Slashdot Mirror
Evidence For Comet-Borne Microfossils Supports Panspermia
New submitter onyxruby writes "On December 29th of last year a comet exploded over Sri Lanka. When examined by Cardiff University one of the comet samples was found to contain micro-fossils akin to plankton. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center tested additional samples with similar results. The research paper was published in the Journal of Cosmology. In practice this means that the argument that life did not start on Earth has gained additional evidence."
Update: 03/12 16:59 GMT by S : On the other hand, Phil Plait says the paper is very flawed; the sample rocks the researchers tested may not even be meteorites.
Its just a piece of the earth's ocean that was blasted into space during the theoretical asteroid extinction event?
Here. Interesting stuff.
Dog is my co-pilot.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/11/meteorite_life_claims_of_fossils_in_a_meteorite_are_still_wrong.html
According to this..
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/11/meteorite_life_claims_of_fossils_in_a_meteorite_are_still_wrong.html
Wickramasinghe has been "proving" panspermia for decades. This isn't any bigger a story than the last dozen times.
He once claimed that influenza was from space because it struck everywhere simultaneously - a patently false claim. You can learn more than he knows about it on Wikipedia.
He should give it up and go into creationism, where there's money to be had.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Isn't that something that mainly the Germans are into?
You're confusing Germans with satyrs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Looking at the original article, they are not peer reviewed and they have loads of fun citing only their previous articles that claim the same thing. Are they looking at small dust particles and thinking they see 'plankton' or is it really there? - a greater mystery than their paper can answer.
Because there is no proof, and not even any evidence for it.
It's been pretty thoroughly debunked, and at most it seems to be proof of Chandra Wickramasinghe's incompetence as a scientist, lackluster con man abilities, or both.
Oh, and certain slashdot editors accepting bad articles without spending two minutes on Google first.
Miller–Urey experiment created amino acids in the lab with lightning. This is the most likely source of life on earth. Not Mars, not comets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment
Bad Astronomer has done a good hatchet job on this story:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/11/meteorite_life_claims_of_fossils_in_a_meteorite_are_still_wrong.html
wot no sig
Bill Plait's take on this story.
Is that Phil's big brother?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I have never heard of Panspermia being associated with Intelligent Design. I have heard people who believe in Intelligent Design shooting down Panspermia as some kind of new age nonsensical unscientific crap.
Basically, Panspermia solves the issue of the unlikelihood of life developing sporadically on Earth, by saying "Space did it", which is the scientific equivalent of "God did it".
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
and heaven knows what's beyond our observability horizon.
BTW, if physicists are right even God doesn't know, because the information can't be transferred. Or, if God is everywhere, the part of him that's "here" doesn't know what the part of him that is "there" knows, due to to the whole speed of light thingy.
Pardon the mental/theological masturbation...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Proof of extra-terrestrial life."
It's not a bigger story because it's not new. This particular meteorite may be new, but this has all been done before.
Water Bears. Freaky little microscopic animals. They go into a suspended state in unfavorable conditions and ca remain there indefinitely. While in that state they'll survive unshielded exposure to space - radiation, temperature extremes, the whole nine yards. When they encounter a benign environment again and reanimate they're good as new - they can even repair considerable radiation damage to their DNA. If they're not panspermic creatures they're certainly candidates to become such. Now imagine they get frozen into the heart of a fair-sized comet where they're shielded against most radiation, they could potentially even cross between stars. Disclaimer: we have no idea what the upper limit on suspended duration is, assuming there even is one. I imagine freezing to near 0K could extend it considerably though.
I can only imagine that similarly durable single-celled creatures exist as well.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"Phil Plait rips the paper to shreds. Wickramasinghe is a crank, and that Journal publishes all kinds of nonsense."
This deserves more than a short mention. I do not always agree with Phil Plait, but I think he nailed it pretty solidly here.
First, Plait points out that the diatoms are (A) all known Earthly varieties, and (B) almost certainly not "fossilized".
Then, he gives us other good reasons to question whether the "fragment" is a meteorite at all.
But despite that, he is still probably right.
