NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
Aliens exist, and we have proof.
That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover, who has spent more than 10 years studying meteorites around the world, told FoxNews.com in an interview. “This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist [sic] would say that this is impossible.” (Which is nothing more than repeating an unprovable illogical assumption. Life evolving on earth would seem to suggest it could evolve elsewhere--unless one's science is clouded by one's religious faith assumptions.)
Hoover discovered the fossils by breaking apart the CI1 meteorite, and analyzing the exposed rock with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to detect any fossil remains. What he found were fossils of micro-organisms (pictured below), many of which he says are strikingly similar to those found on our own planet (pictured above).
“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,” said Hoover. Some of the fossils, however, are quite odd. “There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stump.”In order to satisfy the inevitable hoard of buzz-killing skeptics, Hoover’s study and evidence were made available to his peers in the scientific community in advance of the study’s publications, giving them a chance to thoroughly dissect his findings. Comments from those who decided to sift through the evidence will be published online, alongside the study.
“Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis,” writes Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Dr. Rudy Schild, who serves as the Journal of Cosmology’s editor-in-chief. “No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published.” (Well, this is a biggy.)
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Over the weekend I was watching some program on the History channel (done this very year) that brought up the fact the Vatican has made statements to the effect that it's OK to believe in alien life forms, and indeed the Vatican has a number of times in the last three years. All of the 'educational' channels have been running program after program on alien life, UFO's, and psychic phenomenon. Hollywood is cranking out one movie after another based on UFO reports. And now we have scientists from NASA and the Smithsonian revealing the existence of what appears to them to be alien bacterial forms. I can't help but wonder if all of this is some sort of design being executed to condition global humanity to the real life changing news that yes indeed we have made contact with sentient extraterrestrial life forms and that things are not at all as we have been taught.
This announcement about fossilized bacterial forms would be the equivalent of putting a toe in some very deep waters. It will be fascinating to follow the reaction to this story.
This is inspiring news - after a very depressing week ala Philadephia, Wisconsin...
ReplyDelete"Which is nothing more than repeating an unprovable illogical assumption. Life evolving on earth would seem to suggest it could evolve elsewhere--unless one's science is clouded by one's religious faith assumptions"
ReplyDeleteThe truth is, without other examples, we simply CAN'T know HOW likely the spontaneous emergence of life is.
Evolution by natural selection once self-replicating cells with genetic information exist is simple enough.
But getting all the ingredients of such a cell together in the first place...with a membrane and genes that somehow both transcribe for organic molecules AND replicate themselves. Well, what the odds of that are...we just don't know.
The best we've gotten zapping organic soup in the laboratories are some amino acids. Who knows how rare or how common the spontaneous emergence of a first life form is. It's really impossible to calculate. The chances are clearly very small, but how small we don't really know. 1 in a million stars? A billion? A hundred billion? (the number of stars in the galaxy).
We'll see how this fossil bacteria thing turns out. It would be fascinating if it were true, but the whole thing reminds me of a certain Mars meteorite from Antarctica back in the 90's...
I just think 16 billion years or so and 100 million galaxies each with their multiple billions of stars tilt the odds in favor of life existing elsewhere--and having a great deal of time to develop sentience. After all mother earth is only some 4.5 billion years old and look what happened here.
ReplyDeleteOh, and that leaves out all the other interesting speculation about other universes and dimensional realities posited in quantum physics and string theory.
ReplyDeleteWhy all the questions about life being 'spontaneous?' It may have been, but only after God placed all the necessary elements in the universe to begin with. Therefore, it's logical to assume that the elements and environment for life to 'spontaneously' appear on earth has every chance to 'spontaneously' appear somewhere else. In fact, NOT to believe that is to limit the love and the reach of God....which is limitless ....
ReplyDeleteI have read the works of authors who propose that oil is not biogenic but abiogenic and slowly seeping out from deep within the earth's crust. The heat and the ability of oil to create membrane bubbles provide a calm environment in which chemical reactions can occur. Even the most basic animal and plant cells are likely the descendants of communities of more primitive reaction chambers (organisms?).
ReplyDeleteThis all requires a planet with a hot core and, therefore, active tectonics on the surface. Mars and the Moon are dead inside. Their surfaces are covered in craters that are never subducted under tectonic plates because there's no thermal energy (or not enough) within the planet/moon. That why there are very few craters on earth's ever-refreshing surface.
I think Thomist is starting too late in the story, i.e. the cell is a complex community which only became a basic building block for more complex life after who knows how many eons as a community of simpler, maybe not even living, entities.
Wonderful news if true, but many, many, many peer reviewers will be sharpening their instance of Occam's Razor as they go through Richard Hoover's latest paper.
ReplyDeleteThe existence of extraterrestrial life is not the biggest miracle I can imagine. Proving it scientifically - THAT will be a miracle. And may I witness it in my lifetime.