British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
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Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#2Life is constantly surprising us, it's well known that there is bacteria on the outside of the ISS, it could well be that life is falling down rather than up.
I'd like to see a DNA sample that doesn't point to existing earth life, for me just seeing diatoms seems a little too early to reach this conclusion.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#3Paper: http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf
The journal of Cosmology is regarded as a low-quality publication by many scientists. I can't judge the assertions in the paper but the methodology seems good.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#4Life is constantly surprising us, it's well known that there is bacteria on the outside of the ISS, it could well be that life is falling down rather than up. I'd like to see a DNA sample that doesn't point to existing earth life, for me just seeing diatoms seems a little too early to reach this conclusion.
I was thinking the same thing. Of course if life is falling down to earth, it may be hard to tell apart, but there should be some hints of life optimized for earth versus optimized for elsewhere.
I find the bacteria on the ISS fascinating. Can you point me to a good article?
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#5Until they do more rigorous analysis of this it is not convincing.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#6Paper: http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf The journal of Cosmology is regarded as a low-quality publication by many scientists. I can't judge the assertions in the paper but the methodology seems good.
What flags this for me is that if you have an organism in hand, it's easy to do more analysis to provide evidence that it is not terrestrial. At the moment, I'd still say that the hypotheses of "their probes was contaminated", "our model of what particles are in the stratosphere are wrong and this is fully terrestrial life", and "they're flat-out lying" remain higher odds based on this evidence than "they found extraterrestrial life". In our own atmosphere.
They even mention a test they could run, but they did not wait to run the test before announcing. Not a good sign. Especially since that is not a lengthy test to run, compared to the speed of publication....
I of course reserve the right to change my mind based on more evidence; I have no problem with the idea that our stratosphere models may be wrong, for instance, and if extraterrestrial really is raining down on our stratosphere, so be it. Let facts be the judge. But some sort of biochemical or isotope evidence this is not just another extremophile would be nice.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#7Life is constantly surprising us, it's well known that there is bacteria on the outside of the ISS, it could well be that life is falling down rather than up. I'd like to see a DNA sample that doesn't point to existing earth life, for me just seeing diatoms seems a little too early to reach this conclusion.
I was thinking the same thing. Of course if life is falling down to earth, it may be hard to tell apart, but there should be some hints of life optimized for earth versus optimized for elsewhere. I find the bacteria on the ISS fascinating. Can you point me to a good article?
I don't know specifically about the ISS, but I found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade fascinating. Multicellular, and "can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, pressures about 6 times stronger than pressures found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than would kill a person, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce."
It's "some of them will survive in outer space", though.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#8Paper: http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf The journal of Cosmology is regarded as a low-quality publication by many scientists. I can't judge the assertions in the paper but the methodology seems good.
For reference, here is the front page of the Journal of Cosmology:
The paper contains almost no detail about the methods used, and lacks involvement of a diverse group of authors. This indicates that the authors are not thinking hard enough about alternative theories to explain what they have found.
For instance, the paper contains this sentence:
"It is also unlikely that the fragment could have come from commercial aircraft, which fly below well below our stratospheric sampling height."
And goes no further. Completely unacceptable.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#9Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but still, this is good to see.
I imagine this discussion in the scientific community will go on for many years, perhaps decades. I'm still not convinced that Viking didn't find some evidence of life on Mars back in the 70s.
Re: British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life
#10"In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere, we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space" so, just because we don't KNOW of any mechanism by which large particles could be transported to the stratosphere, we conclude that the particles originated from space - even if we obviously don't KNOW of any mechanism by which life could originate from space and fall on Earth? This looks like very very weak reasoning.