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True - but the Goldilocks zone is "liquid water possible due to solar influence". A radioactive core on a planet or gravitational "squashing" on a large moon orbiting a gas giant would also create liquid water outside that zone.
Also liquid methane / ammonia are also good candidates for supporting a different form of life.
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That's long been my opinion. We've anthropomorphised the search for life, by looking for it in our own image, or at least in the image of life on this stone.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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Ah true - as they now think with Encaladus/Europa. Good point.
I'm still skeptical about methane/ammonia. It's possible, but Nitrogen just doesn't have the flexibility as a molecule as Carbon. Only three possible bonds - with some of the combinations being highly reactive - limits its use in my mind. Of course, it could just be my mind that's limited. The bacteria search[^] could lead to some interesting (and possibly mind expanding) finds.
TTFN - Kent
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The even more mind breaking possibility is that of life existing at a time scale incompatible with our own - for example if something was "alive" but had a metabolism so slow it only changed over tens of thousands of years, could we ever recognise that?
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Have you read Stephen Baxter's "Proxima" and "Ultima" by any chance? 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Maybe. We're really good at seeing patterns though (see those who think Earth is 'alive'), and finding stuff that's alive, but definitely wouldn't look like it from the casual observer.
They certainly wouldn't be likely to be detected by SETI, that's for certain.
TTFN - Kent
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On a sufficiently large timescale could sand dunes be considered alive?*
*I'm beginning to suspect that Italian wine was not entirely fresh...
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I may have to rethink my opinion of Italian whites - they are definitely more inspiring than I remember 
We're way deep into really hypotheticals, but I still think it's possible. Given a couple of generations of intense observation, I think we'd notice something was up. For example, the current estimate for carbon cycling on the Earth is 100-200 million years[^]. So we go to some other planet and start observing, and notice that some of these long cycles get diverted into "something". Over similarly long cycles, we notice some sort of signalling (chemical, electromagnetic, or sonic) happens between components of that "something". Our portable pattern matching devices (those grey lumps we all carry) notices that certain messages match certain phenomena, et voila: The Polar Vortex this year is Gaia[^] complaining about fracking
Yup. I think it's half-past wine for me.
TTFN - Kent
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: tardigrades
I love the tardigrade. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, in Cosmos, said it best: If an alien were to land on earth and do an exhaustive life form scan, it would likely conclude that Earth is a planet of tardigrades, with clusters of additional species here and there.
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There's one species that have never subscribed to YAGNI
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Forcing employees to sign non-compete agreements drives entrepreneurs into states where they have more rights, such as California. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
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Kent Sharkey wrote: non-compete agreements
which are unenforceable.
#SupportHeForShe If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
Only 2 things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Forcing employees to sign non-compete agreements drives entrepreneurs into
states where they have more rights, such as California
Call me cynical, but I think it has more to do with the nice weather than non-compete agreements.
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These minimum requirements, as outlined by Paul Reed, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, will need to be met in order to boot and run Windows 10, update and service the OS, as well as deliver a baseline user experience for devices that run the OS, regardless of the make or brand. "You must be this tall to get on the ride"
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Rides are made for children, for enjoyment... But they're always left behind by this lame excuse, "You must be this tall to get on the ride".
These requirements are just so awesome! But I wonder what was that rumor about Windows 10 being of about 1.5GB in size.
Quote: GB of RAM and 16GB of storage for 32-bit installs, 2GB of RAM and 20GB of storage for 64-bit
A lot of confusions.
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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During the past few weeks, Microsoft has promised to improve the speed at which Windows 10 builds are released to Insiders. "There's a bad moon on the rise."
OK. I'm not entirely sure why that's the first thing that popped into my head about monthly installs.
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I am simply going to turn automatic updated off and then peace of mind will be all mine.
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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Today we are pleased to announce that MSBuild is now available on GitHub and we are contributing it to the .NET Foundation! What do they have left to open source? Code for the shouty menus in VS?
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Nope, their code of conduct is yet to be open-sourced!
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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Kent Sharkey wrote: What do they have left to open source? Code for the shouty menus in VS?
Opensourced at https://github.com/Microsoft/referencesource/blob/master/mscorlib/system/string.cs[^] lines 2709-2715:
[Pure]
public String ToUpper() {
Contract.Ensures(Contract.Result<String>() != null);
Contract.EndContractBlock();
return this.ToUpper(LegacyMode ? CultureInfo.InvariantCulture : CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);
}
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Microsoft detailed how they are going to make it easier for developers to integrate Cortana into their apps. It looks like you're trying to recreate a hated feature: would you like help with that?
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Kent Sharkey wrote: It looks like you're trying to recreate a hated feature: would you like help with that?
No, but please execute future queries faster.
Recursion: see Recursion.
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I've broken the encryption!
C = C
o = l
r = i
t = p
a = p
n = y
a = 2
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users this summer, but Microsoft is also extending its offer to software pirates. Kind of takes all the fun out of torrenting it now
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