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Is SARS From Mars?

Posted by timothy on from the make-of-it-what-you-will dept.

lupulack writes "A news item at CTV.ca asks whether coronaviruses such as that implicated in SARS are in fact completely terrestrial in origin. It's not as clear cut as you might think !"

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Link to a more believable article by Andy_R · · Score: 5, Informative

    The World Health Organisation are now saying it's likely to have originated in civet cats

    I expect the author of the theory that 'The Lancet' printed in their letter page will now follow up with an equally believable theory that the cats flew here from Mars.

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  2. Sceptical - or blinkered? by canthusus · · Score: 4, Informative
    I see a lot of scepticism about Prof. Wickramasinghe's theory! Scepticism is good, where it's informed. But some of the scepticism borders on blinkered.

    To put a couple of things straight first. Professor Wickramasinghe hasn't said that SARS comes from space. In the Lancet letter (free reg required), he says "With respect to the SARS outbreak, a prima facie case for a possible space incidence can already be made". Note the word "possible". Note the words "prima facie" (roughly="sufficient to warrant further investigation").

    This isn't some crackpot who's just heard of SARS, can't understand epidemiology and therefore thinks it must have come from outer space without thinking things through. Along with Fred Hoyle, he's long been a proponent of panspermia - the theory that life originated in space, rather than on Earth.

    There is plentiful evidence of complex organic molecules in cometary and interstellar material. The environment on periodically warmed comets is every bit as suitable for the generation of life as the alternative theory of the primordial soup. Organic compounds, quite tightly concentrated, intermittent energy, water. The theory is that life on Earth originated Out There, so it would be no surprise that DNA/RNA from space would fit earthly organisms - they share the same origins.

    In his letter, Prof. Wickramasinghe estimates that "a tonne of bacterial material falls to Earth from space daily, which translates into some 10^19 bacteria, or 20 000 bacteria per square metre of the Earth's surface". It would be surprising if none of these found a viable host. On the rare occasion that there is a good match, a pandemic could result. We don't know if SARS started this way or not.

    Note that meteors aren't involved. Nothing gets burned up on re-entry. The stuff just drifts in.

    I don't know what the answer is, but I know that it's not as clear cut as some would like to think. It's just possible that data from Beagle2 this Christmas might help shed a little more light.