According to this article there's on average 1 UFO sighting a month, this forum has quite a few pilots and police I wondered if any one had ever
seen one ... So to speak
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/9468022/Britain-visited-by-one-UFO-a-month-but-MoD-rules-they-pose-no-threat.html#disqus_t
hread
It's good news though the MOD won't be investigating them anymore as they don't pose any threat 
Just had a look its not a UFO its thunderbird 2
i think you actually need to believe in them to even warrant seeing one! like ghosts. i am one of those who wont entertain the possibility of either,
but thats just me. never seen one and pretty sure i never will. and until i do i will continue bieng a non believer!
I haven't seen a UFO but I have seen a fen tiger
All the time, i live by two USAF bases.
I saw a triangle thing many years ago coming in to land at silly o clock in the morning, 10 year later it turned out to be a stealth fighter with no
landing lights on !
The blackbird, U2, and god knows what other planes were stationed at the base. They could all be called UFO's
If the men in black ask, i didnt see a thing
walking home from school one day many many moons ago, i saw a silver ball hovering in the sky, it didn't move at all, but it was spinning round
and round at a few hundred rpm i'd say. if i'd had a camera phone back then, i'd have got a video, but it was even before everyone had
phones. i'll never know what it was
to me, you can never say something doesn't exist. just because you never see it, doesn't mean its not there.
Yes, my car, when it briefly drove on the road. Since completely disappeared to a garage and not seen since.
A couple of police buddies weres on nightshift in the 80's and saw some strange lights in the sky and heard a weird noise. Like most cops,
they're sceptical so-and-so's, but felt sufficiently bothered about it to call it in and tajke the undoubted ribbing that was coming their
way!
Anyway, they finished their shift at 6am and were given a call at mid-day asking them to come back in as some RAF guys wanted to speak to them asap.
They spent over an hour being asked in great depth about what they saw and heard...
I suspect it was either an experimental aircraft, or maybe a Soviet aircraft having a sniff about... but who knows - it may have come from further
afield!!!
UFO is a contradiction in terms, just because the person who sees it can't identify it doesn't mean that its unidentified, the pilot at least will know what it is.
quote:
Originally posted by daniel mason
i think you actually need to believe in them to even warrant seeing one! like ghosts. i am one of those who wont entertain the possibility of either, but thats just me. never seen one and pretty sure i never will. and until i do i will continue bieng a non believer!
), but I reckon that if the universe is indeed 'infinite', then it must surely follow that there
are 'infinite' possibilities. Therefore there's every chance there's life out there!
I was abducted by aliens for 3 days in the 70s, ask work they'll verify it.
Thinking about how vast the universe is it is pretty much certain that there's other life out there, as for if some of them have developed space travel & come here for a bit look round I'm fairly sceptical!
yip,(well heard/felt the vibes)scared the crap out of me.
several years someone who was unknown to me at the time recounted the same experience....i recon they are out there
Defiantly other life forms out there. Pretty much scientifically proven. None of them near us though and if they have the tech to find and get to us
then they wont be interested. We will be primitive to the other intelligent life forms they go to meet.
Deal with it!!
quote:
Originally posted by scootz
I suspect it was either an experimental aircraft, or maybe a Soviet aircraft having a sniff about...
We flew to a job about four years ago, about midnight.
So not much in the way of light aircraft about, particularly over the built up areas, we all saw a single light heading north, in the opposite
direction to us.
The light wasnt strobing, the cab was turned to keep eyes onto it, I panned the camera around and picked it up on the IR camera.
After thirty seconds or so, we all realised it was a huge Chinese lantern, which had gone down our left side, which when it hit our downwash that sent
it around behind us. suckering all us into thinking it was something a bit unusual.
Lights play all sorts of tricks on your eyes at night, anyway it was the closing party for the Beijing Olympics that night, and we put that down to
some family releasing the lantern about midnight.
Never seen a UFO, even with over 3,000hrs flight-deck time on a VC10.
Been on many a 'journey into space' though (alcohol induced). I ensure I buy a return ticket.
The vast distances between us and the nearest solar system more or less prevent interstellar travel. If another race had the technology to cross such
vast distances then you can be sure we wouldn't 'spot' them.
