you are silly. humans will kill each other off well before anything visits us. let us hate!

@ unk0wnx

A BS, don't you mean Bsc?

Anyway although I don't have a Bsc yet I am a second year undergraduate of Microbiology.

I really don't understand how anybody who studied Biology cannot see how DNA is molecule of inheritance and of evoloution. Through use of G+C% and the DNA molecules "melting" point we can arccurately show relatedness. Through use of protein databases we can show how one protein, through traceable mutation in DNA, can be turned from one into another and then predict the "evolutionary time" (which is not equivilent to real time) that mutation would have needed to occur. Through tracing changes in the conserved regions within the Ribosome we can difinitivly show how related each speices is. 

With all this information the tree of evolutionary life preposed, by Darwin, is  highly thesiable and almost beyond doubt. In a vision of the world without evolution how the varieties of speices and creatures came about is mind bogglingly difficult to understand. 

And adaption (and natural variation) IS how evolution happens.

i have no idea what the guy above me just said...

but i think that unkn0wn doesnt know waht he is talking about...this guy above me sounds like he know what he is talking about...jsut listen to the guy above...

Good explanation. Saved me time having to research it in order to explain it. Im studdying physics not biology.

You get a pizza

Well, if that's the case... basic physic & chemistry would be in his arsenal which most people get in HighSchools.

I went in College(s) from the age of 17 but that was in the mid '70s... when the education principles got beserk in Canada to recruit graduate tech_professionals rather than University Doctorates, Masters or Baccalaureates.

My work & family priorities prevented me from finishing a thesis in Finance (or invest enough money in the "system" to accumulate enough credits to apply for a BAC in accounting) at the HEC (Montreal, Haute Etudes Commerciales)... but that doesn't make me any less of an honorably dismissed Lieutenant for service rendered in the Armed Forces or stopped me from paying for a DEC (another diploma gathering dust in a drawer somewhere, btw) in programming in 87.

My point being anyone can afford a degree, the question is from where & how.

How many idiots have i seen in upper classes? Most couldn't even match integral with differential mathematics, much less understand science or application as being a pool of thoughts already engineered by teachers who distribute knowledge.

Trick was to prove them wrong when they were. Or fail trying -- for a cost.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, the mule is an example of the offspring of two distinct species that can still interbreed, not an example of a species that has arisen through speciation.  If you read the other link (I know, its long) you'll find brief overviews of case studies of species near speciation.  I'm not sure what kind of evidence I can present to you at this point, so I'm going to go with a logic argument that I believe leads to the conclusion that speciation is at least possible.  I can't obviously demonstrate speciation other than with a computer simulation, and I doubt that would be satisfactory.

I see you already have some information concerning evolution and biology from your degree.  I see you also acknowledge the possibility for genetic adaptation through random variation in a population.  If you acknowledge that random mutation occurs, and you acknowledge that selection occurs such that mutations are beneficial to the organism generally become more dominant within a population over time (this is just adaptation I'm talking about), then I pose the following arguments:  in addition to beneficial mutations, mutations occur that are detrimental to an organism's survival and mutations occur that generally have no effect on the ability of the organism to survive and procreate (neutral mutations).  If you're willing to accept those arguments, I give you the following:  neutral mutations may become dominant within a population if they occurred at the same time as a beneficial mutation.. that is, the same genetic code mutates beneficially and neutrally.  In this case, the neutral mutation gets carried and passed along with the beneficial mutation.

If you accept all that, I present you with isolation:  Specialization through adaptation leads populations of the same species to procreate within isolated groups.  This may be due to any variety of factors including the presence of food sources and predators, geographic delimiters, and so on.  At this point, you have the same species but two different gene pools that are subject to different selective pressures.  This means different random mutations prove to be successful in each group, leading to each group developing different adaptations.  This is very evident and plenty of evidence for it exists in biological literature.

I suppose the next part of the argument is most critical, and also the part we currently disagree on.  With isolated populations, you already have groups that do not interbreed, even though they are physically capable of it.  The next step for speciation to occur is for some mutation to happen that prevents the two seperate groups from interbreeding.  According to some definitions, speciation has already occurred with the divergence of genetic code for adaptation.  Lets take it a step further and say speciation requires not only distinct adaptations but the inability for the two groups to procreate.

Given the arguments I posed, there are two ways this could happen.  First, the beneficial adaptations make the two groups inable to produce viable offspring.  Second, a mutation that is neutral to the procreation of one specialized group prevents procreation with the other specialized group.  Either way, we now have to genetically distinct groups that are unable to procreate with each other.  They are both specialized in different ways, and they both have the same common ancestor species.  At this point, speciation has occured.

