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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?
These bacteria are 41km from Earth, a bazillion light years from somewhere else, thus, they are from somewhere else.
good logic.
BC
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
NASA does have a low budget for a agency, but you have to consider just how many people it actually serves with those dollars. While you could technically argue, "all of humanity", so far tests in space have not, in my mind, led to any huge improvements in human life. Before I get flamed to pieces, I just want to point out that while NASA certainly is doing a lot of good, the Department of Education has a more immediate and obvious positive (hopefully!) effect on the nation as a whole, and it serves millions and millions of children. Its budget is only 56 billion dollars, about 4 times as much as NASA's.
14 billion dollars is a lot of money. I believe that NASA deserves it, even if sometimes it seems that they sometimes do experiments in space just for the hell of it or for publicity. However, I also think that the size of their current budget is about right.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
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.
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.
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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.
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
The only way these things are "extra terrestrial" is if that means they don't live on the ground.
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