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Has NASA Discovered Fossilized Alien Cyanobacteria in a Meteorite?

03/07/2011 12:07AM

Has NASA Discovered Fossilized Alien Cyanobacteria in a Meteorite?
A NASA scientist claims to have discovered the fossilized remains of an alien life form -- a cyanobacteria in meteorites which have been collected on Earth. According to Dr Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the alien life form could explain how life on Earth started. Dr. Hoover fractured small meteorite specimens under a sterile environment and then examined the freshly broken surfaces with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to search the surface for evidence of fossilized remains.

Dr Hoover explains that travelling to Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska, he has studied an extremely rare form of meteorites -- CI1 carbonaceous chondrites -- of which only nine are known to exist on Earth.

"I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet Earth. This field of study has just barely been touched -- because quite frankly, a great many scientists would say that this is impossible."

"The exciting thing is that they [the bacteria] are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on Earth. 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 stumped," said Dr Hoover.

"We have known for a long time that there were very interesting biomarkers in carbonaceous meteorites and the detection of structures that are very similar... to known terrestrial cyanobacteria is interesting in that it indicates that life is not restricted to the planet Earth," Hoover said.

Dr. David Marais, an astrobiologist with NASA's AMES Research Center, is very cautious about jumping to conclusions. "It's an extraordinary claim, and thus I'll need extraordinary evidence," Marais said.

Dr. Rudy Schild, of the Harvard-Smithsonian's Center for Astrophysics and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cosmology, where Dr. Hoover's paper has been published said "Dr. Richard Hoover is a highly respected scientist and astrobiologist with a prestigious record of accomplishment at NASA. 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. 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, he wrote."

Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute said "Maybe life was seeded on earth -- it developed on comets for example, and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early Earth. It would suggest, well, life didn't really begin on the Earth, it began as the solar system was forming."

Dr. Shostak continued "A lot of times it takes a long time before scientists start changing their mind as to what is valid and what is not. I'm sure there will be many many scientists that will be very skeptical and that's OK."


For more information:

http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/nasa-scientist-sees-signs-of-life-in-meteorites/?partner=rss&emc=rss

http://www.torontosun.com/news/2011/03/06/17515861.html#/news/world/2011/03/06/pf-17515701.html

http://www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=1131



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