Do you disagree with anything in this logic argument? 

If you have a different definition of speciation I can try to adapt the argument to it.  There are also of course asexual organisms for which the "interbreeding" argument is void.  For these organisms, the same argument concerning isolation and selective pressures can be applied without the argument about interbreeding.  Over time, with varying selective pressure between two isolated groups of the same species will lead each to develop successive adaptations (and the adoption of neutral genetic code) over time such that their limited genetic code diverges significantly enough for the two groups to be considered unique species.

There is no life outside of planet Earth but you can keep on dreaming.

When it comes to life, Earth IS the center of the universe. Think about it!

I just love those self centered opinions. It seems that throughout the history of our civilisation many people said that we were special. And if I am not mistaken they were all proven wrong. All of them.

The earth was not flat.

The earth was not the center of the universe.

The Sun did not turn around the earth.

The simple fact is that the earth and the solar system are nothing out of the ordinary in the milky way. we just have a planet in the habitable region of our system.

I was watching a show in french it's called Découverte, it's a very serious and very respected science show. Yesterday they were talking about planets thatc ould support life. Some scientist have been creating a model that shows how systems are created and what it takes to have water on its surface. Turns out after more than 100 simulation that when a planet is created in the habitable zone it's full of water to the point that earth is considered a bit on the dry side.  So I for one would think that our planet is a standard planet and that others like it do exist. Therefore the possibilities of life are more and more likely. Not the reverse.

I still wonder why people would prefer to be alone in the universe...

*LOL*

I wonder who is the one dreaming...

Funny how you keep on posting your belief as fact...

@Solam:

This is all nice and well. But I already stated that extraterrestial life has not to be a lifeform as we know it. Who says that lifeforms all need oxygen to breathe, temps of -10°C to +50°C to survive and such?

There are i.e. lifeforms that survive temps beyond 100°C on earth. Granted, they're no higher lifeform. Still I daresay that it is quite possible that our imagination is too limited to search in the right places.

As for your question

Because they cannot grasp the fact that they're nothing special.

My thoughts on the matter:

Earth being the only living planet in the universe is a statistical impossibility.

Contact with Aliens cannot be made, due the fact that (as far as our science knows) light speed cannot be reached, much less exceeded, and even if it could, it's way too damn slow for interstellar traveling.

Aliens that would visit us would propably be friendly, since if they were hostile, they would propably had destroyed themselves long before getting here.

Could be that FTL travelling isn't possible. But who says it is nescessary at all?

Could easily be that space folding or inter-/extradimensional travelling is the key to explore the universe(s) and meet other lifeforms...

Yes, but Gravitic Warp Drives are still in the Sci-Fi realm. Then again, we are using technology today that was in the Sci-Fi realm not too long ago.

Right you are.  

No, seriously. I like to keep an open mind to new possibilities like i.e. interdimensional bridges and such. Though I'm afraid I won't witness the usage of those in my lifetime.

PROTOCEPT00 WRITES

IF life existed on another planet it would not effect the Christian religion in the least.

IF There are living beings on other planets, and IF they are endowed with free will and IF they have sinned agaisnt the moral law of God and IF God did attach their salvation to the death of Christ on the Cross, then Christ died for their eternal salvation also.

BUT WHO COULD VERIFY ALL THOSE IFS? Meantime Almighty God has revealed to us on this earth all that we need to know for our own needs and such speculatons concerning other possiblities when it comes down to brass tacks are of little practical importance.

Turns out that at least for right now  on the question of whether there is life anywhere else, my belief is fact. But let me be clear that when I say that there is no life outside of the earth, that is my personal belief. In other words, Christianity and specifically the Church has never denied that it's possible that life exists on other planets.  

Whatever may be said of possibility, there is no probablility that life exists upon other planets. Probability demands at least some shred of evidence and as far as I know there is no shred of evidence in existence.

And this is fine...

But I am sceptical of what science thinks! Going back to when other scientists speculated that life might have started in some warm little pond...hypothezing that chemicals produced in the atmosphere dissolved in the primordial seas to for a "soup" from which the first living cells emerged!

 In 1953 the Miller Urey experiment was conducted..you know the one in which they tried to similate the Earth's primitive atmosphere and producing the chemical building blocks of life by sending an electric spark through a mixture of gases!

While the experiment failed, it is still featured in school science textbooks, in videos, etc.  as an icon of evolution.