite part on the planet.''



[...]

He added that it's still not clear whether migration from Australia and Melanesia to the Americas was directly across the ocean, or by going up along the coast and via the Aleutian Islands. Archaeologists continue to study this issue.

After Siberians, Australians and Melanesians, I am hereby reserving 4th place of relatedness to native Americans for Hindoos.

[Husky]

"Large Hadron Collider, world's largest machine, broken by 'rogue weasel who bit through power cable'"

(I don't know why we need to use adjectives like "rogue". And why do people always put a picture of an innocent specimen of the species to illustrate such stories, as if the whole species is at fault or is suspect? "That wasn't the purpose behind it." Yes I know, but if this were a human community there would be whining about stereotyping, right?)



theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/29/large-hadron-collider-fouine-chews-through-transformer-wiring

Large Hadron Collider on paws after creature chews through wiring

LHC to be out of action for a week while connections to transformer are replaced following visit from hungry fouine

Friday 29 April 2016 20.14 BST



The world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator has been brought to its knees by a beech marten, a member of the weasel family, that chewed through wiring connected to a 66,000-volt transformer.



In an in-house report on the incident, managers at Cern, the European nuclear physics laboratory that runs the LHC, described the incident at the transformer unit as being caused by a “fouine” – a beech marten native to the region. The report concluded it was “not the best week for the LHC”.



The glitch echoes a similar event in 2009 when the power was cut to one of the LHC’s cooling plants leading to unwelcome temperature rises in the collider’s apparatus. That incident was blamed, at least tentatively, on a bird dropping part of a baguette on a compensating capacitor where the mains supply entered the LHC from the ground.

(Novel use for a bit of a baguette.)

But did the little weasel fry?



So, are they saying:

1 Weasel > many human eggheads.





Makes me think of Space Bat:

- www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1acf7o/its_been_four_years_space_bat_we_will_never/

("It's been four years. (7 years) Space Bat, we will never forget you")



- gizmodo.com/5173385/shuttle-riding-bat-dies-the-most-glorious-death-imaginable



Humans antropologise animals' "misadventures" way too often. None of these animals signed up for this. There's no indication "space bat" wanted to go into space "or die trying". There's every indication - from other members of its own species, as well as of other species, that it aimed to just live its life to completion and die from natural causes.





The weasel did in fact die from its 'mistake':

scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/1940160/pop-goes-weasel-hadron-collider-particle-accelerator-shuts-down

Cern spokesman Arnaud Marsollier told the BBC it would take a few days to repair the damage caused by the weasel, which did not survive its high-voltage encounter.

Even guinea pig owners know to protect their wires to prevent obsessively wire-chewing guinea pigs from electrocuting themselves.





Soon we'll see odes appear on reddit or wherever that the weasel was some kind of kamikaze, part of some brotherhood protecting the universe's secrets from mankind that's "just not ready to handle the truth yet" (a la that brotherhood in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade + Jack Nicholson's line in A Few Good Men). Web 2.0 people need something to do, after all.

[Husky]

Very early modern human finds apparent;y



1. www.nature.com/news/how-china-is-rewriting-the-book-on-human-origins-1.20231

How China is rewriting the book on human origins



Fossil finds in China are challenging ideas about the evolution of modern humans and our closest relatives.

Jane Qiu



12 July 2016

Not everybody is convinced. “Fossil interpretations are notoriously problematic,” says Svante Pääbo, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. But DNA from Eurasian fossils dating to the start of the human race could help to reveal which story — or combination — is correct. China is now making a push in that direction. Qiaomei Fu, a palaeogeneticist who did her PhD with Pääbo, returned home last year to establish a lab to extract and sequence ancient DNA at the IVPP. One of her immediate goals is to see whether some of the Chinese fossils belong to the mysterious Denisovan group. The prominent molar teeth from Xujiayao will be an early target. “I think we have a prime suspect here,” she says.

(Yes, she's *the* Fu from Harvard's Fu et al 2016 paper.)



Plus one of the comments is interesting:

sen darbi

•

2016-07-18 09:12 PM



The book on human origins was already rewritten (and then discarded) with the discoveries in Hueyatlaco, modern humans in North American at least 250,000, and perhaps as early as 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, according to four dating methods. They just weren't supposed to be there. But those finds had to be denied and ignored, because they proved conventional scientific beliefs about human origins to be myths, and would have effectively demolished the status quo of the scientific establishment regarding ancient humanity. It's really hard to admit, isn't it, that you haven't known what you're talking about through the course of your professional life. And others must go along, or be out on the street. So it's also a question of money. And that of course is not science. We are so much worse off then, those of us who simply seek the truth about such a fascinating and mysterious riddle—where did we come from? Science, alas, is not science, not on the big questions. It is politics, money, and human pride.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hueyatlaco

Hueyatlaco

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Hueyatlaco is an archeological site in the Valsequillo Basin near the city of Puebla, Mexico. After excavations in the 1960s, the site became notorious due to geochronologists' analyses that indicated human habitation at Hueyatlaco was dated to ca. 250,000 years before the present.[1][2]



These controversial findings are orders of magnitude older than the scientific consensus for habitation of the New World (which generally traces widespread human migration to the New World to 13,000 to 16,000 ybp). The findings at Hueyatlaco have mostly been repudiated by the larger scientific community, and have seen only occasional discussion in the literature.[3]



...

