Check here…
Are these guys nuts? If the story is true, life is absolutely TEEMING (to coin a phrase;)) with life… why didn’t any of the astronauts over the past 30 years or so notice? Surely there were tests done of the (relative) vacuum outside our atmosphere, right? Right?
I think panspermia (the idea that life exists in space and possibly seeded our planet with its first lifeforms) is a valid and appealing idea, but I am very skeptical of the “evidence” being claimed here. If true, it would be a major news story and should be discussed extensively in peer-reviewed journals. Exactly how did the patterns of dispersal in the atmosphere suggest that they were coming from space, and not the lower atmosphere? Were any DNA studies or species determinations done on the organisms? Also, I wonder how these organisms (presumably arriving “naked” from outer space) were able to cope with deadly solar radiation?
Unfortunately, a lot of the ideas espoused by people like Sir Fred Hoyle and his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe seem very improbable and often border on the ridiculous.
For example, I read somewhere that Sir Hoyle believes life evolves by packets of bioinformation arriving (sent?) from outer space, and that viruses and bacteria are literally pouring down on us from space everday. Most of their “evidence” of extraterrestrial life in the past has been based solely on spectral data, which they claimed suggested that organic compounds were present in the dust around stars. I’m not an astronomer, but I don’t think their claims have ever been taken seriously by the scientific community.
By far the craziest idea I heard was that epidemics like the flu are not spread from person-to-person contact, but from the atmosphere of the earth passing through virus clouds in space. I just found a link for this bizarre theory here.
Jeez! That should be: “If the story is true, space is absolutely TEEMING…”
Anyways, thanks Mace! That was my take on it also…
I’m not completely adverse to the idea that there is life elsewhere, nor am I totally adverse to the idea of panspermia [sup]Hehe! I said “sperm”[/sup], but it seems to me that if (as I recall the article saying… right now my LAN is acting up, so I can’t re-check…) 1/3 of a ton of bacteria were raining down on Earth EACH DAY someone would have noticed before now…
I see no reason that terrestrial bacteria couldn’t be up that high… volcanic activity or meteor strikes could carry bacteria up that high into the atmosphere (seems to me… I could be wrong!) as well as rocketry… and a good, healthy sneeze! (OK, sorry… joke!:D)
Does anyone know if any of the previous space missions test for life? Take samples of the vacuum?
They MUST have! I would have…
tested!!! DAMN!
Hard to bottle Vacuum as it is nothing, but Space isn’t a true vacumm as there are particles, dust, single atoms and other bits floating in it so I guess if they tries to “scoop” a very large section of Space they might find something.
Right now a probe is being sent out to collect atoms from the sun. (Genesis solar probe) You would think that would be easy but due to the vast emptiness out there its mission will take three years to collect enough for any appreciable data.
So you would assume the short missions of Astronauts and Cosmonauts wouldn’t allow for them to find anything.
It’s not all that implausible I suppose; although free bacteria would be very vulnerable to radiation damage, they would be safer locked away in cometary ice (although how they got there would be another question.
It made me think of the Martian Bacteria issue (a chunk of mars meteorite was found containing [what some people interpreted as] fossil bacteria), but if a chunk of mars can get gouged out by an impact and end up on earth, then the reverse ought to be possible; suppose when the Yucatan impact happened (and wiped out the dinosaurs), fragments of earth rock with viable bacteria were flung out into space, some of these found their way to Mars and (somehow) made it down to the surface; if conditions were right, they could reproduce and create a population there, ready to be flung back by an impact and end up in a meteorite on earth (OK, rather a lot of 'if’s in there, admittedly)
Current mainstream thought is that trading microbes within the solar system (as described by Mangetout) probably happens. Earth microbes have almost certainly landed on Mars, and if Mars has microbes, they’ve made it back here, too.
Bacteria spreading from star to star is much less plausible, but certainly not inconceivable.
However, the hypotheses of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are not highly regarded. I see that MaceMan has already noted their infamous contiagion - from - outer - space speculations.
If the Earth is constantly rained on by microbes, it should be a simple matter to collect microbes in cosmic dust from, oh, say, low-earth orbit, or, better yet, from interplanetary space. I don’t know of any applicable experiments experiments, though–you’d need a sample return and then you’d need to look specifically for microbes. Cosmic dust is collected in the upper atmosphere (and thus would be contaminated by terrestrial microbes), and then studied in the lab. There have also been spacecraft experiments on dust, but the dust is vaporized when it slams into the detector. Here’s a cosmic dust experiment flow on the Shuttle: http://setas-www.larc.nasa.gov/esem/CDCE.html . However, it doesn’t look like they are taking any special care to avoid contaimination–you’d have to design the experiment carefully.
What’s up with this Meeting of the International Society for Optical Engineering, anyway? There was also a talk by a guy who claims that the Viking GEX results show 3%-level diurnal variations which could only result from biology. Is this conference just a loonie magnet, or what?
One example was that after Apollo 12 landed at the same site on the Moon, parts (including the TV camera) of the earlier unmanned Surveyor 3 lander were retrieved and checked for biological activity. Dorment bacteria were discovered and reactivated, despite the spacecraft having been exposed to lunar conditions for 31 months. This is normally interpreted as lifeforms from Earth having survived this time in space and indeed this conclusion has previously been endorsed by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe (with the aim of proving that organisms can survive prolonged exposure to such conditions).
Frankly, nobody’s done other tests because they don’t believe they’d find anything. Conversely, it’s difficult to definitively rule out a relatively small influx of biological material, even if one believes there is no such flux. Personally I suspect that any lifeforms that are in the upper atmosphere are overwhelmingly likely to have originated from the biosphere just below, rather than any lightyears beyond. A priori it may be unlikely that Earth life has reached up to there, but this might just be the case where the wrong hypothesis has prompted someone to do the experiment with the unexpected (but not mad) results.
If what they’ve found are lifeforms …
I have to say this all sounds pretty thin to this interested layman so far. These are bacteria which, by all accounts, look like ordinary Terran bacteria. This scientist David Lloyd from Cardiff University says “There would have to be some unusual event which would take particles from the Earth to a height of 40 kilometers.” Well, yeah, I guess there would have to be, at that. He then goes on to say “The most likely possibility is that the bacteria have arrived from another planet.” So, given the choice between a.) an “unusual event” or b.) apparently ordinary, garden-variety bacteria are actually from outer space, he thinks the simplest, most likely explanation is “b”? Forty kilometers up is pretty far from Earth’s surface, but at 40 kilometers up you’re still a heck of a lot closer to Earth than to anything else in the Universe.
Oh, and then he says “I’d like to think that, at any rate.” Ummm, yes doctor, I’m sure you would.
And, not to be snide, but what does the International Society for Optical Engineering know about exobiology or bacteriology?
Now, if the Stardust probe comes back with a bunch of bacteria on board, that would start to look interesting.