Dinosaurs from space may have advanced intelligence

[AiA in Atlanta]

Few scientific papers stir much interest in the general population.

At first glance, the paper, "Evidence for the Likely Origin of Homochirality in Amino Acids, Sugars, and Nucleosides on Prebiotic Earth" in the Journal of the American Chemical Society by Ronald Breslow of Columbia University, appears too dense and impenatrable for anyone without a PhD in chemistry.

However, at the end of Breslow's paper, the tone changes and the imagination is stirred when he speculates that there may indeed be living dinosaurs on other planets that have human intelligence or greater.

The paragraph reads, according to io9:

"An 
implication
 from
 this 
work 
is 
that 
elsewhere 
in
 the 
universe
 there 
could 
be 
life
 forms 
based 
on 
D 
amino
 acids 
and 
L
 sugars, 
depending 
on
 the 
chirality 
of 
circular
 polarized
 light 
in 
that 
sector 
of 
the 
universe or 
whatever 
other
 process 
operated 
to
 favor
 the 
L
α‐methyl 
amino acids 
in 
the 
meteorites 
that 
have 
landed 
on Earth.



He goes on to write, "Such
 life
 forms
 could
 well
 be
 advanced
 versions
 of
 dinosaurs,
 if
 mammals
 did
 not
 have the
 good 
fortune
 to 
have 
the 
dinosaurs 
wiped
 out 
by 
an 
asteroidal 
collision, 
as 
on
 Earth. 

We 
would 
be 
better 
off 
not 
meeting 
them."

According to TG Daily, Breslow's report takes on a more serious topic, that of the mystery of why the building blocks of terrestrial amino acids, sugars, and the genetic materials DNA and RNA take only one shape and only two possible orientations.

The mystery goes back to the origins of life itself.

One theory that Breslow agrees with is that meteorites carried certain amino acids billions of years ago 'seeding' the earth.


Thus, according to Smithsonian, the planet's flora and fauna would be constrained by their characteristics.

This might mean that on other planets there was an opposite biochemical orientation than that of life on earth.

Though just speculation, space dinosaurs, it seems, might not just be in the imagination of Star Trek creators after all.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news ... picks=true

[skippy]

I love this sort of stuff. Its a given other lifer forms exist, but what form they take is the question, imagine massive dinosaurs with intelligence.

[Super Nova]

I love this sort of stuff. Its a given other lifer forms exist, but what form they take is the question, imagine massive dinosaurs with intelligence.

I find this very interesting myself as well.

We are not the only lifeforms in the universe.

We cannot be the only one's that have evolved intelligence and a technological society.

Imagine big brained dinosaurs with their really big brains being applied to science and not controlling their large bodies. How smart could they be. Birds evolved directly from the Dinosaurs and when I watch the local crows go about their busines, it is clear they are bloody smart. Smerter than the average bird by far.

It is probably a good thing, I think Boxy raised this a while back, that we don't get in contact with such lifeforms. If they are very superior, they will just see us as a resource to consume or enslave like we do all other liveforms on this planet. If we are about equal, one of us, I bet it would be us, will start a war with them. We just love wars and our greed and self interest will drive use to be top dog.

If they are peaceful maybe we would make good pets.

[Super Nova]

Interesting article below (stolen from the SSSF)

The Aliens would probably need to co-operate to evolve as we have.

cooperate in large groups of unrelated individuals quite frequently, and that requires cognitive abilities to keep track of who is doing what to you and change your behaviour accordingly," says co-author Luke McNally of Dublin's Trinity College.

McNally points out, though, that cooperation has a calculating side. We do it out of reciprocity.

"If you cooperate and I cheat, then next time we interact you could decide: 'Oh well, he cheated last time, so I won't cooperate with him.' So basically you have to cooperate in order to receive cooperation in the future."

McNally says teamwork and bigger brainpower fed off each other.

"Transitions to cooperative, complex societies can drive the evolution of a bigger brain," he says.

"Once greater levels of intelligence started to evolve, you saw cooperation going much higher."
Physiological limits

more....but not much.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/ ... 474794.htm

is this really "news"?

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/COOPEVOL.html

and zero sum games.

[AiA in Atlanta]

Think it is futurist Ray Kurzweil who believes either 1) we are the leading edge of intelligence in the universe because we haven't been contacted or 2) advanced aliens would be so sophisticated they would have no need to send massive ships full of bodies all the way to earth and so are monitoring us remotely (and secretly).

[skippy]

Think it is futurist Ray Kurzweil who believes either 1) we are the leading edge of intelligence in the universe because we haven't been contacted or 2) advanced aliens would be so sophisticated they would have no need to send massive ships full of bodies all the way to earth and so are monitoring us remotely (and secretly).

Both are fair assumptions.

[boxy]

Another is that we overestimate the inevitability of intelligence being "the" dominant evolutionary survival mechanism. Just because we are on top now (or seem to be... bugs and bacteria still rule this world), does not mean that evolution elsewhere in the universe, or even at other times in earth's history, would favour intelligence of our kind. Even in earth's history, intelligence is a blip on the landscape.

[IQS.RLOW]

When was the last time we sent out a scouting party to establish contact and communicate with an amoeba?

[mellie]

When was the last time we sent out a scouting party to establish contact and communicate with an amoeba?

....Someone had to say it, it might as well have been IQS.