If it was part of the lander, wouldn't it be surrounded by the tracks of the lander as it landed? Not sure about distances but it looks too far away to have just dropped off and I wouldn't think the lander would be ejecting things to any distance.

But it looks very unnatural. Curious! How far from the lander do you reckon it is?

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Spike
:)

Yup, or if it broke away at some point on the way down or landed on the ground recently, wouldn't there be a disturbance of the 'soil' around it, or is the picture not detailed enough to show that.

Also, if you know how far away it is, could you also figure out how big it is? (not that size matters if any of you gents are getting nervous! )

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<span style='color:purple'>My voices don't like you!</span>

hello

Age of Universe 15 Billion. Time it took for life to develop on earth 5Billion.
Communication limited to the speed of light.
I do not share the argument that there are billions and billions of stars and therefore life must have evolved somewhere else.
Facts that make this argument more plausible are planets around other stars, chemical compounds present in other starsystems which are building blocks for life.

Perhaps new evidence makes a yes answer a little more plausible.

However we do not have billions and billions of stars to draw from because our reach is absolutely limited by the speed of light.
Therefore we are limited to the universe of only perhaps 1000 light years.
Roundtrip for acquisition of knowledge 2000 years.
Our collective memory how far has it ever stretched in our existence? 200 years.
Therefore we will never be aware of other life in the universe therefore we are alone.
What a bummer. Do we value life sufficiently?

The universe is homogeneous (every region is the same as any other)... we can except there is life exist in the other side of our Milky Way...

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We come without a thing and gone without a thing. We need simple life. A cup of teas and a couple of meals per day, that is good enough. And this is my standard of living.

Extremely good point, Tiny. Scientists declare the Universe to be "homogenous". Isn't it likely, then, that life flourishes everywhere? Or is life some anomalous, uncharacteristic, singular phenomena here on this speck of dust we call Earth??

BUT...Zauber also has a very good point. The Universe is VAST. But the speed-of-light limits us to a range of only a few light years. So if there IS life, we'd never know/hear about it...(unless their lifespan is centuries/millenia??)...And the chances of life occurring within those few light years' radius from us is, perhaps, slim...perhaps...

It's just like asking the question: What happened before the Universe? or, What lies outside the Universe? Human physics (bound by the speed of light) cannot answer these fundamental questions. So it's perhaps stupid to ask, Is there life out there? Perhaps there is, but it might as well be in a black hole...where we can never reach...

I would have to disagree with you in a way Faulkner. The speed of light does not limit us as of yet because with our chemical rockets we will never even come close to nearing the speed of light. We can't be limited by something we can't reach. By the time that we do find the technology to reach near speeds of light - I would think that before we ever near the speed of light we will have learned enough about the frabric of space and time to bend it or warp it or tear it enough to allow us to jump from one place in space to another.

That's what I was going to say, Blue Wolf, but you beat me to it! :P As soon as we can achieve photonic speeds, we'll be sure to be shaking hands with tentacles & all kinds of weirdo appendages!

But to achieve PHOTON SPEED, we need to convert ourselves to pure energy!?

Can it possibly be done?

We cant, because we still having mass acting on us, if u wanna to achieve PHOTON SPEED, unless ur mass become "0"...

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We come without a thing and gone without a thing. We need simple life. A cup of teas and a couple of meals per day, that is good enough. And this is my standard of living.

I have been told that I am pure energy :P So maybe just a few more pots of coffee and I will make light speed

Sorry, out of topic here, but hey Tiny! What's the Chinese hieroglyphics?

I think it *could* be possible to convert us for zero mass, photon-speed. As long as we could have photons with some form of information content, we could encode ourselves in them and decode them at the other end. That opens up the debate about whether the decoded version is still "us" but I don't think it's *impossible* to conceive of some sort of light-speed travel.

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Spike
:)

We'd need this tiny mass according to Einstein... but aren't we starting to break away from that, new theories and loop holes in theories and stuff? Would we still need a near zero mass with the new theories starting to emerge, does anyone know?

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<span style='color:purple'>My voices don't like you!</span>

It certainly seems to me, though, that these problems of communication and speed are merely that, problems.

With enough time, resources, and intelligence ... I'm certain these issues can be resolved. I just wish more people supported such efforts. A little bit of support can go a long way. Political. Financial. Personal.

I don't have the mindset to contribute to physical engineering; but I certainly encourage those who do!

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Live long enough to see Space!

We can get to space as a species. The above link is information about life-extension (living longer) so that you can personally see a space-based civilization.

The MPrize (a prize to encourage life extension research now contains over 3 million dollars.

Intelligent life beyond the Earth...

I maintain, as I have for many years, that the single largest piece of evidence that we have to support intelligent life beyond our planet is the fact that we have no evidence of open contact with any as yet.

Point 1: There's the distance issue, making direct communication difficult at best.

Point 2: Any civilisation advanced enough to bridge the distance issue almost certainly would not contact us openly. I mean, think about it. How would the nations of our planet react to something like that?

If they're advanced enough to bridge the distance issue, it would stand to reason that they'd be intelligent enough to watch and study us and wait until we're at least to a point that we wouldn't do more harm than good with our reaction to them openly contacting us.