People also assume any other race would be interested in a society that seems to be increasingly dependant useless television shows, celebrity gossip
and something called 'facebook'.
quote:
Originally posted by IronyPeople also assume any other race would be interested in a society that seems to be increasingly dependant useless television shows, celebrity gossip and something called 'facebook'.
quote:
Originally posted by Irony
The vast distances between us and the nearest solar system more or less prevent interstellar travel. If another race had the technology to cross such vast distances then you can be sure we wouldn't 'spot' them.
That's assuming they use a technology base with which we're familair and employ known or proposed limited propulsion ability. (All based on relativity theory). Not to mention mankinds' paltry 100-200,000 years on the planet, (equivalent to the last second before midnight on New Year's eve assuming a one year evolutionary clock.
I'm a sceptic too Irony. Your moniker lives up to its name with your avatar from War of The Worlds.
woodster - 20/8/12 at 12:01 PMthese people seem very convincing
http://www.disclosureproject.org/
Confused but excited. - 20/8/12 at 02:31 PMLots of people see things in the sky that they can not identify. So by definition, they have seen a UFO.
If on the other hand, you mean has anyone seen an alien spacecraft, without resorting to recreational pharmaceuticals, then . . . .
02GF74 - 20/8/12 at 02:34 PMquote:
Originally posted by bi22le
Defiantly other life forms out there. Pretty much scientifically proven.
nonsense. there is no proof, saying there are billions of galaxies with millions of stars that may have planets of similar distance as earth is to our sun is not proof - it is simply stating there are planets they are like earth and could support life.
life is only found on one place so there insufficient data to use probalilties to extrapolate that lfe exists elsewhere. what happened on earth to give rise to life may be a unique and unrepeatable event like the big band.
MikeFellows - 20/8/12 at 02:52 PMim sure other life must exist. the shear number of stars in the observable universe makes me believe that its impossible life doesnt exist elsewhere. then really its just does intelligent life exist and if so whats the chances it has the capabilities to travel through space to visit us
I dont see it happening myself. though I am sure many of these people who spot them see ufo's they are just not from outer space
but what does get me wondering
given the opportunity to go visit and alien race on a different planet and have a look what they do, I would jump at the chance. then given that really im a large child, I could think of nothing better that capturing one and prodding it with a stick. so if I would do it, why wouldnt they?
AllWeatherDan - 20/8/12 at 03:02 PMI was a UFO if you ask the tower at Linton.
Simply forgot to call downwind :-)
They had no idea who I was!!!!
Dan
02GF74 - 20/8/12 at 05:51 PMquote:
Originally posted by MikeFellows
im sure other life must exist. the shear number of stars in the observable universe makes me believe that its impossible life doesnt exist elsewhere. ......
i hear what you are saying but that is not the conclusion i can come to.
Let's say you bought a ford capri and found a pair of ladies undies under the back seat. There were tens of thousands of capris made, how many of them would have ladies underwear in them? it is impossible to say as you have insufficeient data i.e. you have one sample. It does not follow that if 100 million billion capris were made then there would be another or more that had pants in the back. The one you purchased may be unique for all time.
If you examined 1,000 capris and found pants, then using probablity, you could say there were other capris with pants and how often you would come across one due to the larger sample.
Using probabiblity can make preditctions if you can model the item - say it is a dice. Using physics, you can accept that the dice will land on one side, and all things being equal, the chance is 1/6 for any one side. I don't see how you can say the same about life. Given the age of the earth, how come we haven't discovered life that is not related to what is living now (ignoring bacteria and virus). surely given that much time, you would think differet types of living creatures that are unrelated to what we have now would have appeared? maybe they have but could not compete and left no trace.
we have theories of how life started - the primodrial soup - but nobody has created life yet alone proteins in a lab - there is so much we don't know.
as said, quoting n billion suns with x billion planets is just that - it is no guarantee of life.
Mr Whippy - 21/8/12 at 11:33 AMto me the most disturbing thing so far is just how quiet it is out there, nothing seems to be going on out in space, no signals, alien tv or communications zip, SETI has been going for ages now and it's not getting anywhere, this seems very odd
Considering our earth beams out heaps of tell table radio noise, why so far apart from the stray WOW signal it's deathly silent in space, surely we'd pick up something by now?? I'm all for building a huge radio array on the far side of the moon and just seeing if anything shows up.
