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The Hayabusa capsule has traveled 2.5 billion miles (4 billion kilometers) in seven years and is expected to land in the desert of South Australia state Sunday night. Could it have alien life on it? Doubtful in my opion.........
Here a link to the article Scientists wait in Outback for Japanese spacecraft - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_australia_space_landing - broken link)
Watched a nat geo documentary about this and they said not only is it likely but its probable. I wont go into details as the documentary was an hour long but if you are interested its the "Whats out there" 1 of 6 documentary.
Watched a nat geo documentary about this and they said not only is it likely but its probable. I wont go into details as the documentary was an hour long but if you are interested its the "Whats out there" 1 of 6 documentary.
Are you saying the the National Geographic documentary said it is probable that the Hayabusa capsule has collected a sample of life? Or are you saying that the NG program was saying that it's probable there's life elsewhere in the universe, including our own solar system?
The Hayabusa probe was plagued with technical problems well before it arrived at the asteroid Itokawa. The Japanese have stated they had no idea whether the procedure intended to stir up and collect dust samples actually worked, not to mention returniing with any samples, although it's hoped that the probe's landing on the asteroid may have stirred enough to at least adhere to the probe, maybe some filtering into the probe. Even if it had, most if not all dust particles could've burned off the probe on during reentry of the Earth's atmosphere. If anything did remain on the exterior of the probe, it would be heavily contaminated with dust from the Earth on impact. What the Japanese are hoping for is that the procedure to collect dust samples of the asteriod went on as planned, even though there was a communication problem with the probe.
In my opinion, it's extremely unlikely any form of microbial life exists on Itokawa and hitched a ride back to Earth. However, it's possible that organic compounds (molecular chemical building blocks of life) might be present there. As far as I know, nothing has yet been determined what may or may not have been brought back by the probe. The Japanese will be conducting extensive and highly detailed examinations of the probe to learn if anything has been collected. It remains to be seen what the results will be. The main idea of sending the probe was to better understand what kind of stuff such asteroids are made of.
IM saying that according to scientists its not out of the question that life on earth started from an asteroid which hit earth billions of years ago which originated from another solar system. Sorry about the run on sentence
IM saying that according to scientists its not out of the question that life on earth started from an asteroid which hit earth billions of years ago which originated from another solar system. Sorry about the run on sentence
It's quite possible organic molecules may have been been distributed from asteroids and comets during the early history of the Earth. Not just from asteroids though, as such compounds would have existed throughout the entire proto-solar system in the form of gas and dust which ultimately contributed to the formation of the planets, at least the rocky planets, and in turn with the right combination anbd conditions, enabled life to get a start and thrive on Earth. It's hard to say if such materials originated from another solar system. However, the formation of gigantic clouds of gas and dust throughout the galaxy appears to originate from various supernovae which provides a stellar nurseries for the birth (or formation) of new stars, including our own sun.
In that sense, I agree with you, that asteroids certainly would have contributed to the formation of life on Earth, but then so would the collection of all kinds of small dust particles gravitating together and eventually growing as larger planetary-sized objects during the early accretion disk surrounding the young Sun. What we see today in the Asteroid Belt, and most likely the outer Kuiper Belt, are the remnants of the accretion disk.
Although the chemical materials for life (like carbon for example) might be present to contribute to the formation of life, it's doubtful (as the OP stated) that any life, even microbial life) is present on the asteroids for the Hayabusa probe to pick up. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, the probe has brought back with it, albeit, by sheer luck. The Japanese are hoping that the collection system might have worked as programmed despite all the technical problems. If it does contain material from the asteroid, it'll be an historic first to actually collect such material by landing on an asteriod and returning that material to the Earth. I'm hoping it managed to succeed with that task. It'll help us better understand asteroids, as well as the origins of the Earth and maybe life on the planet got a start.
In response to the OP, is it possible the probe could carry alien life? Probably not. It would be pretty exciting to see close up what kind of minerals are present though. On the other hand, there are still many things about the universe we don't yet understand, and many surprises waiting to be discovered. If we ever discover that microbes (such as nano-sized bacteria in a dormant state) exist in the harsh environment of deep space, I think it would radically change our views about how life on Earth began.
Well NB it seems you know a lot about this subject. A lot more than myself. Its interesting for me to read your post and other posts alike because to me its an interesting subject to speculate on. My friends and I and also colleagues will argue for hours about life on other planets, intelligent and non intelligent. Anyways the subject of Hyabusa landing on Earth is right on topic of other life out there. Id be interested to hear what scientists find when it hits.
Well NB it seems you know a lot about this subject. A lot more than myself. Its interesting for me to read your post and other posts alike because to me its an interesting subject to speculate on. My friends and I and also colleagues will argue for hours about life on other planets, intelligent and non intelligent. Anyways the subject of Hyabusa landing on Earth is right on topic of other life out there. Id be interested to hear what scientists find when it hits.
LOL! Subjects like this are of great interest to me, but I don't have a fraction of the knowledge that professionals in the field who have spent their lives studying do. We can't rule out various possibilities about life elsewhere. Mars seems to show it had an atmosphere in the distant past that was suitable for early forms of life, although there's no indication that any life exists there or ever did. But the possibility is still there.
Jupiter's moons, Europa and Ganymede, are suspected to contain oceans under their thick layers of ice, but there's no way at present to know, and to undertake such an exploration would be an enormous task, not something likely in the foreseeable future. Even Saturn's moon, Titan, with an incredibly hostile atmosphere of nitrogen and clouds of methane and ethene that freezes solid at the surface, might contain some kind of strange alien life (microbial) that can thrive in such an environment. The thing is that we can't completely rule out the possibilities of life elsewhere in the solar system. I personally think the only life thriving in our solar system is probably here on Earth. Mars still remains a good possibility of life below the surface though, or may show some evidence of life in its distant past. I'm less optimistic about the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, but even they can't be completely ruled out.
We're generally looking for signs of life as we know it, the idea being to "follow the water" as an indication. But it's still entirely possible that life as we don't know it may survive in locations generally considered to be impossible. The real point is that we just don't know enough about what's out there. We're still at the very beginning stages of exploring space and the planets around us. I think what it gets down to is not about the odds or possibilities that life exists elsewhere. It's finding the actual proof of it by observing either living or fossilized specimens that would settle the question once and for all. Until then, we're left with guesses and speculation.
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