Extraterrestrial Life is a censored subject says Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe!

I think the issue comes down to the viability of the theory of panspermia itself, and apparently it will be difficult to prove in any case. But it is clear that there are organic molecules in comets and asteroids, so their probable contribution to life on earth is likely, which at least helps the panspermia case. In other words, we already have lots of organic matter in space, including in space dust. The existence of extremophiles is also well documented, including apparently the tardigan, a small animal that can survive in a vacuum. Also, I think the point with discovering bacteria in the stratosphere is more that it paves the way for the plausibility of bacteria surviving in deep space.The bacteria they discovered there was resistent to high UV, which has got to be crucial. So while there may be no smoking gun as it were, the circumstantial evidence is surprisingly good. It is difficult to believe in fact that bacteria on earth hasn't already found its way into space and onto other planets and moons. A grand ecology involving the whole sol system is not really that farfetched, even if it were perhaps it is always one way,

there is also the apparent discovery of extra-terrrestrial bacteria claimed by these scientists: Geologist Bruno D'Argenio and molecular biologist Giuseppe Geraci claim the bacteria were wedged inside the crystal structure of minerals (srcool down to the fifth bullet point on the page): panspermia-theory.com

Originally posted by Astyanax

Evolution of lifeforms is easy but getting started is obviously a lot harder.

Indeed. And where better to start than on hospitable Planet Earth, which seems almost deliberately designed to host life?

Allow me to repeat that I do not discount panspermia. It is just that there is no evidence for it at present.

True, there is no direct evidence, but there is indirect considerations that may make people want to change their Bayesian prior.

But early Planet Earth was not particularly hospitable to life, and yet the evidence is that microbial life was present on Earth nearly from the geological beginning---and yet multicellular life took quite a while to get going.

The attraction of Panspermia is this: that *if* there was free-deep-space microbial life, it would have been nearly impossible for the Earth to have not have encountered it in its early history, and such life though not particularly adapted to Earth at first would likely have multiplied and precluded the de-novo evolution of life on Earth. (we detect only one basic biochemistry--maybe one and a half if you consider bacteria/archaea separately).

And many bacteria/archaea are known to be very (and unusually) hardy in cold space conditions. Why would that be? Is that an evolutionary part of Earth history? No. You can explain hot extremophiles living in springs, but what about cold-vacuum-and-radiation-resistant microbes?

www.washingtonpost.com...

Bacteria grew more virulent in microgravity, and others withstood obscene fluxes of radiation! How did that evolve if they originated exclusively on the surface?

The experimental problem with Panspermia is that if it is true, then the basic chemistry of Earth microbes and space microbes would be fairly similar and it would be extremely difficult to pinpoint any specific microbe as having space-origin. We need many sample returns from comets and underground on Mars.

Originally posted by Zcustosmorum
Would microorganisms mean the rods that have been talked about or would it mean those other floating things that are seen on the famous tether incident video. I suppose it could make sense

Neither. Microorganisms are invisible to the naked eye and to most instruments except microscopes. He's referring to things like bacteria.

and FYI, those "objects" around the STS Tether were shown with very compelling evidence to be artifacts created by the camera used. I got into a literally month-long debate about this with a professional photographer who re-created the effect perfectly and described it in detail. Bummed me out, similar to when crop circles were utterly debunked for me.

Originally posted by something wicked

Originally posted by Sablicious
Religion is ET's arch nemesis.

Until we eradicate religion, we will never be able to freely explore the possibility of ET life without ridicule.

Because as we all know, were alien life to be discovered, it would expunge any vestige of 'credibility' ([insert hysterical laughter]) these fictitious belief systems (/ systems of control) have.

Can you provide a statement from any major religion that states it fundamentally disagrees that life may exist on somewhere other than earth? Just one statement would be fine, although I'd prefer it to be from within the last couple of hundred years if that's ok.

Creationists at one time accepted the world was flat. They killed the man who said it was round. Creationists at one time accepted that gravity was a lie. There was a time when Creationsts said all the planets circled the Earth. Galieo was killed for figuring we circle the sun, as do the other planets.

Your conditional requests highlight the fact that they have ammended positions post-hoc. It only follows that the above examples would also negatively treat ET possibility. Nowadays they have changed their tune. Just goes to show how unconvincing they are in everything else they say if they're changing them over time. Same for all religions really. Heck they even said early term abortions were not murder at one point, now it's different. Make up your mind. Always changing their tune.