Finding life is one thing but really only finding an advanced race is of interest, then we'll know where we stand. It's a shame science seems to shy away from SETI like research yet if they did find another advanced race it would be the biggest discovery in human history
mookaloid - 21/8/12 at 01:19 PMquote:
Originally posted by 02GF74
quote:
Originally posted by MikeFellows
im sure other life must exist. the shear number of stars in the observable universe makes me believe that its impossible life doesnt exist elsewhere. ......
i hear what you are saying but that is not the conclusion i can come to.
Let's say you bought a ford capri and found a pair of ladies undies under the back seat. There were tens of thousands of capris made, how many of them would have ladies underwear in them? it is impossible to say as you have insufficeient data i.e. you have one sample. It does not follow that if 100 million billion capris were made then there would be another or more that had pants in the back. The one you purchased may be unique for all time.
If you examined 1,000 capris and found pants, then using probablity, you could say there were other capris with pants and how often you would come across one due to the larger sample.
Using probabiblity can make preditctions if you can model the item - say it is a dice. Using physics, you can accept that the dice will land on one side, and all things being equal, the chance is 1/6 for any one side. I don't see how you can say the same about life. Given the age of the earth, how come we haven't discovered life that is not related to what is living now (ignoring bacteria and virus). surely given that much time, you would think differet types of living creatures that are unrelated to what we have now would have appeared? maybe they have but could not compete and left no trace.
we have theories of how life started - the primodrial soup - but nobody has created life yet alone proteins in a lab - there is so much we don't know.
as said, quoting n billion suns with x billion planets is just that - it is no guarantee of life.
I'm with Mike on this.
I mean space is big - really BIG - HUGE in fact. I refuse to believe that anything like our evolution would only happen once. It happened at least once so it could happen again.
The other thing is time - It may have already happened millions of years ago and the lifeforms are now extinct. it may be some time before on some blue green planet far far away something crawls out of some soupy substance and thinks to itself 'Oh this is new - I wonder where am I? What am I? etc.etc. - I wonder if I am alone in the universe?' In our meagre understanding of time - which is even harder to get your head round than space - it is even harder to believe not only that there must be life out there somewhere but there must be life out there sometime .........
02GF74 - 21/8/12 at 01:46 PM^^^^ that is an example of faith - you believe in something to be true, becasue you want it to be true yet have no evidence of it.
maybe there is life eslewhere, maybe there isn't - stating the number of planets similar to earth that can support life is not evidence.
mookaloid - 21/8/12 at 02:09 PMquote:
Originally posted by 02GF74
^^^^ that is an example of faith - you believe in something to be true, becasue you want it to be true yet have no evidence of it.
maybe there is life eslewhere, maybe there isn't - stating the number of planets similar to earth that can support life is not evidence.
The evidence that it is possible is our very existence.
Whether you think it is likely or not is up to you. I think it is unlikely not only that we are the only examples of life in the universe but also that it is unlikely that it has never happened before or that it is unlikely that it will never happen again.
I can think of many things that I know to be true - but I can't see them.
Anyway the day the Vogon Constructor Fleet arrives I'll make sure that my mate Ford (Prefect) is in the vicinity - oh and I'll just go and make sure I know where I can put my hands on a towel.....
Mr Whippy - 21/8/12 at 02:42 PMthe interesting thing about life is just how quickly it started, almost as soon as it could exist on the earth it appeared. It seems to suggest that life is easy to get going and hard to stop when it does.
There may be no proof yet and some may call it just fail but you can use some common sense to gauge how likely it is to happen elsewhere.
However that is totally separate to the speculation that alien flying saucers are in our sky's! Look on you tube and you can’t help be disappointed at the masses of lame ‘Best UFO Ever!!!’ videos. How many billions of camera phones are there now? How could a UFO not be filmed?!
Irony - 21/8/12 at 02:59 PMI believe there is life out there somewhere. The universe is rather large and we a very very very small part of it. Those lame drawings in school text books with all the planets lined up confuse people. Our solar system is simply enormous! I cannot believe something so tiny as the human race is unique in the universe.
Amazing star scale video
[Edited on 21/8/12 by Irony]
whitestu - 21/8/12 at 03:06 PMquote:
Anyway the day the Vogon Constructor Fleet arrives I'll make sure that my mate Ford (Prefect) is in the vicinity - oh and I'll just go and make sure I know where I can put my hands on a towel.....
