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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe - Podcast 283 - 12/15/2010
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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, LLC - dedicated to promoting critical thinking, reason, and the public understanding of science through online and other media. The first episode of the SGU podcast went online on May 4th, 2005. It soon became a popular science/skeptical podcast, and remains one of the most popular science podcasts on iTunes.
SGU Podcasting Awards: SGU on XM: You can listen to the SGU on America's Talk XM 166 every Saturday night from 8-9pm Eastern.
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Podcast
283
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December 15, 2010
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Interview with Dan Gardner
News Items: Piltdown Anniversary, Hydrogen Production, Voyager Leaves Solar System, Slushball Earth
Who's That Noisy
Your Questions and E-mails: Alien Plants vs Animals
Science or Fiction
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Segment: News Items
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Segment: Questions and E-mails
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Question #1 - Alien Plants vs Animals
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I was wondering why almost all you come across regard extra terrestrial life it seems to almost exclusively be focused on alien animal life?
Why not alien Plants?
What would it mean if we found a moon or planet with alien plant life, but no animals. Is that even possible? Or vice versa?
Is it just that the idea of Little Grey Men are sexier than Martian Ferns?
Obviously there are some basic fundamentals I fail to understand on the distinction between the plants and animals. So how much of one is there?
In a way it almost appears as if the two are alien life forms with a symbiotic and side by side relationship.
What is a distinction that separated life into the plant and animal kingdoms? Is there a common ancestor to both?
At the base level the search for alien life for a time before a distinction?
If they did find a Fern on Mars, some how it just doesn't seem as exciting as say a Martian Worm.
PS. My example was originally a Martian flower, but for obvious reasons that was a bad example.
Brendan
Melbourne Australia
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Segment: Interview
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Interview with Dan Gardner
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Author of Future Babble
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Segment: Science or Fiction [ Click Here to Show the Answers ]
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Segment: Who's That Noisy
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Who's That Noisy
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Answer to last week: Finneas and Ferb
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Segment: Quote of the Week
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Quote of the Week
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"My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world."
- J.B.S. Haldane
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