Wyoming Trip

 November 13, 2009 to November 17, 2009 with Patricia Lorono and Alice.

Visited Riverton, Wyoming. (Original post/backup link)

Predictions of Evolution of Alien Life

Evolution of life on other worlds is seeming more likely as human knowledge of the Universe expands. David Zeigler has recently proposed eleven Evolution Predictions of what abilities or traits will evolve on other worlds, conditions allowing. The predictions are that some lifeforms will be the following:

• Water dependent and carbon based.
• Chemosynthetic (chemical based energy synthesis) or photosynthetic (light energy synthesis).
• Heterotrophic and predators of heterotrophs (food chain of lifeforms).
• Passively or actively mobile to seek out optimum conditions. As such, body plans will evolve something similar to what we would identify as a head, with arrays of sensory organs.
• Sessile (non-mobile or anchored in place).
• Powered flight (birds, some insects, bats, pterosaurs), or at least directed gliding (flying squirrel, flying fish).
• Parasites, which on Earth account for over 65% of the total number of species.
• Genes will be selfish, and natural selection will spawn adaption to the environment.
• Will have senses, especially sight, sound, touch, heat detection, etc.
• Motile, organisms will have natural attraction and repulsion to stimuli.
• Large bodies of water will foster a wide variety of lifeforms, which may independently evolution similar adaptions.

The list seems a little incomplete and maybe not well organized. It is a good starting point in the discussion of what we can expect to find on other worlds. It can help us in knowing where to look, as well. Perhaps this list is formed from human prejudice. However, with only Earth as our example, this (at least for the time being) seems to be a fair set of predictions.

Source: Skeptic Vol. 14 No. 2, 2008 - Predicting Evolution


Related articles

• Monkeydactyl: Pterosaur to Human?
• Video: What Would Trees Look Like On Other Planets?
• Predictions of Evolution of Alien Life
• Communication with Alien Civilizations
• Odds of Humanoids Evolving again
• Part 5: Blue Plants
• Part 4: Silicon Life
• Part 3: Arsenic Life
• Part 2: Exotic Amino Acids
• Part 1: Mirror Life

Largest building ever built *discovered* in Egypt

If ancient descriptions are correct, and if the recent discovery is what some think it to be, the lost Labyrinth of Egypt may be at Hawara. This was a massive temple that was described by many ancient authors, such as Herodotus, to house 3000 rooms. The walls of each room were filled will paintings and hieroglyphs. Some have presumed this labyrinth housed the lost Hall of Records, dispite other theories that place it under the Great Sphinx of Giza. I'm not going to go on about this. Just check the links.

Ocean

Blue Dark Ocean Depths
Strange Living Treasures Hidden
Where The Monsters Dwell

13 and 13 coworker complaints and such

ThomasNet has had a blog. Apparently, it's been running in some fashion or other since 2000. Of course, back then maybe they didn't label it as a blog, but that's really what it was. There's a couple of articles that caught my attention recently.  (Original links no longer function, so please use the backup links.)

• 13 types of irritating coworkers (backup link)
• 13 Types of coworkers we like (backup link)

In these articles, David R. Butcher explores the best and worst traits in our coworkers (and ourselves) at work. His likes and dislikes may seem a bit arbitrary. He complains about the suck-ups in the first article, but lauds the jokers in his second. He makes the obvious observations regarding the positive coworker; yet in a sense of irony, he complains about the complainers. It's a fairly entertaining read.

Yet another Earth-world Found!

As technology and techniques in the hunt for terrestrial planets improves, we are finding that terrestrial planets seem to exist in a wide variety of star system types. In a presentation to the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, MI on June 2, a team of astronomers stated that they used the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics II telescope (New Zealand) to find a planet around a brown dwarf star. The planet is estimated as being about three times the mass of Earth.

The particular world discovered by the scientific team orbits a start about 300 light-years from our Solar System. It's orbit is likely as large as that of Venus around our Sun. According to current estimates, it most likely is made up ice and rock.

As more worlds are found, it seems to me that human understanding must accept that there is a very high likelihood that life exists beyond of Earth. There may come a day in our life times when such existence of life becomes completely undeniable.

Source: Astronomy Sept 2008 - Another super-Earth discovered