To paraphrase the guide again, if the universe has an infiite number of planets, and we know not all have life, then the average population of the planets in the universe is zero (i.e any finite number divided by infinity).
On that basis none of us exist!
woodster - 21/8/12 at 03:07 PMas prof Brian Cox has said the puzzling question is with the universe being so huge and so old why have we never been visited by aliens?
Irony - 21/8/12 at 03:28 PMquote:
Originally posted by woodster
as prof Brian Cox has said the puzzling question is with the universe being so huge and so old why have we never been visited by aliens?
Prime Directive: Rule of First Contact from Star Trek says something like:
"no civilisation should be contacted before a certain technological advancements are achieved (i.e warp capability) to prevent the said civilisation from having its natural course of evolution disrupted"
Brian Cox obviously is not a Trek fan.
russbost - 21/8/12 at 04:07 PMThere are three different things here
1. Have I seen a UFO, yes, twice actually, do I think they were alien spacecraft, resounding NO. Of course there are loads of UFO sightings, planes, ballons, weather ballons, chinese lanterns, even skydivers etc, if you see things at or from strange angles, if they reflect light, if it's at night & they have lights on they can appear really weird. I'm a pilot (PPL) & things can look even more odd when you're in the air, things usually become apparent after a while as to what they actually are, but on at least 2 occasions from the ground I've never been able to work out what things were, one looked vaguely like a flying dustbin & the other was a strange light (I would suspect that one one was probably sunlight reflecting off something)
2. Is there life on other planets, well, given the sheer no. of galaxies (100's of billions), almost all of which will have at least one planet with the vague possibility that it could support at least basic life like microbes, viruses etc. I think almost certainly yes. Even if the chances of life occuring once in a million years on the number of known planets was tiny, we have a lot of millions of years for it to have happened in, plus there are almost certainly many billions of planets we have no knowledge of their existance as yet. We have life in freezing cold places, almost completely dry places & places where the heat & chemical content/pressure of the water would kill us in seconds (undersea hydrothermal vents in case you were wondering) so I think the chances of there being NO life ANYWHERE in the universe is highly unlikely - it doesn't even have to be carbon based, which opens up even more possibilities.
3. Is there intelligent life - ahh! now, this is somewhat more tricky, for a start, how intelligent, a cockroach isn't very bright, but it's rather more compex than a simple bacteria or a single cell creature. Are we talking sheep intelligent, cat/dog/chimp/dolphin intelligent or are we talking human intelligent? Either way, I think chances of finding anything even as smart as a cockroach are an awful lot smaller than finding some form of micro biological life such as suggested in 2. Apparently, from recent findings, for us to have got where we are from chimp intelligence has required an extremely unlikely brain mutation to happen not once, but twice since our ancestors became a separate species from the chimp, so chances of us being as bright as we are are ridiculously small in the first place! (Looking around Basildon on a Saturday afternoon I suspect some of the population has missed at least one of those mutations!!!
Finally even if we take the argument from 3. & say, ah, yes, but with so many planets in so many galaxies there must be intelligent life somewhere, well ok, lets say there is, but even if it's fairly close, say 100 thousand light years, & even if this life were way more intelligent than us way, way back in time, then unless they've found a way of exploiting worm holes in space (believed to exist, but requiring more energy to open one than everything we've generated as a human race so far!) or some method of travelling A LOT faster than light (still believed impossible by current thinking, tho' they did think they'd found some neutrinos travelling fractionally faster than light last year, but turned out to be experimental error!) then they're still on their way & will be for an awful lot more than our lifetimes.
If they had started their own SETI programme 99,000 years ago we'd still be waiting for the first signal to get here & presumably the guys that sent it would be long dead, & it would take a similar time to send a signal back even if we could translate what they'd sent & send a reply.
All in all I think the main reason why we're highly unlikely to see an alien any time shortly is simply because space is kinda large!
MRLuke - 21/8/12 at 05:31 PMquote:
Originally posted by 02GF74
quote:
Originally posted by bi22le
Defiantly other life forms out there. Pretty much scientifically proven.
nonsense. there is no proof, saying there are billions of galaxies with millions of stars that may have planets of similar distance as earth is to our sun is not proof - it is simply stating there are planets they are like earth and could support life.
life is only found on one place so there insufficient data to use probalilties to extrapolate that lfe exists elsewhere. what happened on earth to give rise to life may be a unique and unrepeatable event like the big band.