When life is discovered somewhere else in the universe (as I believe sooner or later it will be), the balance of likelihoods will change. For the moment, the answer stands as previously stated.

Aren't you contradicting yourself?

It only stands for you if you exclude unexplored planets that we know of. We've barely explored any other planetary body so we don't know whether there is life there.

It was only ten years ago the scientific community stated categorically that water does not exist on the Moon or Mars, and now we know it does. Same concept.

Only after every planetary body, comet and asteroid that we know of has been thoroughly explored can you state "life does not exist anywhere else". Then your Occams Razor statement will work logically.

reply to post by Nightspore

It is clear that there are organic molecules in comets and asteroids, so their probable contribution to life on earth is likely, which at least helps the panspermia case... we already have lots of organic matter in space, including in space dust.

Yes, indeed. Now broaden the focus a little bit, and what do we see? That everything comes from space. The very planet is a condensate of spaceborne dust and debris. The water on it came from space, too. Every atom of which Earth is composed, living or dead, came originally from space. But it does not follow that Earthly life originated anywhere but on Earth.

Geologist Bruno D'Argenio and molecular biologist Giuseppe Geraci claim the bacteria were wedged inside the crystal structure of minerals (srcool down to the fifth bullet point on the page): panspermia-theory.com

There have been a few such discoveries, all of them (as we have seen above) inconclusive.

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reply to post by mbkennel

The attraction of Panspermia is this: that *if* there was free-deep-space microbial life, it would have been nearly impossible for the Earth to have not have encountered it in its early history, and such life though not particularly adapted to Earth at first would likely have multiplied and precluded the de-novo evolution of life on Earth.

Nearly impossible? Say rather that, if the density and distribution of such life were sufficient, there might be an outside chance of it. Space is a very big place. And we have absolutely no evidence – not even circumstantial evidence – to suggest that such life exists, or ever did exist.

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reply to post by Krusty the Klown

Aren't you contradicting yourself?

No, I am not. And I am not willing to offer a lesson in logic and probability on this thread, so I fear you must be content with what I have said about the matter so far.

Originally posted by Astyanax

Aren't you contradicting yourself?

No, I am not.

Ok I was just trying to be polite. You ARE contradicting yourself and you ARE wrong.

And I am not willing to offer a lesson in logic and probability on this thread,

Considering your logic is flawed and your reasoning is spurious that will probably to the benefit of every reader of this thread.

so I fear you must be content with what I have said about the matter so far.

Not so much content as amused. It's entertaining when people are so sure of themselves that they are arrogant about it especially when they lack the very understanding they see in others.........

Mind firmly closed indeed.....thanks for the laffs.....

reply to post by Astyanax


I never mentioned anything about disproving but I talked about "disregarding". Disregarding without giving enough resources or support necessary progress the research further.

Indeed it's a bit boring to repeat the same things but I don't know how else to get to you when you are walking around the points I'm making in each post. Risking another wall of text, here it goes..

Do panspermia people get the same resources to experiment on their theories as much as the Higgs particle guys? No. If you are not a scientist how do you know Wickramashinge's work was disproved scientifically? Because basically the media and other scientists (which ones again, anyone well-known?) basically say "both your research and your methods suck dude, you're nuts!" Do we have any resources actually disproving and providing a valid, non-biased challange to his conclusions? Please do share.

Did Higgs guys fail at proving the particle exists so far? Yes, indeed. Did they get shut down and labeled "nuts"? Definetly not.
Did panspermia guys fail at proving the E.T. exists so far? Yes, indeed. Did they get shut down and labeled "nuts"? Yes.

I like to see some more resources being put in this area and un-biased, un-ridiculed research being discussed as openly as other sciences and unproved theories in short.

reply to post by bilb_o

I never mentioned anything about disproving but I talked about "disregarding".

The examples I gave earlier show that the subject of extraterrestrial life is not disregarded.

Here's another example: just a few weeks ago, on January 25-25, the oldest scientific organization in the world, the Royal Society, held a discussion meeting on the detection of extra-terrestrial life and its consequences for science and society.

The Society (whose former members include Michael Faraday, Robert Hooke and Sir Isaac Newton) is very interested in extraterrestrial life and intelligence. In January 2010, it held a big conference on the subject, attended by, among others, Frank Drake (he of the famous Drake equation), Colin Pillinger, who headed the Beagle2 Mars lander project, and Lord Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, who is also President of the Society. It was widely reported in the media, so I can't think how you must have missed it. A follow-up conference by the Society in October of the same year looked at the societal consequences of the discovery of ET life or intelligence.

