Possible liquid water found on Mars?

True, that'd be really cool. As fro the silicon being difficult, of course it's difficult, but in the absence f carbon competition, and the voracity of life, it remains a possibility, and we should be ready to recognise such life if it is found.
The point is that DNA is not a necessary part of life, all life on earth may have it, but another coding mechanism may be used, especially if we're dealing with a molecule unlike water such as ammonia or some such. Nature's bound to have many ways of getting her dirty mits every where 😛

Originally posted by agryson
True, that'd be really cool. As fro the silicon being difficult, of course it's difficult, but in the absence f carbon competition, and the voracity of life, it remains a possibility, and we should be ready to recognise such life if it is found.
The point is that DNA is not a necessary part of life, all life on earth may have it, but another coding mechanis ...[text shortened]... onia or some such. Nature's bound to have many ways of getting her dirty mits every where 😛

The benefit of water, contrary to other solvents, is that it is a liquid between 0 and 100 Celcius. There is not any other such effective solvent that a body liquid (blood) can be based upon.

The large range in temperature of liquid water make it safer for life if the planets orbit parameters and other climate reliant properties are not stable.

I vote for carbon and water based life. It worked well for us, didn't it?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
The benefit of water, contrary to other solvents, is that it is a liquid between 0 and 100 Celcius. There is not any other such effective solvent that a body liquid (blood) can be based upon.

The large range in temperature of liquid water make it safer for life if the planets orbit parameters and other climate reliant properties are not stable.

I vote for carbon and water based life. It worked well for us, didn't it?

So far so good🙂 But you cannot rule out the possiblity of life, even carbon based life on planets such as Titan where the main liquid is methane. It also serves in the liquid department at the temps in that environment.

Originally posted by sonhouse
So far so good🙂 But you cannot rule out the possiblity of life, even carbon based life on planets such as Titan where the main liquid is methane. It also serves in the liquid department at the temps in that environment.

Titan is cold, with slow chemical processes. It will take some time to form even the most primitive form of life - but there is some probability.

It is rather sad that the life forming processes at Titan will take a great kick on when the Sun goes nova in another 5 billion of years. The warmth will give a life surface just to die out when the Sun become a small white dwarf som 100 millions of years later.

I think the most probable place in the Solar System is one of the Jovian moons - Europa. Lots of water.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Titan is cold, with slow chemical processes. It will take some time to form even the most primitive form of life - but there is some probability.

It is rather sad that the life forming processes at Titan will take a great kick on when the Sun goes nova in another 5 billion of years. The warmth will give a life surface just to die out when the Sun becom ...[text shortened]... the most probable place in the Solar System is one of the Jovian moons - Europa. Lots of water.

Sounds like a good sci fi plot, Earthlings long since gone, evolved out of the solar system or extinct, whatever, meanwhile Titan starts warming up. Earthlings, knowing in advance this is going to happen but way too far in the future to be of any direct help for mankind, sets up nanostorage solids that contain expandable DNA of all earth life when the waters thaw out, by this time earth and earthlings all gone but there is, say for the sake of the story, a 200 million year sweet spot where life forms but we had given it a head start by knowing in advance what DNA to come bursting out of the nanostorage when the place heats up. This leads to a second resurgance of mankind and the full story of the human race is played out this time they know there is not billions of years and so develop an incredibly advanced civilization, much more advanced than anything that came before in all the billions of years the earth had life. So they figure out faster than light travel and find an earth-like planet around a star that is like our earth was say 3 billion years in OUR past, thus giving them a clean start in a new solar system, this time building a multigalactic civilization that will now attempt to change the coming fate of the universe, a challange even these advanced people may not stop.
But before the universe goes pow or crinkle or whatever it is doomed to do, they figure out a multidimensional travel route to another younger universe and start over with one that will last a trillion years. What do you think?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Sounds like a good sci fi plot, Earthlings long since gone, evolved ... to do, they figure out a multidimensional travel route to another younger universe and start over with one that will last a trillion years. What do you think?

I wait by the book stand, from now on. Would love to read something like this!

Your thought about mankined 5 billion years into the future is fascinating.

Mankind have evolved from primates to where we are now the last 5 million of years. To what will the mankind evolve in the next 5 million of years? Not to say 5 billion years, 1000 times of that time span.
When in the future does man evolve out of the kind we are now into the next stage, into some high evolved creature not imaginable by the contemptorary man?

Or do we devolve back into primates after some time?

There's a great book out, though it's not fiction, called "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil. There's a website too, but I've forgotten the url, I'll look it up again later.
In this book he has a theory about human development (it's quite a heavy tome, don't think you'll have it read in a few days) which is based on exponentials and he's had some success with this theory in other areas, though the theory does have its critics. He predicts we'll reach the next "epoch" somewhere between 2040 and 2055.
He suggests taking care of your health so that you can get that far, apparently it's going to be great. I won't spoil the book by going into greater detail about the end result unless you guys really want me to!
Also, I remembered the link...
www.kurzweilAI.net
but it spoils the 'result' too, you'll just have to get the book.

Originally posted by agryson
There's a great book out, though it's not fiction, called "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil. There's a website too, but I've forgotten the url, I'll look it up again later.
In this book he has a theory about human development (it's quite a heavy tome, don't think you'll have it read in a few days) which is based on exponentials and he's had some suc weilAI.net
but it spoils the 'result' too, you'll just have to get the book.

Is that a new one? His original book was "The age of spiritual machines" with the same theme, been out a few years now. My buddy Leboeuf (plays chess here) and I have been kind of charting the trend to his 'singularity' and techology seems to be on track for this.
For instance, supercomputers now are exceeding 1500 TRILLION instructions per second. Intel has just announced a single chip with 80 cpu's inside! Not for sale yet, still a demo, but the trend is pretty clear. That single chip would enable PC's or laptops with teraflop computing speed which is hundreds of times faster than any PC out today. It only seems a matter of time. Newer technologies like Spintronics which uses the magnetic orientation of molecules instead of electron flow in a computer, quantum computation, a dream for now but seems to be inching forward to a day when a computer spits out the answer almost before you ask the question. These technologies will make todays machines look like pocket calculators and I mean the Petaflops of today, will be more like Gigapetaflop computers effectively. Try to think what that will mean for the world.
If you have computers thousands of times faster than even the best of today, it makes the simulation of a human brain most likely, right now there is a simulation of half a mouse brain, a huge step along the way to having a human brain in silicon or whatever the technology of the distant future will be. When that happens, all sorts of new technologies will follow, perhaps super mathemetician computers better than Newton or Chadradeskar or Steven Hawking making new discoveries humans can only dream about. The problem then occurs when having been made, will the computer not release its own findings but keep it to itself, thinking the human race too immature to use such advanced technologies it could unleash. Gives you food for thought, eh.
About my new book🙂, the most likely scenerio would be humans just die out and maybe intelligence with it. So I see where they could invent a kind of solid DNA and solid simulation of cells that could store the human genome, maybe by that time, say a million years from now given a smooth time of solving earthly problems, enabling a truly scientific age with a million years of uninterrupted science, could make seeds of a new ecology in the form of nanotube coded solids that would start making new life forms just out of the environment that would ensue on the newly warming Titan, billions of years after humans have gone. Say 4 billion years from now, intelligence has been long gone from the solar system and the new seeds start hatching the entire ecology of earth and it has hundreds of millions of years to get it going. In light of Kurtzweil's ideas, I think it could actually come about. I have to think about a real book here, I think it has real potential for a bang up tale, don't you think?