The problem is there is precious little about Earth that is actually unique. The top 5 most prevalent elements within the human body are the top 5 most prevalent elements throughout the universe and in pretty much the same mix.
We share 98% of our dna with a worm, we are only 2% different. How much time and energy would you expend to investigate a worm? If there is life out there that is even 2% different to us it would come here and be so far ahead that we would be worms to them.
Ultimately the most inexplicable ufo sightings are likely to be American or Russian as the source for the OP article stated when interviewed
02GF74 - 21/8/12 at 06:05 PMquote:
Originally posted by Irony
I believe there is life out there somewhere. The universe is rather large and we a very very very small part of it.
we don't need to look that far out, there are two places in our own solar system: Jupiter’s moon Europa and Mars that could support life as know on earth - without googling, i don't know how much time these 2 places have had for life to start up but AFAIK both draw a blank.
[Edited on 21/8/12 by 02GF74]
JoelP - 21/8/12 at 08:32 PMGood timing this thread, i saw one just yesterday!
Ive never been good with birds - it was little, speckly and brown.
JoelP - 21/8/12 at 08:36 PMOn a more serious note, if we are alone in the universe, then the chance of our happening was something in the order of one in a billion billion billion. Thats quite an unlikely event to have happened, but it did. So i think it more likely that the event wasnt actually that unlikely, and infact we are not unique.
woodster - 21/8/12 at 08:37 PMMaybe life was found On mars a few years ago .....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2191650/Curiosity-Did-NASA-discover-life-Mars--36-years-ago.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Ninehigh - 21/8/12 at 08:37 PMquote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
to me the most disturbing thing so far is just how quiet it is out there, nothing seems to be going on out in space, no signals, alien tv or communications zip, SETI has been going for ages now and it's not getting anywhere, this seems very odd
Considering our earth beams out heaps of tell table radio noise, why so far apart from the stray WOW signal it's deathly silent in space, surely we'd pick up something by now?? I'm all for building a huge radio array on the far side of the moon and just seeing if anything shows up.
Provided they're sending something out we can pick up...
hillbillyracer - 21/8/12 at 09:57 PMquote:
Originally posted by 02GF74
quote:
Originally posted by MikeFellows
im sure other life must exist. the shear number of stars in the observable universe makes me believe that its impossible life doesnt exist elsewhere. ......
i hear what you are saying but that is not the conclusion i can come to.
Let's say you bought a ford capri and found a pair of ladies undies under the back seat. There were tens of thousands of capris made, how many of them would have ladies underwear in them? it is impossible to say as you have insufficeient data i.e. you have one sample. It does not follow that if 100 million billion capris were made then there would be another or more that had pants in the back. The one you purchased may be unique for all time.
If you examined 1,000 capris and found pants, then using probablity, you could say there were other capris with pants and how often you would come across one due to the larger sample.
Using probabiblity can make preditctions if you can model the item - say it is a dice. Using physics, you can accept that the dice will land on one side, and all things being equal, the chance is 1/6 for any one side. I don't see how you can say the same about life. Given the age of the earth, how come we haven't discovered life that is not related to what is living now (ignoring bacteria and virus). surely given that much time, you would think differet types of living creatures that are unrelated to what we have now would have appeared? maybe they have but could not compete and left no trace.
we have theories of how life started - the primodrial soup - but nobody has created life yet alone proteins in a lab - there is so much we don't know.
as said, quoting n billion suns with x billion planets is just that - it is no guarantee of life.
I have a Ford Capri, there is no underwear beneath the rear seat. This does not prove or disprove the existence of alien life.
However, given the racy thing a Capri was in its day it has a higher probability than average that such circumstances could arise, though they would likely have been there since the early 1980s & therefore may have potential for a life form of their own by now.
Mr Whippy - 21/8/12 at 10:47 PMquote:
Originally posted by Ninehigh
quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
to me the most disturbing thing so far is just how quiet it is out there, nothing seems to be going on out in space, no signals, alien tv or communications zip, SETI has been going for ages now and it's not getting anywhere, this seems very odd
Considering our earth beams out heaps of tell table radio noise, why so far apart from the stray WOW signal it's deathly silent in space, surely we'd pick up something by now?? I'm all for building a huge radio array on the far side of the moon and just seeing if anything shows up.
