Scientists suspect cephalopods may be space aliens

Researchers applied Moores law to the variety of genes over time. They came up with a graph that extends back in time before the formation of the Earth.

3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net...

phys.org...

a reply to: stormcell

Haven't read it, but is this for cephalopods' dna?

a reply to: reject

Everything between plankton, mammals and humans.

Godzilla vs Octobeast was a good flick, back in the day. NASA's planning to make a high-budget sequel, according to those very same scientists!

a reply to: reject

Extraterrestrial or not I believe cephalopods are in their own way...alien.

Cuttlefish are fascinating, however another challenger has entered the ring...the mimic octopus.



It makes you wonder how intelligent life might appear or act like.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: strongfp

Why? Because they share similar DNA and RNA sequencing with other creatures just like them.

Indeed. It seems that octopus diverged from squids about 270 million years ago. Well after the Cambrian explosion and hardly a "sudden" appearance.

Using a relaxed molecular clock, we estimate that the octopus and squid lineages diverged ∼270 Mya, emphasizing the deep evolutionary history of coleoid cephalopods8,30

www.nature.com...


Possible that their evolution was spurred by an extraterrestrial virus? Sure, why not (would space virii find a friendly host in an earthly organism)? Any evidence of that happening? Not really.

Octopus eggs from the sky? Nah. Something would have eaten them.

lol, it seems...let us just throw some more wild speculation out there...hey 270 million years is a nice tidy number.

The way science looks at these things it will be easily another 2,000 years before any actual progress is made.

Theories of evolution in most forms is as useless and unsatisfying as anything...or maybe these nutters just have not evolved yet to realize fantasizing about evolution looks equal to fairies in the sky.

Time to end these charades.

a reply to: reject>> Or maybe life found on Mars came from Earth when we were hit by an asteroid and it was transported there. Or early life was seeded on both planets and Mars had that catastrophic meteor collision which stripped it of most of its atmosphere and severely damaged its magnetic shield.

a reply to: reject

originally posted by: LightSpeedDriver
a reply to: strongfp

Any creature that can camouflage itself automatically and change shape to "blend in" sounds pretty alien to me.

Yeah, nothing screams "alien" like being perfectly adapted to the environment you evolved in. I guess Chameleons are aliens too?

The article is kind of click bait. Being affected by an ancient virus or possibility ET virus doesn't make it an alien. Tons of speculation involved in this one.

Even if it was affected in the ancient past by bacteria that somehow came through space to earth, it's still safe to eat. It contains nutrients we need to survive.

a reply to: stormcell

Moore's law being applied to biological life? I'm sorry but that is grasping at straws there. Moore's law is about transistors and the rate is actually slowing down now. Thats a bit of a stretch there.

a reply to: stormcell

Moore's law being applied to biological life? I'm sorry but that is grasping at straws there. Moore's law is about transistors and the rate is actually slowing down now. That's a bit of a stretch there.

Well....
So I don't think they're aliens at all. But I do think they're magical and beautiful and highly intelligent. I cringe when people eat them! The Mimic Octopus can learn sign language, can escape from a tank, can open a door. I've always loved octopus and incidentally it's very hard to find octopus stuff like jewelry or house-hold goods. There are a million owls and roosters though! not fair!

originally posted by: Skorpiogurl
I've always loved octopus and incidentally it's very hard to find octopus stuff like jewelry or house-hold goods.

Contact White/Viviane Rowan Design in Cape May, NJ, they have a large collection of octopi-themed home goods of high quality.

originally posted by: Milkweed
From what I understand, this is an attempt to explain away discrepancies with the octopus and the theory of evolution. Well how does it do these amazing things like, change color? Must be an alien.

