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SUPERORGANISM. “It is argued here that bacteria are essentially modular organisms where the bacterial cell, microcolony, and macrocolony are modules of different levels of complexity analogous to modules of macroorganisms.” https://lnkd.in/dS-m-D7 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends focused on an interesting article about how thoroughly we have searched for signs of life in the cosmos, concluding that our searches have been minuscule compared to the search space needed to be explored. And this article only deals with searches for advanced life forms capable of emanating obvious signals, rather than biological life forms, where the search history has been even more woeful. We are left with the obvious question: why has mankind been so willfully uncurious? View in LinkedIn

UPPER LIMIT ISSUE. “However, at the beginning of a search, typical upper limits are far from dispositive and can even seem absurdly high. For instance, the first upper limits on the flux of solar neutrinos were much higher than the expected flux, and indeed a reviewer of the paper describing the experiment amusingly commented:” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn

THE RATIONALE. “Thus, when a well-designed and -executed program "fails" to find the sought-after phenomenon, that null result can be expressed as the lower surface of the explored volume, which represents a new upper limit that future experiments can improve upon. Once the entire parameter space a phenomenon could occupy has been excluded by experiment, we can speak of the null result as being dispositive: the sought-after phenomenon does not exist.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn

SEARCH NULLS. “Searches for first examples of hypothesized physical phenomena proceed through a series of progressively stringent null results. The thoroughness and speed of a search are typically quantified by parameterizing the search space and calculating the volume explored.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn

SIZE OF THE TASK. “Quantifying the amount of searching that has been done should help to dispel this misconception. Tarter et al. (2010), for instance, have estimated that ruling out the existence of radio beacons based on the amount of searching to date is akin to basing one's opinion on the existence of marine life on dipping a single drinking glass into the ocean and seeing if it contains a fish.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn

PULL-THE-PLUGGERS. “Perceptions to the contrary abound, as many authors use the "failure" of SETI to date as evidence that we should stop looking, that we need to move to new search strategies, or that we should reevaluate the fundamental assumptions of the field.” https://lnkd.in/dKzsrBv View in LinkedIn