Provided they're sending something out we can pick up...
that's very true but radio is just so good, very simple and efficient who wouldn't want to use it? we ourselves seem to be using it ever more rather than turning to something else. There may be some fab new tech that will replace it some day but it seems to have a very long useful life for communication, we may just not have the sensitivity required to pick it up yet but I think it's well worth a damn good search, not so much as a intentional signal to us which is very unlikely but just normal chatter around a planet like ours.
Ninehigh - 21/8/12 at 11:44 PMWell it's an alien planet so who's to say they don't see in radio waves and communicate globally in some other way we can't detect (maybe the range isn't there) or aren't looking for.
Also bear in mind our earliest radio transmissions are what, 70 years old? That's not very far in galactic terms, I mean if someone else is picking this up they might well be thinking we're fighting the Germans atm
Simon - 22/8/12 at 01:57 AMquote:
Originally posted by 02GF74
nonsense. there is no proof, saying there are billions of galaxies with millions of stars that may have planets of similar distance as earth is to our sun is not proof - it is simply stating there are planets they are like earth and could support life.
life is only found on one place so there insufficient data to use probalilties to extrapolate that lfe exists elsewhere. what happened on earth to give rise to life may be a unique and unrepeatable event like the big band.
If there is one planet that has/had/shall have life (ie this one), and yes I avoided the "intelligent" bit deliberately, then mathmatically it (and us) can't exist. After all, 1/infinity = 0. Based on fact, we know one planet has life and the planet hunters have checked possibly 20,0000 stars in our galaxy, so on that basis of 1/20,000 gives us over a million stars with planets supporting sentient beings at the moment and ignoring all those that may have risen and fallen
Universe is approx 13,750,000,000 years old (unless your a fan of many on the gods alledgedly on this planet, where it can be anything from 10 - 20,000 years old).
In that 13,750,000,000 years I suspect many civilisations have risen and fallen - in fact, given the age of the universe and the number of stars (200,000,000,000 ish) in each of the infinite number of galaxies, I'd say the chances of something similar to Star Wars actually happening quite good.
Re the SETI thing, do you think the aliens have switched to digital yet. Maybe that's why we can't hear anything. Also, our nearest star is 4 light years away, do you honestly think that a radio signal sent (ie Hitlers little speech) was broadcast with much more power than a couple of thousand watts, and imagine what chance a 1000 watt bulb would look like from 4 ly away.
Just because we can't do interstellar speeds doesn't mean another spacefaring civilisation can't. Even if FTL is actually impossible (which I don't by the way), there's always the generational spaceship as an alternative, whereby a species might take thousands of years to make a journey.
For what it's worth, I think a visit from outer space is unlikely, just hope they're more vulcaneqsue than borq though , but I think a god far more preposterous.
ATB
Simon
[Edited on 22/8/12 by Simon]
Ninehigh - 22/8/12 at 03:30 AMI came home drunk one night and really fancied a bacon butty. The next morning I found an unidentified fried object
02GF74 - 22/8/12 at 07:54 AMquote:
Originally posted by Simon
In that 13,750,000,000 years I suspect many civilisations have risen and fallen - in fact, given the age of the universe and the number of stars (200,000,000,000 ish) in each of the infinite number of galaxies, I'd say the chances of something similar to Star Wars actually happening quite good.
I accept the estimates for the number of planets that are earthlike but the other side of the coin is the sequence of events that are required to start life that seems to be ignored.
We do not know what they are else life would have been created in the laboratory. Something happened on earth 3.8 billion years ago that may have been a result of rare events occuring in a specific number within a given time - the probablilty of it being inifinitely infinitisimal but it happened. As we don't know what these events are, it may be that they can never ever happen again thus making like on earth unique for all time.
An analogy is the monekys with typwriters that will eventually product the complete works of Shakespeare - on paper if can happen but in reality? (even with a finite number of monkeys e.g. the number of planets that could support like it may take longer than the entrie lifetime of the universe multipled by iteslf a billion times = never).
quote:<--- linky
"The appearance of such a molecule, given the way chemistry functions, is incredibly improbable. It would be a once-in-a-universe long shot," said Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University. "To adopt this view, you have to believe we were incredibly lucky."
also worth a read
(btw it's all fascinating stuff!!)
[Edited on 22/8/12 by 02GF74]