Of course, I have some other thoughts in regards to aliens and the like, but I'll save them for another time.

- Skywise

Tony873004 put an imaginary dog on real Mars. But look closer at the real picture of the now famous Martian rock outcrop. It looks like a fossilized skeleton of a "marsosaur". On the right, there is a well defined tail, then, moving to the left you will see the body bones. Well, it's a joke of course, but. . .

What is "marsosaur" by the way? some kinda alien? or u mean Mesosaur?

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We come without a thing and gone without a thing. We need simple life. A cup of teas and a couple of meals per day, that is good enough. And this is my standard of living.

We live in a universe limited to the speed of light. This limitation nullifies our attempts to contact galactic beings. Only those creatures in the Universe who (which) broke the speed of light limitation can communicate efficiently with each other. They must be as far ahead of us as we are ahead of amoeba (as Captain Kirk once said). They may study us, but communicate with us is perhaps useless to them.

I agree with you wholeheartedly galaxy dweller, and being a trekkie I agree with captain kirk as well.

If these aliens did communicate using a means of faster than light communication - is it possible taht we would not be able to 'hear' them? I mean with our technology the way it is?

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Damien,
International Baccalaureate Physics teacher
Optics, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Instrumentation Major
Admin: Pacific Science and Art

Well it could be. Bones do contain some sulfur but mostly calcium phosphate. Perhaps, they are eating both the sulfer and the calcium phosphate. They could also be sigle celled protozoa. Check this link out: There are some huge microbes here on Earth.

http://www.microbe.org/microbes/biggest.asp

If you have ever really examined a large photograph of a galaxy, or an empty part of the universe, you would realize that you couldn't possibly count the number of planets there are in that one galaxy. You couldn't even count the stars. And THEN you look in the background and see a whole bunch of nearby galaxys, with the same property of endless stars and planets, and then you look at the fuzzy background, and realize that the fuzzyness is only because they are all individual and countless galaxsies, that you cannot possibly come close to the number of planets out there. Its like the number for pi. It will NEVER end.
So if you think that there is an endless number for that, please do not tell me that they are all barren and wastelands. There have to be at least a thousand planets just like ours with a dominant species, that has a language, and can do all the same things we can.

Then you take into account that UFO's are not a recent "discovery" in many (okay, a few) old paintings, usually christian and catholic, there are silver DISKS and spheres in the background.
I know its a crazy farfetched theory, but could angels really be "aliens" They glowed, and could fly, but they didn't have wings. Well, who ever said your atoms would stay in one place when you defy gravity? They all had spacecrafts in their pictures... so, could we be an experement? They look like us... they think something like us... i think.... and they seem to be monitoring us. They make appearances, and I think we are just some little "controlled experement" with them controlling it.
Okay, now I'm going to be known as the freak right?



As for getting here fast... do you think there is a way into other dimensions? If so... it would be possible to stop or manipulate time. They are unstable. Or at least in theory. Or it would be possible to manipulate you into going "warp speed".

Endless number of stars leaves endles possiblites for life.

Ezekiel 28
13 thou wast in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was thy covering: the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the chrysolite, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the carbuncle, and the emerald, and gold. The workmanship of thy tambours and of thy pipes was in thee: in the day that thou wast created were they prepared.

Revelation 21
18 And the building of its wall [was] jasper; and the city pure gold, like pure glass:
19 the foundations of the wall of the city [were] adorned with every precious stone: the first foundation, jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald;
20 the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprasus; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst.

Astronomers spy 10 billion trillion trillion-carat diamond

The Associated Press


LOS ANGELES (AP) - If anyone's ever promised you the sun, the moon and the stars, tell 'em you'll settle for BPM 37093.
The heart of that burned-out star with the no-nonsense name is a sparkling diamond that weighs a staggering 10 billion trillion trillion carats. That's one followed by 34 zeros.

The hunk of celestial bling is an estimated 2,500 miles across, said Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"You would need a jeweler's loupe the size of the sun to grade this diamond," said Metcalfe, who led the team that discovered the gem.

The diamond is a massive chunk of crystallized carbon that lies about 300 trillion miles from Earth, in the constellation Centaurus.

The galaxy's largest diamond is formally known as a white dwarf, or the hot core of a dead sun.

Astronomers have suspected for decades that white dwarfs crystallized, but only recently were able to verify the hypothesis.

A paper detailing the discovery has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters for publication.

I bet this is one of Gods small stones in heaven. Huge to us but tiny to him.

Hmm, I find the Old Testament a fascinating sci-fi read! "God went up"..."God came down"... Obviously an extraterrestrial of some kind... However way you interpret it yourself, you have to admit, reading it "literally", this is what you get!

But even these fun (and sordid) Old Testament stories were re-writings of even older mythological texts like the Gilgamesh Epic and the Atrahasis Epic and the Enuma Elish and Ishtar's Descent Into Hell etc (all FANTASTIC reads!)...and in all of them, the "gods" come out of the sky!

Might just be ancient fictions, but hell, what an imagination!