Biostratigraphic researcher Sam VanLandingham has published two peer-reviewed analyses that confirm the earlier findings of ca. 250,000ybp for the tool-bearing strata at Heyatlaco. His 2004 analysis found that Hueyatlaco samples could be dated to the Sangamonian Interglacial period (ca. 80,000 to 220,000ybp) by the presence of multiple diatom species, one of which first appeared during this era and others that became extinct by the era's end.[10] VanLandingham's 2006 paper[11] refined and re-confirmed his 2004 findings.

Need to check for any aDNA (if the ancient samples yield DNA) to see if and how "modern human" these hominid remains are.





But most can't be bothered. Steppists, IEists and other eurocentrists however are forever preoccupied with Europe/Europeans (dubbed "Caucasians" mystifyingly), and so Harvard(?) is now going to come out with yet another aDNA paper on Eurospace instead. But thein, all their research is always about themselves, from their POV, to tell stories about themselves and to pre-emptively direct all the future storytelling about themselves (about "European" ethnogenesis). They're boring now, overstudied, and mostly (if not entirely) irrelevant to everyone else. But they'll still keep pretending they're a source rather than a sink population, by pre-emptively doing all the early aDNA studies about themselves, thereby dictating - as much as possible and for as long as possible - all the storytelling about many other "Eurasian" populations as being (partial) derivatives of Europeans.





2. Anyway, a more sensationalist version is in the news (which didn't wait for the Chinese hominid aDNA to be analysed before formulating the title as a certainty):



www.express.co.uk/news/science/692980/Humans-Africa-race-evolved-from-CHINA

Humans do NOT originate from Africa – teeth discovery shows race evolved from CHINA

THE idea that modern day humans evolved in Africa is under question by Chinese academics who claim to have fossil evidence showing our ancestors stemmed from the east Asian country.

By Sean Martin

PUBLISHED: 13:08, Mon, Jul 25, 2016 | UPDATED: 13:18, Mon, Jul 25, 2016





The discovery of three human teeth in an ancient limestone cave in the district of Bijie in China could blow our understanding of human origin wide open.



The teeth, according to the researchers, are between 112,000 years and 178,000 years old – which is shockingly 75,000 years older than the first modern human fossils found in Africa.



When the teeth were first discovered, it was thought they belonged to an extinct ancestor of humans known as homo altaiensis, or Denisovian.



But new analysis shows that they belonged to homo sapiens.

...

Here too, one or two of the comments have bits of info:

human remains older than those in Africa have also been found in Afghanistan

(Of course, it could still be that the oldest modern humans are in Africa, waiting to be found. Or that older remains there were just too poorly preserved - because of the climate for instance - so that the real answer could remain elusive. A la how Malta-1 may be one of many migrants to Siberia - one of many extinct lines - and that ANE is not native to north eurasia/didn't originate there, but rather somewhere that couldn't preserve the source of such strains well.)





And of course, a comment revealing the white supremacist psyche/fears (eurocentrists never wanted African origins):

Snodgrass

This has long been an issue. The Chinese have been very confident that the Chinese race developed seperately. They reject the African basis for all Homo Sapien Sapien. I understood the genetic evidence supported the Out Of Africa theory and western scientists in the main do so , but genetic evedence is so easily corrupted a find like this so early could change everything..... If western gentic markers are missing from these finds we have lot of work to do....

Good for the Chinese for taking history-writing into their own hands, rather than letting the alien demons always write it for everybody, with everyone waiting around for the aliens to tell them stories based on (obviously) incomplete data.



It's Chinese researchers that made the major recent finds for & revealed some of the most important recent info on dinos too (besides IIRC supplying the final proofs regarding dino to bird evolution too).





3. Another topic:



www.express.co.uk/news/science/655379/Ancient-dormant-virus-lurking-in-YOUR-DNA-which-could-RESURRECT-itself-at-any-moment

Ancient dormant virus lurking in YOUR DNA which could RESURRECT itself at any moment

AN ANCIENT virus is lurking within our DNA which could spring back into action at any moment, scientists have discovered.

By Sean Martin

PUBLISHED: 17:25, Thu, Mar 24, 2016 | UPDATED: 17:41, Thu, Mar 24, 2016





[...] After analysing the genome of some 2,500 people, the team found nineteen new pieces of non-human DNA within our genome, taking the total of us which isn’t human to a whopping eight per cent, which is largely made up of viruses.



[...]



Some of this newly discovered DNA could have been passed along through humans for as long as 670,000 years, and some of which may influence diseases in our bodies today.



However, most startlingly is the fact that the experts have found a piece of viral code which is still completely intact and may spring an ancient virus into life once more.

Are they sure only 8% of human DNA is viral and not all of it? I'd have thought it would be the latter... 'twould explain the parasitic tendencies for the largest parasite (macrovirus) on the planet and the most numerous.

[Heathens exempted from all such insults, of course.]