NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite

[Muck]

CBSNews

In what's sure to rekindle the debate over the question of life beyond Earth, a scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center says he has fossil evidence of bacterial life inside of a rare class of meteorites .

Writing in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology, Richard B. Hoover argues that an examination of a collection of 9 meteorites - called CI1 carbonaceous meteorites - contain "indigenous fossils" of bacterial life.

"The complex filaments found embedded in the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites represent the remains of indigenous microfossils of cyanobacteria, " according to Hoover. That matter-of-fact sentence also underscores the shout-out-loud implication that the detection of fossils of cyanobacteria in the CI1 meteorites raises the possibility of life on comets. And Hoover does not shy away from offering that very conclusion.

Skeptics will doubtless weigh in soon with questions. Still, Hoover's proposition may have stirred more controversy several years ago. More recently, though, some scientists have suggested that meteors and comets slamming into the Earth brought with them the very integuments of life, including water and a host of complex organic chemicals. If he's right, Hoover may have evidence to support that theory. He argues that the complex filaments he found embedded in the meteors are micro-fossils of extraterrestrial life forms that existed on the meteorites a long time ago prior to the meteorites' entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

"This finding has direct implications to the distribution of life in the Cosmos and the possibility of microbial life on in liquid water regimes of cometary nuclei as the travel within the orbit of Mars and in icy moons with liquid water oceans such as Europa and Enceladus," he writes.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

CBSNews

As much as I'm convinced there's life elsewhere, I've heard this same song and dance before, about 15 years ago with martian meteorite ALH84001:

 

[Mike80]

Finally - an explanation about where Sam Cassell came from....

 

[OCBuckWife]

As much as I'm convinced there's life elsewhere, I've heard this same song and dance before, about 15 years ago with martian meteorite ALH84001:

(sung to the tune of Mandy, Barry Manilo)
Oh NASA, you came in to my heart and you teased me, with NEWWWWS of life on MARRRS...Oh NASA, you cried wolf once too MANNNNYYY...of life on MARRRS...Oh NASA.

 

[Muck]

(sung to the tune of Mandy, Barry Manilo)
Oh NASA, you came in to my heart and you teased me, with NEWWWWS of life on MARRRS...Oh NASA, you cried wolf once too MANNNNYYY...of life on MARRRS...Oh NASA.

To be fair Hoover went to the press on his own, not at the behest of his employer (NASA). :p

Followup Thoughts on the meteorite fossils claim

On Saturday I posted about the claims of Richard Hoover, a NASA scientist who says he has found evidence of fossilized microbes in a meteorite. As soon as I saw the story (thanks to a tweet from my friend Sheril) I knew the ?net would explode with the news, so I wrote a quick post about it. My intent was to be as scrupulously fair as I could be while still trying to rein in the usual speculation that follows sexy news like this.

I?ve had a day to mull all this over, and I wanted to write some more thoughts about it. My initial thought was, of course, extreme skepticism ? we?ve seen claims like this before which haven?t panned out, and this one has a lot more, um, hyperbole than most before it ? but not being an expert in biology I didn?t want to make any firm conclusions until the experts weighed in.

Well, now they?re weighing in.

You can skip down to my conclusions ? let?s just say here it doesn?t look good for the microaliens ? but what follows is a more in-depth analysis.

.../cont/...

 

[Jake]

Given the recent discussions about cutting NASA funding between the President and Congress wouldn't it be fortunate if they found something new to research?

 

[sandgk]

Given the recent discussions about cutting NASA funding between the President and Congress wouldn't it be fortunate if they found something new to research?

If they did find something remarkable it would not be published in a backwater internet dishrag like the Journal of Cosmology.

 

[MaxBuck]

Why doesn't the Journal of Cosmetology stick to what they know, rather than getting into life on asteroids?