Academia, Science

It Came From Outer Space: NASA Scientist Reveals Fossil From Meteorite

Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, has released this picture of a fossil of a life form that came to Earth on a meteorite — as opposed to Sigourney Weaver’s stomach.

In the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology, Hoover says that these fossils appear in CI1 carbonaceous chondrites — a rare type of meteorite. If true, they are a life form confirmed from outside our planet.

Source: Yahoo

64 thoughts on “It Came From Outer Space: NASA Scientist Reveals Fossil From Meteorite”

  1. I’m with Elaine and Mike on this one …

    I’d be with Nal too except he makes too much sense …

  2. James M,

    To amplify your statements about crushing acceleration not being an issue, I did some calculations…

    Using the special relativity formulae for Lorenzian velocity addition and time dilation I simulated a voyage from Earth to Alpha Centauri (picture the spaceship at the end of the game ‘Civilization’). The ship thrusts at a constant 10.0 m/s^2 and when it’s halfway there it begins deceleration. This is a naive calculation for many reasons (starting with the fact that it’s using special relativity to solve a general relativity problem, ending with the fact that I’m playing fast and loose with frames of reference and simultaneity, and including some stuff that I’m not mentioning…) but the results should be in the right ballpark for a trip of this sort.

    The trip is 4.37 light years and to an observer on Earth the ship takes almost 5 years and 8 months to reach it’s destination and has a top speed of 0.994930179576667 c. The duration of the journey from the passengers’ point of view is only a little over 2 years and 9 months. The real reason to send robots first is that interstellar travel is going to be one-way for quite a while…

  3. I agree with Elaine. God created one planet 6,000 years ago and then fashioned a solar system, galaxy and infinite Universe around it to separate the faithful from the faithless, by seeing who wouldn’t have total faith is His Scriptures. Forget the Universe and its’ temptations, you’ve got an immortal soul to save.

  5. raf,

    You are correct…I meant to say that he was not an intelligent life form….

  7. Jameses-es,

    Aye. Radiation is still the rub for even our local travel. Generally the more complexity an organism has, the more sensitive it is to radiation.

  8. James M, that depends on your method of propulsion, how efficiently it consumes fuel, and where you intend to go. A fusion rocket, for example, vastly reduces the amount of fuel you have to carry compared to chemical rockets, while giving you a HUGE boost in potential acceleration. Humans must deliberately dial down even the rockets we have now so we do not splatter humans around the cockpit. Destinations will likely include coming close to gravity wells, and long acceleration curves for humans vastly extends the time such maneuvers consume. And forget about “emergency acceleration.” With bots, 10s of gees, even 100s of gees, is possible without issue. Humans? Considerably less than 3 and more than one half over the long haul. It adds considerable time when humans have to be fed while they age. I have yet to see a plausible Mars plan that does not fry humans while their bones turn to chalk.

    Not that it matters today. Our rockets are play toys compared to what is needed in open space. Today, acceleration is secondary to the radiation problem, in any case.

  9. Nal,

    Although I agree this particular article has a suspect pedigree, that doesn’t automatically discount panspermia as there is no hard evidence on the idea either way. What there is evidence of is amino acid compounds in meteors and comets. While this is not tantamount to evidence for panspermia, I think that the presence of the chemical basis for life in extraterrestrial objects is at least curious enough to merit keeping an open mind about the idea of panspermia.

  10. Didn’t George the 2nd Confirm that there is life form outside of this planet… Maybe not intelligent….but still a life form…

  11. James in LA,

    I agree that manned flight is unlikely for a long time, but crushing acceleration isn’t the reason. All the hard acceleration comes with getting out of the Earth’s gravity well, which we can already do. After that, you can accelerate slowly—whatever gives you the most efficient use of mass, since the biggest constraint on how fast you can go is on how much fuel you can carry, rather than how quickly you accelerate.

  12. Very nice. One suspects that with a shovel and five minutes of digging, evidence of microbes will likely turn up in this solar system wherever one chooses to dig. Most of the life by mass on this planet is in the first mile of crust. The solar system has been a pinball machine for 5 billion years, distributing stuff hither and yon.

    As these processes arise from the evolution of stars, life has likely been around since the first stars exploded over 13 billion years ago. This seems to reduce the ET Problem to one of ships passing in the night. Space is at once alarmingly huge and old.

    Space is hard. Humans have yet to fall out of the Van Allen Belts that shield the planet from radiation. Each of the astronauts that went as far as the moon have since developed cataracts. Humans need the equivalent of 30 feet of water of shielding against radiation in open space.

    Given our love of cyberspace, one posits the first human-like intelligences to leave the solar system will be largely made of non-flesh, something that can survive both radiation and the crushing acceleration needed to get anywhere interesting. The alternatives are large craft with elaborate shielding, pushing back the launch time considerably.

    We’ll be going, sure as that first group of hominids had to go over the African horizon.

  14. No.

    No, no, no. No no no no no no no no.

    No, no.

    No.

    Fox News broke the story, which ought to make one immediately suspicious — it’s not an organization noted for scientific acumen. But even worse, the paper claiming the discovery of bacteria fossils in carbonaceous chondrites was published in … the Journal of Cosmology. I’ve mentioned Cosmology before — it isn’t a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth.

  15. The picture you used is titanospirillum velox (from Earth), not what the article is claiming is the alien fossil.

  16. I am suprised that this announcement is not getting the attention it deserves. If verified this could be the greatest discovery since fire!

  17. The link in this one didn’t show up, so if this turns into a double post, I apologize:

    It is not an auspicious beginning. Finding credible evidence of extraterrestrial microbes is the kind of thing you’d expect to see published in Science or Nature, but the fact that it found a home on a fringe website that pretends to be a legitimate science journal ought to set off alarms right there.

  20. More claptrap from the rationalists again, I see. When will they learn. I’m off for my tarot card reading so I can face the day.

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