Giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox
WASHINGTON: A NASA scientist's claim that he found tiny fossils of alien life in the remnants of a meteorite is being closely reviewed by 100 experts.
Richard Hoover from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre's paper, along with pictures of the microscopic earthworm-like creatures, were published late Friday in the peer-reviewed open access Journal of Cosmology."He concludes these fossilised bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilised remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, e.g. comets, moons, and other astral bodies," said the study.
’Indigenous fossils’ inside meteorite
Hoover sliced open fragments of the Alais, Ivuna, and Orgueil CI1 carbonaceous meteorites, which can contain relatively high levels of water and organic materials, and looked inside with a powerful microscope.
Based on Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and other measures, Hoover has concluded they are indigenous to these meteors and are similar to trichomic cyanobacteria and other trichomic prokaryotes such as filamentous sulfur bacteria.
"These studies have led to the conclusion that the filaments found in the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites are indigenous fossils rather than modern terrestrial biological contaminants that entered the meteorites after arrival on Earth," said the study.
"This finding has direct implications to the distribution of life in the Cosmos and the possibility of microbial life in liquid water regimes of cometary nuclei as they travel within the orbit of Mars and in icy moons with liquid water oceans such as Europa and Enceladus," the study concluded.
Experts invited to comment
Studies that suggest alien microbes can be contained in meteorites are not new, and have drawn hefty debate over how such life could survive in space and how and where life may have originated in the universe.
The journal's editor in chief, Rudy Schild of the Centre for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian, said Hoover is a "highly respected scientist and astrobiologist with a prestigious record of accomplishment at NASA."
"Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis," he said.
"No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough analysis, and no other scientific journal in the history of science has made such a profoundly important paper available to the scientific community, for comment, before it is published," added Schild. Those commentaries will be published March 7 through March 10.
Criticism of past alien claims
A NASA-funded study in December suggested that a previously unknown form of bacterium had been found deep in a California lake that could thrive on arsenic, adding a new element to what scientists have long considered the six building blocks of life.
That study drew plenty of criticism, particularly after NASA touted the announcement as evidence of extraterrestrial life. Scientists are currently attempting to replicate those findings.
