4 ms·
only know to be produced.....is a whoa bessy phrase,?¿ as in 70 years ago an undergraduate figured out that dimethyl sulfide was produced by living organisms an
by metalman 2y ago
only know to be produced.....is a whoa bessy phrase,?¿ as in 70 years ago an undergraduate figured out that dimethyl sulfide was produced by living organisms and he asked his professor what else made it, and got shrug and "nothing else I know of" and everybody has been cutting and pasting since, OR, an international team spent years and millions working on the chemistry behind
dimethyl sufide in an epic known to all quest to determine it's origins.
Science does have an issue with cutting and pasting ancient mistakes, and then bieng exceptionaly reluctant to change and move forward,
not to mention that SETI, and the rest of "alien" research is most definitly tainted with public fantasy and entertainment industry influence, so
even with one of the notoriously oderiferous sulfide compounds present, I wont hold my breath
- pinkmuffinere 2y agoYa, it’s a bit less exciting, but I bet we’re about to learn many new ways to produce dimethyl sulfide outside of a living organism
- allan_s 2y agoactually we know how to produce it without involving living organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfide#Industrial_processes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfide#Industrial_pr...
- poulpy123 2y agoactually a living organism is needed to produce it this way
- xrisk 2y agoWikipedia says "In industry dimethyl sulfide is produced by treating hydrogen sulfide with excess methanol over an aluminium oxide catalyst”. Which part requires a living organism?
- hidroto 2y agoI think they are being a little glib by saying a human is need to make the industrial processes.
- varjag 2y agoVirtually all of them involve non-trivial design by sentient beings.
- rsynnott 2y agoWell, someone needs to treat the hydrogen sulphide with excess methanol over an aluminium oxide catalyst. I suppose a robot could do it... For a non-life explanation, you're really looking for something that could plausibly happen in (abiotic) nature, not an industrial process.
- mr_toad 2y agoThe only thing that could make a nerd happier than detecting alien life would be detecting alien robots.
- rpastuszak 2y agoWait, what's the difference?
- griffzhowl 2y agoAlien life could just be microbial, while alien robots would require an advanced technological civilization, I guess
- darkwater 2y agoWell, there could be nanobots...
- aurareturn 2y agoWhich part requires a living organism? haha. Do you really need a hint?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- HelloNurse 2y agoAnd the question is even more complex: not whether producing dimethyl sulfide "from scratch" without involving living organisms of the familiar sort is possible (of course it is), but what the hypothesis that each of the numerous possible ways to produce dimethyl sulfide happens naturally (or that alien lifeforms want a lot of it) implies about the environment of the exoplanet.