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Bacteria @ 41km
Makarand writes "
According to this
article in The Times of India, air samples collected
using balloon-borne cryosamplers at altitudes of around 25 miles contained bacteria that are
believed extra terrestrial.
This was revealed recently by legendary Indian astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar,
who supervised the experiments last year. The article throws light on the
brilliant Indian efforts to find if there is anyone out there.
Here is an older
article announcing the launch of this project.
"
If I collected stuff with a balloon, I'd probably hold off on assuming its extra-terrestriality. Unless it's some kind of super space balloon, but I don't think we have those yet.
And what's with the repeated mention of the guy's Indian-ness? Can we try to keep the nationalism out of Science, please? (Oh, wait, I guess that would be "multiculturalism," since he's swarthy.) And what's with calling him "legendary?" That sounds almost like WWF (or whatever it's called these days).
In any case, this sounds like only so much limelight-grabbing. I'm placing my bet now on peer review punching a hole in this guy's metaphorical balloon.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Bactera? Isn't that a car by Nissan?
If their budget is low, compare it to NASA's here, and just imaging if they discovered it before the U.S. did.
These bacteria are 41km from Earth, a bazillion light years from somewhere else, thus, they are from somewhere else.
good logic.
BC
> legendary Indian astrophysicist
> brilliant Indian efforts
Sounds just like ole time communist propaganda. Our brilliant scientists figured out how to convert 4-ply toilet paper into 2-ply paper that will last twice as long. Soon India will take over the world.
The probes sucked air at four different heights. Some bacteria were found in the air samples. These were not common contaminants.
Nor had they been used in the laboratory where the test was held. Moreover, no such growth was found on control membranes.
(End of Document)
Now how in the world does this mean its extraterrestial?
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Abortions for some...miniature American flags for others! - Kodos
Surely you mean bacterii?
No need to say more than this.
Anyone remember that book? Any one out there with one of those vapor-chilled cases, keep an eye out on your rubber gaskets.
Lord, bless my users that they may stop being such fucking idiots!!
I wonder, does this "extraterrestrial" life have DNA in it? If it does shouldn't that raise a few questions? Like perhaps contamination from terrestrial sources? Attention grabbing headlines like this are rather unscientific if they are so premature as to not even do basic tests.
Wow, I had forgotten about that until just now. Your right, its got several similarities. And the part with the rubber dissolving was nice.
Considering how long ago the experiment was done, the article was amazingly short on "what tests we've done on the strange new bacteria we found" details. (Or is the Indian new year not Jan 1, so "last year" is more recent?)
Pretty boring if there was a glitch and the bacteria really didn't come from 41km up. An astrophysics expert probably isn't so expert in preventing biological contamination.
It may be that the bacteria are Earthly, but natives of the upper atmosphere. Bacteria have turned up frequently in places where "everybody knew" that nothing could live, and are recently suspected of living in the atmosphere of Venus.
With native high-atmosphere bacteria around Earth and/or Venus, there would be plausable prospects for occasional cross-contamination via speeding bits of space dirt.
Select comets & a few other places in the solar system might have been able to produce or harbor bacteria that wound up here. Extra-Solar origins would be ultra-significant...but how could you prove it?
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Which is more likely: That bacteria from Earth managed to travel 41km into the sky sometime in the last 4.5 billion years, and then survived in that environment; or that bacteria travelled millions-trillions of miles through space from some other system and just happened to find Earths atmosphere?
Hey, I like the "intergalactic spores" theory as much as anybody, but I think this scientist is ignoring the obvious.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
There's already plenty of existing evidence of bacteria in clouds, why do they think it's extraterrestial?
U TF -8&q=bacteria+clouds
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
Makes me wonder why the astrophysicist is called legendary.
This article appeared on SpaceDaily over a year ago, and provides a bit more detail:
New Evidence Of Living Bacteria From Space
Cardiff - July 29, 2001
Claims of evidence of living bacterial cells entering the Earth's upper atmosphere from space has come from a joint project involving Indian and UK scientists.
The first positive identification of extraterrestrial microbial life will be reported on Sunday, 29 July 2001 at the Astrobiology session of the 46th Annual SPIE meeting in San Diego, USA by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University. He will speak on behalf of an international team led by Professor Jayant Narlikar, Director of the Inter-Universities Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India.
Samples of stratospheric air were collected on 21 January 2001 under the most stringent aseptic conditions by Indian scientists using the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) cryogenic sampler payload flown on balloons from the Tata Institute Balloon Launching facility in Hyderabad. Part of the samples sent to Cardiff were analysed by a team at Cardiff University led by Professor David Lloyd and assisted by Melanie Harris.
Commenting on the results, Professor Wickramasinghe said: "There is now unambiguous evidence for the presence of clumps of living cells in air samples from as high as 41 kilometres, well above the local tropopause (16 km), above which no air from lower down would normally be transported."
The detection was made using a fluorescent cyanine dye which is only taken up by the membranes of living cells. The variation with height of the distribution of such cells indicates strongly that the clumps of bacterial cells are falling from space. The daily input of such biological material is provisionally estimated as about one third of a tonne over the entire planet.
This new evidence provides strong support for the Panspermia theory of Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe.
"We have argued for more than two decades that terrestrial life was brought down to Earth by comets and that cometary material containing microorganisms must still be reaching us in large quantities," said Professor Wickramasinghe.
--
1 Corinthians 1:18-31 makes even more sense since Watson and Crick, doesn't it?
The mis-statement here appears the use of extra terrestrial, which could actually apply to any organism that lives independent of the earth's surface.
Not actually Alien, just outside the predominant biosphere.
The asumption that they come from 'out-there' is groundless, they could have as easily come from the surface at some time in past as the result of asteroid impact backwash, super volcanic erruption, or an unusual storm.
They are an important discovery and there needs to be more study in the means of nourishment in near nothingness, as well and the ecology the this exoterrestrial flora or fauna.
I find some comments on the report particularly derisive. Consider: It's a *newspaper* report on an *informal* talk; there's a good deal of context missing; It's been processed by a science reporter who had a few column inches to fill. So, the report should be treated with the respect that IMO it deserves: take it with huge doses of salt and wait to see a proper publication before you judge anyone.
As for Mr. Narlikar, Jayant V. Narlikar worked with Hoyle on the Steady State theory of the universe. Legendary? Maybe not. Try Subrahmaniam Chandrashekar.
Oh great! H-1B's are now even replacing American crackpot scientists. Congress should act now to protect our near monopoly of scientific bullshit from the onslaught of cheap foriegn crackpots.
if what they MEANT by extra-terrestrial was it originated from some other place than earth, it would be simple to test. Simply start sequencing some of the more common genes found in terrestrial bacteria. It would positively identity the strain if it were terrestrial, and if it were extra-terrestrial... well I assume we would observe something (eg differences, no common genes, completely different metabolism) never-before-seen.
/. for posting such a WEAK excuse for science.
Shame on
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are (/were) pretty well known as on a planet of their own. Their claims vary from believing illnesses like flu arrive on Earth from comets to believing there is a megaintelligent being at the end of the universe communicating with us via quantum uncertainty. If you don't believe me just pick up the books that they have written - it's all published.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The only way these things are "extra terrestrial" is if that means they don't live on the ground.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Article on astrobiology. Somewhat related to the post here.