[citation][nom]horendus[/nom]This basically means that the amount of potential habitats in which life could have spawned outside of our planet has been dramatically increased. It also means the "bio genesis" looks to have occurred at least twice on our planet and proves without a doubt that our existence is no more unique than the next planet in which the chemical and energy conditions were enough to have started life.[/citation]
Assuming that NASA actually says what NOS is reporting it as saying, it does increase the number of possible forms of life by a factor of at least 2. However, just how common life is is something that will remain speculative until either ET lands, publicly, on Earth or we find life on other planets.
[citation][nom]dgingeri[/nom]Also, given that over 95% of this galaxy has been bombarded in gamma radiation from various novas, neutron star and black hole collisions, and other astrophysical phenomena that life can't possibly exist as much as normal people keep thinking it does. Physicists understand that 95% of the galaxy is uninhabitable, normal people don't. Just the fact that we exist is such a crap shoot that it certainly can't be an accident. The universe is just too hostile.[/citation]
In my opinion, scientists often assume that they know "everything" and base opinions such as this on assuming they know "everything." History has often shown that such assumptions are baseless. As I see it, it would be better stated that 95% of the galaxy is uninhabitable for life as we understand it. Though it is beyond current understanding, it is not impossible that life somewhere has developed in such extreme conditions and that such life has found a way to use such radiation in ways that support it or is perhaps required for such life to exist. Science used to think that the conditions under which extremophiles exist could not support life until extremophiles were found. Some extremophiles have even been found to exist in the cores of nuclear fission reactors.
Also note that astronomers have recently concluded that
they have underestimated the number of stars in the known universe by a factor of three.
/nos.nl/artikel/202302-nieuw [...] tdekt.html ? The article doesn't say NASA believes the DNA to be alien per se. It only says that its composition is totally different from that of all known terrestrial DNA (as Phosporus is replaced by Arsenic in the bacterial composition. This still leaves open the possibility that the DNA originated on earth, but was formed under completely different circumstances than other life forms.The only significance this has, is that it proves that living organisms can use different basic building blocks than just phosphorus, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and sulphur. But I thought most scientists already intuitively agreed with that these.Of course, the actual NASA broadcast might reveal totally different information, for example evidence that the DNA must be extra-terrestrial for some reason. Extremely minor nitpicking: NOS is a Dutch radio and TV station, so the news first appeared on TV, not in the online article.[/citation]
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