Talk:Astrobiology

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Many of this theories about alien life rely on the premise that the existence of water (and other physical circustances) in a planet leads or is a clue to the existence of life wich is in my view a false judgement and it points in many ways to spontaneous generation theories, wich were never proven and somewhat go back to pre-scientifical thinking. The whole question is how life happened in the Universe. It can be an extremely rare event (unique), or quite regular. I do not agree that non-living matter can generate living beings, otherwise I would start thinking that the right mixture of water, minerals and sunlight would create bacteria, worms or whatever. The circumstances in wich life appeared are still far beyond our understanding.--Fpenteado 16:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


Is it worth pointing out that the vast majority of scientists now use the term Astrobiology? C.F. the two scientific journals dedicated to the topic are "Astrobiology" and "The International Journal of Astrobiology", respectively. As "Xenobiology" has fallen out of favor in the science community, I'd suggest a name change... IdahoEv 07:51, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree we should move to astrobiology, and google does too: Google:astrobiology (743,000 hits) vs. Google:xenobiology (9,430 hits many of which are Wikipedia or it's mirrors). Also there are journals and funding sources for astrobiology and it has become a more respectable enterprise. Xenobiology is not currently used. If there are no objections, I'll do the move soon. --Lexor|Talk 03:39, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
Lexor, you are correct. The page needs to be moved. It was originally named "astrobiology", but someone moved it in September. I have never understood the reasoning behind such a move, and it has bothered me for months. Since Astrobiology already exists as a redirect (after it was moved), I believe that the easiest way to preserve the history of Xenobiology is to temporarily delete the Astrobiology page, and then move Xenobiology to Astrobiology. --Viriditas | Talk 04:28, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
the absence of life in the rest of the Universe is a falsifiable hypothesis

In what way is it falsifiable ? --Taw

Proven communication from extraterrestrials, or proven samples of extraterrestrial life, would disprove the hypothesis that we are alone in the Universe.

Isn't earth so unique? Everyone is striving so hard to find even a nonexistant grain of life on another planet, when the earth is teeming with life! Every single inch! -- The Anome

Try a thought experiment. G. W. Bush says US telescopes have picked up signals from aliens telling us to stop using drugs. Do you believe him? If not, do you have equal access to the telescopes to listen to them yourself? The hypothesis is probably NOT falsifiable in the strict sense, as the validation of where the 'living' material came from isn't going to determine if (a) the few scientists who can touch it weren't duped (b) it really came from space or (c) it's out of a military lab.
The motivations for such games are extreme, BTW, if it CAN be done it WILL be done, faking it I mean: 'Oops the alien thing got out of the lab and killed all the people who can't digest lactose, not our fault, just how it evolved, oops'. Of course only white folk digest lactose.

The Drake Equation doesn't provide any compelling reason to assume that extraterrestrial life exists, as it may be that some of the other fractions are so low we're the only planet that's ever had life on it. Hence, that argument is flawed, isn't it? --anon

Statement qualified - it should work for you now. --maveric149

Xenobiology should rightfully include speculation about, and modelling of, and attempting even to try to CREATE, alternate life forms, and that is a bit different than the existing xenobiology/artificial-life distinction.

[edit] Intangible evidence?

"There is no current tangible evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life"

What kind of evidence falls outside of the heading of "tangible evidence"? JWSchmidt 16:32, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Psychic communication, teleportation, astral projection, crop circles, abductions... See pseudoscience. --zandperl 23:47, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Is this page copied... from... or to somwhere?

Hi!

So... looking for Xenobiology on wikipedia, I have this file... good... but Google also comes up wit

We are the only planet to have life in the entire universe bigger than billions of light years? How probable is this naive statement?

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