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. "

Comments

Re:sounds dubious

[gene_tailor]

I agree: dubious seems to be the correct attitude for now. The authors have a manuscript on line, linked from the Indians' UK collaborators at Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology but I can't find any indication any of this has been published in a peer reviewed journal. The evidence in the mss is:

1) some electron micrographs showing some clumpy things (putatively cells) and

2) the fact that some clumpy things in their samples can be dyed with flourscent dyes that stain the membranes of viable Earth bacteria.

While I might accept this as weak evidence there are some unknown organisms at high altitude, it is far from proving they are extraterrestial! Besides, why do they assume that an extraterrestial organism would have the same type of cell membrane as an Earth bacterial cell?