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Old September 27th 18, 09:17 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gary Harnagel
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Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 8:04:27 AM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Thu, 27 Sep 2018 05:27:17 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

I suspect that ALL life will have the same DNA.


That seems unlikely. We have created alternate forms of DNA in the
lab, using different bases than A, G, T, C, and U. And which code
differently. I can believe we might see similar genetic chemistry, but
many different bases and coding.


That depends on what one's assumptions are.

Some guesses are better than others. I think it's very arrogant to
believe that nobody's out there, and it's even more arrogant to believe
they haven't been around longer than we have.


Life, yes. Technological life, maybe no. We appear on the verge of
destroying ourselves, and that may be the norm for technological
species. They may not get much older than us.


There's always a distribution when you have a "norm" and all that's
necessary is a survivor out in the sunny side of the bell curve.
Given the age of our galaxy at nine billion years (and it has
incorporated stars far older than that - there is a red dwarf only
150 LY away that is estimated to be 14 billion years old). So that
one survivor can spread its DNA over the whole galaxy in a few million
years.