r H Y nolite

Thoughts on 'life'
December 17 2003 3.47am

Was watching National Geographic just now, a documentary about 4 scientists exploring a series of caves. When they took some of the rock samples back to a lab to observe under a microscope they were quite surprised to find living organisms on them.

Which really struck me when I heard one of the scientists exclaim 'its really surprising life can exist under such conditions!' Such conditions being zero sunlight and high sulphur contents. Sure, it is undeniable that organisms like us humans, animals and plants definitely cannot survive in the above-mentioned conditions, but that does not mean that other 'life' cannot exist or even thrive in conditions drastically different from ours. Such an opinion is obviously narrow and short-sighted.

To even begin with, we humans live in an ozone environment that is highly corrosive. Just leave a piece of iron out exposed to our atmosphere for a couple of days and u will see what i mean. And yet, we cannot live without oxygen, this highly corrosive gas. So whats a couple of hundreds of degrees celcius and a whole load of suphuric acid to other possible life? It definitely could be possible that these lifeforms breathe sulphurous gas and need the 400 degrees of temperature to keep their mostly sodium bodies supple enough to provide for themselves the ease of movement.

I mean, who decreed that all lifeforms in the universe ( I'm working on the assumption that there's life out there. ) must be carbon-based? Who decreed that all lifeforms out there must breathe oxygen and drink water? If we restrict ourselves to such limitations, our search for life out in the universe would encounter numerous problems, the biggest one of which would aptly be described as being that we've been looking at the wrong worlds after all. Maybe somewhere out there on another planet some aliens have their telescopes pointed at our Earth but thinking to themselves: 'Beautiful planet, but I doubt that any life could exist there. It just doesn't have enough friuyterium for life to be possible.' Whatever friuyterium is...

You're just the happy go-lucky type. You might have
your pet peeves, but other than that, you're
mainly calm. Blending in with your
surroundings, you're the type of person who
everyone likes. Usually it's you who cracks
jokes at social gatherings - after all,
laughter is the best medicine. Sometimes you
pretend to be stupid, but in all actuality, you
could be the next Einstein.


What Type of Soul Do You Have ?
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