silverence

All of it, I'd imagine.

All I could think about while reading that write up was "sounds like objectivism."

Ayn Rand + emo = satanism. Who woulda thought.

Or "Quickly! Stop watching while you still thinK your questions will be answered!"

1: Is your name really Leila? Cuz I only know of one other Leila and the irony is palpable.

2: (Playing devil's advocate:) What would you say the inherent value to finding microbial life in our solar system is compared to the cost? Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly excited by the prospect, but the cost of a mission to find it would astronomical (ugh) and even if it turned out to exist, I severely doubt it would be a global paradigm shifting discovery.

2b: Because of the huge range of extremophiles (sp?) that we've found on Earth wouldn't it be safe to just assume that there were microbial life in the oceans of Europa and elsewhere and focus on to more practical space science like NEO detection, or even more grandiose goals like finding intelligence?

3: On more of a philosophical level, where, for you, is the line drawn for "life?" Could our terrestrial understanding of what life is be too narrow for what is actually out there in the universe? As an example, the classic conundrum with this is viruses, but lets say that there is a self-adhering gaseous blob somewhere in Jupiter that runs a process on it's surrounding environment that sustains it's structure and maybe even gives it the ability to multiply. Would you call that life?

4: What was your degree in?

5: From your description of yourself, you don't seem to be too much on the intelligent, "little green men" side of astrobiology, but what are your personal thoughts on the Fermi Paradox anyway?

Thanks for doing this AMA. You have a baller profession.

I get this reference.