NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite
foxnews.comHere is a link to the actual paper:
http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html
The Journal of Cosmology website looks a little sketchy to me -- not what I would expect from a serious science publication.
Even if he could conclusively prove that he is seeing a fossil in a meteorite you couldn't discount the idea that these meteorites were blasted off the earth's surface and into space by some ancient, huge asteroid strike and fell back to earth at a later date. That seems more likely to me than bacteria developing on a comet which is what he is suggesting.
That being said I had never heard of this class of meteorite. Here is a description from the paper by a chemistry professor who analyzed one in 1806,
"He realized that these stones were different from all other meteorites since they had the appearance of solidified clay. Thénard reported that “when the stones were placed in water they disintegrated immediately and gave off a strong clay-like odor.” "
I suppose the source meteorite could have been ejected matter from an impact with another planet that harbored life; i.e., a sort of "meteor vector." That, to me, seems far more plausible than life developing out of nothing on a meteor or comet in space.
Fox neglects to mention that their photo is an actual Titanospirillum bacterium, not the fossil found in the meteorite.
They have a track record of showing images and video with their reporting and imply the images are related to the news being discussed when they are often not.
They actually took the image from the paper, but they used the comparison image instead of the actual one.
Wait a minute, are you implying that Fox News uses juxtaposed or even wrong imagery to try to mislead people?!
Does anyone else question his choice to give FOXNews the exclusive? If you had made one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, would you submit it to FOX?
Unfortunately, it fits right in with history. NASA no longer has any credibility on the extraterrestrial life front. I've lost count of all their announcements, which have without fail turned out to be anything from arguably-fraudulent (though not quite provably so) up through so dubious it means nothing, like the previous meteorite results.
They have a pretty picture in the news story, certainly, but I will wait for independent confirmation before I even begin to consider the possibility that this may be true, as opposed to a carefully-selected picture culled from gigabytes of data. Not because I have preconceptions either way, but because that's how little I value NASA's announcements on this front.
The announcement of "arsenic-based life" was particularly bad, as it turned out to just be normal life that can survive in a higher than normal concentration of arsenic.
To be fair, this just a scientist who works for NASA who filed the paper, not NASA itself.
This guy has some interesting information:
http://m.gawker.com//5777460/fox-news-publishes-fake-exclusi...
Something seems odd here - the guy has made this same announcement in the past.
It's worth reading Phil Plait's article on this: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/ha...
If the meteorites were found on earth, couldn't the fossils stem from local bacteria? Maybe the meteorite hit earth a long time ago, long enough so fossils could form.
Apparently the CI chondrites class of meteorites are rare, all having fallen within around 200 years (oldest find in 1806).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CI_chondrite
Even assuming the possibility of bacteria contagion from Earth the question remains how the biological remain appears to contain no nitrogen, an essential building block to life as we know it.
This should be possible to determine. We should wait for a verification/reproduction of this study which will undoubtedly follow given the claims made.
The paper talks about that in length, and why he thinks that's not what happened. Obvious question is obvious.
All the scientists aren't really looking for "Alien Life" but rather "Life outside of planet Earth that looks very much like life on Earth".
To simplify we are made of cells and breathe oxygen but I would argue life can exists in other forms than one we know.
> He gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late Friday evening in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology.
This just screams credibility.
> foxnews.com