Jul 14 2007

Alien Life On Earth?

Over at the SF Sourcebook blog, William Garth Hopkins and Mark Vange post news reports and discussions of new discoveries in science to provide raw material for science fiction writers. Hopkins and Vange must be advanced beings themselves to provide such a selfless and wonderful service.

A post put up on Thursday discusses the idea that life could have arisen on Earth (or other planets for that matter) and we might never know, since we assume that DNA is the blueprint for ALL life. Hopkins reports on the ideas of Steven Benner from the Foundation For Applied Molecular Evolution, who hypothesizes that other forms of life may have survived on Earth and elsewhere based solely on the RNA molecule, the precursor to DNA. As Hopkins says:

But what about life as we don’t know it? What if other, completely distinct forms of biology also took root on the early Earth? After all, the swiftness with which life appeared might mean that it could easily do so anytime, anywhere the conditions are right. If so, maybe life arose more than once at different locations on the early Earth. Those other organisms might have their own biochemistry and a separate evolutionary history. They might not even use DNA—they could be, in essence, alien beings that just happened to emerge on the same planet. Which leads to the big question: What if one (or more) of those alternative forms of life is still around?

Although Hopkins and Benner apparently stop the speculation at higher lifeforms, this idea seemingly provides fodder for Mac Tonnies’ Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis, (list of Tonnies’ posts on this available here) if only in a “straight science” form. It’s refreshing to see mainstream science thinking in original ways. I believe that the end result of these new ideas will be an overhaul of our view of the universe and “reality,” with the realization that anthopocentric theories and a “balls and sticks” view of physics can only take us so far.

Hurrah!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Breaking News, Evidence, UFOlogy, Wake Up Down There. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.
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