Live data from Hacker News

NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life

news.yahoo.com

41–42 of 42 posts

Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life

#41
post #36

This was published in a crockpot journal and is likely fake: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2294516

The "analysis" presented there is heavily laden with emotion, which reduces its own credibility in short order. I know nothing about the Journal Of Cosmology, but the tone of this blog entry prevents me from accepting it as useful information, it comes across more as axe-grinding. But let's assume JoC is a crackpot journal. Why is a NASA scientist publishing there? Did he decide that NASA's credibility on alien life…

"But let's assume JoC is a crackpot journal. Why is a NASA scientist publishing there?"

He's publishing there because he couldn't publish it in a reputable journal, indicating its quality is rather low. I agree that this article doesn't take the most mature tone ever, but it breaks down what's wrong with the article itself further into it. It's unnecessary to rely on credibility at all; of the journal itself OR the fact that the guy worked at NASA.

Re: NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life

#42

I'm not impressed. The evidence backing the Martian microbe claims for meteorite ALH 84001 were far, far more robust than these seem to be and yet at the end of the day succumbed to the onslaught of criticism. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claiming that you've found life inside a rock that has sat in a stew of micro-organisms (the Earth) for thousands of years is one thing, claiming that such l…

From what I've read, CI chondrites are extremely fragile and don't last very long on exposure to liquid water, which is why about half of the recovered CI chondrites on Earth have been witnessed falls (with the other half found in Antarctica). The two he analyzed for the paper were witnessed falls from 1864 and 1938.

I'm not saying this isn't just a case of pareidolia (it probably is), but the meteorites haven't been sitting in a stew of microorganisms for "thousands of years".

Post reply on HN