No, he is almost certainly wrong. It is plausible that a rock containing live microorganisms could be ejected from a planet during an asteroid strike, drift to another planet within the same solar system, land, and survive. But it is implausible that this mechanism could spread life through interstellar space. To eject a rock fragment with enough force to completely escape a solar gravity well would melt it. Once it was ejected from the solar system, it would take eons to reach another star system. Once it reached another system, it would have an infinitesimal chance of hitting a life supporting planet. It would be far more likely to fall into the star, hit a gas giant, or just orbit for a few billion years. The chance of this happening, even once, in the lifetime of the universe, is remote. The chance of it happening repeatedly, in some sort of chain reaction, is as close to zero as anything can get.
> what is more probable?
Correct answer: We don't know. We have absolutely zero idea what the odds of protolife spontaneously arising in the organic slime might be, except that if that is what happened on Earth then it took somewhere north of a billion years to happen in a planet-sized petri dish teeming with amino acids, so probably pretty low. Then again maybe Earth was just spectacularly (un)lucky. You can't really tell much from one data point.
Meanwhile we also have Water Bears - freaky little indestructible animals that are perfectly capable entering a suspended state and surviving unprotected in space for extended periods (freezing, radiation, etc), and might just possibly be capable of crossing between planets or even stars if they were unlucky enough to get lobbed into space by a large impact and be cryogenically frozen deep in their lump of mud (aka comet). So anecdotal evidence that panspermia might also be possible. Probability, also completely unkown.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Wrong. Panspermia saying "life came from space" is no different than a new isolated lake being formed from meltwater in a frigid environment and over a period of thousands of years being filled with an entire ecosystem as the environment warms. The inhabitants of the lake (if they were intelligent enough) ask how life arose spontaneously in their little world because to them that lake is their world. But to us it's obvious life arrived there from the vast ecosystem that surrounds it -- an ecosystem the inhabitants of the lake can't see. Even in this day and age people still have the prejudice that the Earth is the center of the universe. Being "certain" the life arose on Earth and attacking the idea that it came from space as if it were some kind of heresy demonstrates that human psychology doesn't change. Some of us are just more enlightened thinkers.
But despite that, he is still probably right. What is the chance of micro-organisms NOT getting into space?
Those are separate questions. It makes sense that micro-organisms get into space. He is still (probably) wrong. His argument is that life on this planet came from micro-organisms and that this provides evidence for that (and that Archaeopteryx is a fake. )
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Keep in mind that it's the same professor Wickramsinghe that testified on behalf of creationists in Arkansas, and among other things claimed that the Archaeopteryx never existed and the fossils were all forgeries.
The onus is on those who makes extraordinary claims to provide extraordinary evidence. And doubly so when they have a crackpot history.
Basically, Panspermia solves the issue of the unlikelihood of life developing sporadically on Earth, by saying "Space did it", which is the scientific equivalent of "God did it".
But... technically, space did do it. We are, after all, the example of space doing it.
Question: If we send a probe to Europa, contaminate it with Earth-born bacteria, and 2 billion years from now that moon is crawling with life, does that mean "God did it" too?
Or perhaps panspermia is not the equivalent of 'god dun it' anymore than evolution is.
The idea of panspermia still requires evolution to take place somewhere.
I know! Everyone is right! You see, life started on Earth, but then a giant meteor smashed into earth, which happened to send some rocks into space that had bacteria on them. That meteor was so big, it wiped out all life on Earth, so years later when some of those rocks landed back on Earth, they became the source of all life we see today.
My webcomic
Ok so prove its not a meteor. Haven't seen very good science done here =/
The rock was found on Earth, where there are many Earth rocks and few rocks of recent space origin. Given this context, the rock in question is mostly likely an Earth rock. This is not an exceptional claim. The exceptional claim is that the rock is a meteor, a claim for which the researcher has shown no evidence
Just a bunch of curmudgeony professorial types demanding that Chandra Wickramasinghe is a heretic. Just because Mr Wickramasinghe's theory postulates its evidence for fossilized life in a meteor doesn't mean it must be tossed out. Add it to your body of "things to investigate more fully".
His theory isn't being tossed out because it is 'heretical'. It is being tossed out because he has shown absolutely no evidence for it. I'd wager that eventually, some real evidence will be found which supports the panspermia idea... but even then it wouldn't support his claims.
Really, then how do you explain comets etc being ejected from solar systems?
Hint, not everything has to be done in one big explosion.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.