Apparently, scientists telling and selling the story is already sufficient evidence for some of the flock to consider this "science" or "scientific"; of course, getting one's paper published is part of this too. Ask yourself, what were the details of what the article refers to as a "research study", what experiments did they perform to confirm their 'may be'-claim ("might actually be" in the article title, nice and vague according to 'The Agnostic Code') regarding cephalopods? What "research" was really done when you don't count all the previous research that has already been done regarding cephalopods (or physics, biology, genetics and chemistry) and just building a story around what has already been discovered by others who didn't try to sell a storyline fit for Hollywood and its Sci-Fi market? A quick glance at the title of the actual paper that was published showed it to be just another attempt at promoting and selling panspermia (catering to the market). These papers usually contain more fancy storytelling and speculation than actual research. And any research discussed in it was usually done by others and doesn't logically lead to their speculations unless someone applies a bias in favor of panspermia and a lot of wishful but illogical thinking (usually by leaving out important facts/certainties for people to consider in relation to their speculative argumentation, i.e. the reasons that are proposed to think that "cephalopods may be space aliens" as it's phrased in the thread title or any of their other "different proposed explanations" that the article says they "embrace" in their supposed "attempts to tackle the question of how life originated here on Earth." When it looks more like catering to the market to me with fancy storylines selling, promoting and beefing up panspermia than trying to figure that out honestly or "tackle" as the article puts it).

Too bad these sort of far-fetched storylines and the behaviour of the flock* regarding them doesn't ring a bell for some people.

*: Spectacular scientific breakthroughs (in actual science) has enveloped (philosophical naturalism posing as) science in a halo of infallibility and authority, producing scientism, a religion in itself, a sacred cow. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines this as “an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation.” I prefer to phrase that as "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of methodological naturalism sold to(or perceived by) the flock as the proper methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation." But I guess that would make it a bit too convoluted for a dictionary.

As usual, the article title is heavily sensationalized (reminding me of the entertainment industry again) while the article itself mentions:

“The genome of the Octopus shows a staggering level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes more than is present in Homo sapiens.” [whereislogic: Octopuses are classified as cephalopods]

The scientists challenge that the belief that modern cephalopods evolved to their present form here on Earth and propose the possibility that those we see today are the descendants of creatures that arrived on Earth frozen in an icy comet.

So it's actually these unspecified mythological "creatures" that are supposedly the "space aliens" (the ones we can't do any research on conveniently). Not the octopuses (cephalopods) as studied on earth. And if you're familiar with the overarching evolutionary storyline, you know that that tells the story of a gradual increase in complexity over multiple generations of living organisms, so that seems to imply that these mythological "creatures" from which cephalopods are supposedly the descendants, are less complex than the 33,000 protein-coding genes in the Octopus genome that were discovered by other scientists doing actual research (remember what I said earlier about actual research?).

So the better title for this thread would be:

"Scientists argue that the ancestors of cephalopods may be space aliens".

Whether any of them actually suspects that to be the case depends on their principles and honesty vs desire to market themselves and their papers as supposed "science" or "scientific" (or in case of themselves: "scientists doing valuable research"); a desire to cater to the market for financial gain (sustain or further one's career according to the phrase coined to describe the pressure in academia to rapidly and continually publish academic work to sustain or further one's career: "publish or perish"). I somehow doubt that they actually suspect that to be the case (concerning the ancestors of cephalopods maybe being space aliens), cause they are knowledgeable enough not to be taken in by their own marketing strategies of catering fanciful fantasies to the market as serious scientific studies or papers. 'Pfff, write a Sci-Fi book next time, it might help with your credibility regarding honesty in the future', is what I'm thinking about the ones who wrote this paper or added their stamp of approval on it. It's pretty dishonest and greedy to advance a supposed possibility (even likelihood depending on how it's phrased or interpreted) just because it sells well (is gulped down eagerly by the market, see text under my profile name) when you don't actually believe it's a possibility and you are quite aware that your speculations don't hold much more ground in serious discussions about reality (the facts/certainties/realities) than proposing we are descendants from pink unicorns living in the Orion Nebula traveling to earth in icy space rocks (at least that one is already less vague and more specified than vaguely referring to "creatures that arrived on Earth frozen in an icy comet." Quoting from the article).

originally posted by: Milkweed
From what I understand, this is an attempt to explain away discrepancies with the octopus and the theory of evolution. Well how does it do these amazing things like, change color? Must be an alien.

Well, as they say, if you believe there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs, then why not an octupus from the Klingon galaxy? Makes sense to me!

Hey! Maybe now that they've resolved the octopus came here to do battle with Sigourney Weaver (don't laugh, as everything foundational a tin foil hat believes was first presented in the plot of a Hollywood film... alright, or a comic book), these august scientists can work on an answer, that's not idiotic, anyway, to this question, "Which evolved first, the heart or the blood? If the heart did, and there was no blood, why was a heart necessary? If the blood did, where would it go and what would it do?"

Sigh,whatever happened to the Mighty Sponge?
At 5:30 below: