life on earth and elsewhere

Joe Kiniry (kiniry@cs.caltech.edu)
Thu, 8 Aug 96 08:36:38 PDT


Robert Harley writes:
> Joe Kiniry <kiniry@cs.caltech.edu> writes:
> >1. scientists have believed for decades that the only other planet in
> >our solar system that might have been capable of sustaining life as
> >we know it was mars.
>
> Actually, it is believed that one of Jupiter's moons (can't remember
> which) has sub-surface liquid water, heated by the immense tidal forces,
> which could sustain organic reactions...

yes, actually, ganymade and io both have possibilities. the first
because of its size and the possibility of polar icecaps in its past
and its newly discovered magnetic field. the second for its chemical
makeup.

> >3. we find evidence of life on mars.
> >4. that's two for two in our solar system. (probably <grin>)
>
> You have to be careful about using the existence of life on Earth in
> any statistical argument. The conditional probability that there is
> life on Earth, given that us earthlings are wondering about the
> frequency of life, is 1.

true. but from an outside observer's point of view....

> Bah. That NASA press conference was such a fuck-up. And what the heck
> does "we talked to the world space leadership" mean?

it means there was a joint press conference going on at area 51.

> >America Online Suffers One of Worst Outages in Cyberspace History
> >[...imminent death of the net...]
>
> Wait a sec guys (and girl), this is the best thing that could happen
> to the net! Now if someone can figure out how to take down Compuserve...

simple! i could mailbomb compuserve into the group in a heartbeat.
think about it; its on the only service where you don't have to do
email discovery...

joe