Martian meteorite surrenders new secrets of possible life

[Notebook]

I've never understood the fascination of brain size and relative mass. Whales have giant brains, so what. Let me know when they fly in space (without Spock and Scotty's help). Parrots have much smaller brains, but a few exceptional specimens are smart enough to form sentences, such as the famous Alex the African Gray.

A Norwegian Blue, surely?

N.

 

[Andy44]

African Grays are smarter, but the Norwegian Blue has beautiful plumage!

 

[Urwumpe]

African Grays are smarter, but the Norwegian Blue has beautiful plumage!

Yes, but the typical Norwegian Blue does not sing, unless you put a African Gray into the cage. The Gray then acts as conductor.

 

[ijuin]

For all we know, non-carbon based life (silicates and weirder) may evolve in the reverse order, they start with brains and develop teeth, legs and claws later.

That is a fascinating concept, but it overlooks the fact that teeth, legs, and claws (or something fulfilling similar purposes) are generally required to keep the brain alive long enough for it to evolve to be very smart.

First of all, brains need food, If food is so easy to get that the brain can just reach out and grab anything floating by in the water (or other liquid that it lives in, or on the ground if it lives on land), then the brain has no need to be smart to survive.

However, if food takes work to acquire, then the brain needs mobility to get TO the food (swimming, flying, crawling, walking, whatever), and then teeth or claws or tentacles or something to allow it to grab and kill the food.

 

[T.Neo]

Evolution on Earth has taken many different routes and produced many different adaptations. Life on other planets will be under the same laws of nature. There are things that probably won't evolve, like feathers, and things that will almost certainly evolve, like eyes.

I think "conventional" carbon based life will be the most common, if not the predominant form of life in the Universe.

The elements that make up life like us (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen or CHON for short) are some of the most common elements in the universe. We may contain some other elements, but we're mostly CHON. Other elements such as silicon are less common in the universe, as are proposed "alternate solvents" such as ammonia and ethane.

There's also the issue of efficiency; silicon based life or life using another solvent might not be as efficient as "conventional" life. Carbon is really a reactive atom.

I'm in no way denying the possibility of such life, what I'm saying here is that the raw ingredients for carbon based life are the most common, and the most reactive. Heck, we could have had an early Earth populated by all sorts of life, based on silicon, phosphorous, you name it. Only that it was outcompeted by carbon based life.

Less radical forms of alternate biochemistry (alternate chirality or wholly alien complex molecules) could however be very common.

 

[Marcel]

I haven't heard any official announcement, but I found this:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/home/mars_meteorite.html