Extraterrestrial Life in Earth's Atmosphere?

The Presence Microbes in the Stratosphere has already been demonstrated

It is remarkable that in none of the Cranfield hype, or newpaper reports mention the fact that this proposed work on microbes in the stratosphere is not new. Working with Prof.Chandra Wickramasinghe(former friend and co-worker of Fred Hoyle) and a group of scientists in India we have found bacteria and fungi in the stratosphere at heights of 41km (25 miles)and have put forward theories as to the origin of these microbes;this work has also been published widely in the literature. Have the scientists at Cranfield never searched Google for "microbes, bacteria in the stratosphere" on Google? A review of our work can be found by searchig Google for "high cold biosphere" or "wainwright stratosphere".

Best Wishes, Prof (Hon.Cardiff)Milton Wainwright,Dept. Molecular Biology and Biotechnology,University of Sheffield,UK.

reply to post by ProfMW

Well, again, by avoiding the hype and the newspaper reports, it seems that grad students have "searched google", though I think they may have used other resources.

Literature survey of previous experiments to collect microorganisms from the Stratosphere have either directly raised the issues of contamination or, more significantly, have not implemented appropriate procedures to minimise the risk of contamination.

www.cass-e.com...

Has anyone else done this before?

There have been a number of previous attempts to detect life in the stratosphere using balloon based platforms, high altitude aircraft and meteorological rockets. However many of these experiments failed to adequately the address the issue of contamination; since levels of microorganisms in the stratosphere are expected to be very low compared to ground based contamination (remember the 10 trillion microbes in your mouth) how can we be confident that any microbes we detect are truly from the stratosphere, rather than from ground based contamination?

www.cass-e.com...

But, their objective may be different than yours and those of others.

reply to post by ProfMW


You are right this has been done before but it seems they had a little problem that had cast doubts over the work.It seems they had some questions about them failing to ensure the collecting equipment and how sterile it was. That may be a reason why this experiment is going to happen.

reply to post by Phage


Wow how do we allow these people to conduct experiments without knowing what they are talking about? Amazingly enough there are people out there that do know what they are talking about. I find it interesting that you know more about what this experiment is going to do than the people who are conducting it.
I think you should contact them and set them straight about their experiments, because they obviously are not as smart as you on this subject.

Have heard again from Professor David Cullen of Cranfield University. He confirms that the primary purpose of the CASS-E probe is 'planetary protection and contamination control', which is to say, testing the technology for keeping microbes in one environment from getting in with those from another. He also mentions that: 'As a secondary objective, if we find any organisms we will try to interpret these in an Earth context. Only if we find something unusual would we start to look for further interpretations'. Interesting remarks. It seem they will do more than simply count microbes, if they find any. Without rather close scrutiny, they wouldn't know if they had 'something unusual' or not, and he clearly seems to think they *will* know. If they were to find 'something unusual' the only possible 'further interpretations', instead of an an 'Earth context', are obviously microbes from an other than Earth context, meaning extraterrestrial life. Ross

reply to post by tsurfer2000h

We don't "allow" anyone to conduct experiments. I have confidence that the people performing the experiment know what they are talking about. I have no confidence that the press provided an accurate quote in context. They have already shown a complete distortion of the purpose of the experiment by printing headlines like:

Mission to search for alien life in outer atmosphere

The purpose of the experiment is explicitly defined in the documents I have linked. The purpose is not to look for extraterrestrial life.

I realise, from my own experience, that the press distort information from scientists.Our studies on the microbiology of the stratosphere involved the use of sophisticated cryosampamplers and every effort was made(not surprisingly)to avoid contamination. The assumption behind these quotes is that the Cranfield-sampling of the stratosphere will, by definition, be less open to sampling errors than was the approach taken by us and other workers (including Russian workers in the 1970s) who have showed that microbes exist in the stratosphere. I am sure that when the Cranfield team finds life in the stratosphere(as they certainly will ) they will refer to the work of Imshenetsky, Wainwright et al, Shivaji et al, Griffin and others who have demostrated this fact before them. I look forward with great excitement to see what information they find that extends our knowledge of the "high cold biosphere".
Best Wishes, Prof MW

Thread already started here
www.abovetopsecret.com...

The CASS--E probe was lofted into the stratosphere early on the morning of Oct. 9th, and returned to Earth approximately 5 hours later. No further details are offered by the CASS-E website at this time. It seems possible that if extraterrestrial bacteria exist in Earth's stratosphere, they might predominate there over terrestrial ones. The difficulties associated with earthly bacteria reaching this height, together with the possibility that bacteria having survived an extended trip through space might well be hardier, and live more readily in the stratosphere, suggest this. Ross