Meteorites Could Preserve Evidence of Alien Life

Saw this interesting article about a Russian European experiment that send a rock sample with biological samples into space and then retreived it back to see if any signs of life were still preserved on it after it entered the earth's atmosphere.

In an effort to understand how organic chemicals might survive after a period in the vacuum of space and then violent re-entry through the atmosphere, scientists have uncovered some interesting results. Last year, the ESA/Russian Foton-M3 mission was launched to test the effects of microgravity on various biological samples.

Here is a link to the complete article

www.universetoday.com...

we could have been the result of an experiment like this
dont u think? :O

That's a good article. Thanks for posting it

I somehow missed the point of the photograph of a huge looking boulder of Orkney rock and the description of it being as big as a pork pie What bit didn't I understand?

But say if there is an easier (and cheaper) way to look for ET? Rather than sending hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of hardware to Mars to look for organic chemicals, why can't we analyse all the rocky samples littered across the globe that originated from space?

Source

I think the writer missed a good opportunity here. Do you remember the Martian meteorite ALH84001? It was thought to contains fossils of bacteria that originated on Mars...



The study by Dr Mackay et al was unable to prove that the fossils could not have come from Earth. Would the element of doubt in their origins still be an issue with any other 'space rocks' found today?

The summary to the study of the Martian 'fossils' ends...

o summarize, the Science paper of McKay and co-workers leaves many unanswered question. As they forthrightly state, their paper is NOT PROOF OF LIFE ON MARS. Their paper presents evidence that, on its surface, is consistent with ancient life on Mars; McKay and co-workers believe that the evidence is more consistent with life on Mars than any other explanation or explanations. Almost all of their conclusions can be disputed and will likely be disputed.

From my perspective, their strongest conclusion is that ALH 84001 contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that formed on Mars. These PAH molecules may be related to martian micro-organisms, as McKay and co-workers suggest. The PAHs might also have formed without assistance from living organisms, in what might be called a prebiotic organic chemistry. Proof of a prebiotic organic chemistry system in Mars would be nearly as exciting as proof of life itself.

Allan H. Treiman, Lunar and Planetary Institute August 21, 1996

Hopefully science has advanced enough to rule out any of the confusion in future finds.