lander samples Mars water

[Karlos]

Yep, inferring the existence of water on mars spectroscopically is one thing, to get a lump of ice is quite another.

I'm eager to see the full analysis but it won't be available for weeks :-(

[Karlos]

Well, it's solid ice they found. Liquid water wouldn't last long on Mars today, it would either freeze, boil or more likely, both at once ;-)

However, direct confirmation of water ice carries increases the likelihood that the "ancient wet mars" theory holds water, if you pardon the awful pun. It also increases the probability that subsurface liquid water may still exist.

Since liquid water is a critical requirement for the development of life as we know it, finding it or evidence that it existed can only increase the probability that life exists or existed.

[Karlos]

amigaksi wrote:

I always thought there could be life out there but may not be in the form we know it.  As Karlos prudently points out, we have not detected life "as we know it".

It's a big universe. Abiogenesis here in our solar system, on this planet, has given rise to one principal set of common biochemistry. Given the limitless potential for carbon chemistry alone it makes me wonder if that set is is the only workable one or if there are others that work in conditions quite different from those we know. For instance, there could be life on Titan using radically unfamiliar biochemistry to that we are familiar with.

There's even the possibility that life based on elements other than carbon may exist but given what we know so far of other elements abilities to form large, thermodynamically and kinetically stable molecules of the sort of diversity we see for carbon it would appear unlikely.

[Karlos]

I've occasionally mused that the entire biosphere or even the entire planet is a single organism with a metabolism comprised of the many intersecting and interdependent regulatory systems maintain life as we know it...

[Karlos]

You have my ear, sir...

[Karlos]

I know what it is; I was simply soliciting your opinion on the concept.

[Karlos]

You could take it to the logical conclusion that we exist only in that simulation and never entered it from the outside. Again, you'd have no way of knowing. Furthermore, said simulation might not bear any resemblance to whatever passes for reality outside that simulation.

. the obvious answer is that there is no possible way for anything within the simulation to ever determine the nature of anything outside of the simulation. It should however be possible, I suspect, that one should be able to determine if we are in a simulation though...

What if something external to the simulation was able to interact with us as simulated entities? Such an event could give rise to the idea that both our existence within that simulation and the simulation itself is not all that there is...

[Karlos]

Assuming the nature of the simulation is entirely in the hands of its designers to specify, the rules of that simulation could readily include a one-way mechanism for information injection that, again by design, we'd never be able to identify.

Only the simulated entities within the simulation (i.e. us and everything else we perceive) are fully subject to the entire rules of the simulation, the same is not true for something outside trying to debug it :-D

[Karlos]

Well, the more I think about, the less I can see how we could even be able to recognize an external influence... if the influence doe not follow the laws of our universe, then it would appear to us as a glitch, events that are totally impossible would exist, and given how fundamental our simulation is, the glitch would be devastating to us...

That would very much depend on what that influence was. Provided the result of said influence did not violate the laws of the simulation, the mechanism is irrelevant. It's like me poking information into memory in a running OOP system where none of the code in our system would ever modify data at that address. The specification of that system cannot modify that data but uses it somehow. As far as the objects in that system are concerned it's a fundamental law of "nature" that the data there is immutable. Along come I, with full memory access privileges  and change it. An object that has any private copy of that data can know that it has changed but not how. This doesn't mean that everything to crash and burns.

Who knows? The strange ramblings of those we call prophets would be the only glitch we'd see. And then discount as being a glitch - ie, people regard them as bonkers.

[Karlos]

I'm so glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read this thread just now!