All three events were packed to the scuppers with eggheads, each one paying close attention to the subject of extraterrestrial life.

And finally, those extra-solar planetary discoveries that Krusty was reminding us about, the putatively exobacteria-ridden meteorites mentioned by others, that kerfuffle over (nonexistent, as it turned out) arsenic-based lifeforms in some salt pond... it was science and scientists who did all that research and made all those discoveries. What was that again, about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and intelligence being disregarded?

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Do panspermia people get the same resources to experiment on their theories as much as the Higgs particle guys? No.

Panspermia itself is an unfalsifiable hypothesis. It has no testable consequences.

However, see below...

If you are not a scientist how do you know Wickramashinge's work was disproved scientifically?

His claims that palaeontology is all wrong and Archaeopteryx was a hoax were laughed right out of the field. He doesn't mess about with biologists and palaeontologists any more. He has stuck to looking for evidence to support panspermia, and published very little except in JoC.

Something I posted earlier:

Originally posted by Astyanax
He now publishes only on crank internet sites such as the infamous Journal of Cosmology. Nobody in the scientific community takes him seriously any more. Cardiff University withdrew his funding in 2011; as far as I know he has ceased to have an active career in science.

It seems I was a little out of date with this. After Cardiff University withdrew his funding in early 2011, the University of Buckingham in the UK stepped in and actually created a whole new department just for him, the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology (BCAB). So much for regular science not being interested in panspermia – or is it just a case of keeping the old horse in pasture?

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Did Higgs guys fail at proving the particle exists so far? Yes, indeed. Did they get shut down and labeled "nuts"? Definetly not.

That is far from a 'failure'. Falsifiying a hypothesis is counted as success in science. By the time the LHC research is over, we will know whether it exists or not. If it doesn't, the whole Standard Model of physics is falsified. That's a hell of an achievement.

I like to see some more resources being put in this area and un-biased, un-ridiculed research being discussed as openly as other sciences and unproved theories in short.

Here's a list of research publications from people associated with BCAB. Only one of them – JoC publications, which don't count, excepted – seems actually to have been submitted after the Centre was founded and it seems to be still in peer review. The older ones mostly look a bit speculative with regard to subject; still, it shows that research into the subject (of a kind) is being done.

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reply to post by Krusty the Klown

I was just trying to be polite.

Well, I see by your last post that you've stopped trying, so I hope you're feeling better now.

Wickramasinghe on Panspermia

Read the man himself: Viva Panspermia!

Popular article from JoC outlining the current state of play as he sees it. For all you panspermia buffs.

I found this bit particularly amusing:

An initial injection of a viable cellular life form, which takes root and begins to evolve, would be augmented genetically by viruses carrying genes for the development of all other possible life forms. This grand ensemble of genes for cosmic evolution would in our model have been delivered in comet dust to our planet throughout geological time.

For those really interested, the article contains an onward link to his and Hoyle's career-torpedoing work, Proofs that Life is Cosmic. Apparently they decided that interstellar space is full of dead bugs.

Originally posted by Astyanax

I was just trying to be polite.

Well, I see by your last post that you've stopped trying, so I hope you're feeling better now.

Never actually addressing my questioning of your reasoning.

What a stunning display of the scientific method!

I see you wear your signature as a badge of honour!

Again, thanks for the laffs!!!

reply to post by Nightspore

It is clear that there are organic molecules in comets and asteroids, so their probable contribution to life on earth is likely, which at least helps the panspermia case... we already have lots of organic matter in space, including in space dust. Yes, indeed. Now broaden the focus a little bit, and what do we see? That everything comes from space. The very planet is a condensate of spaceborne dust and debris. The water on it came from space, too. Every atom of which Earth is composed, living or dead, came originally from space. But it does not follow that Earthly life originated anywhere but on Earth.

Yes, indeed. Now broaden the focus a little bit, and what do we see? That everything comes from space. The very planet is a condensate of spaceborne dust and debris. The water on it came from space, too. Every atom of which Earth is composed, living or dead, came originally from space. But it does not follow that Earthly life originated anywhere but on Earth.

This is a clear equivocation. It certainly does not follow that developing planetary bodies will be identical to comets, space dust and asteroids simply because they all "come from space". In fact what we see is that each of the planets in our solar system are highly unique, both in their development and physical properties. Meteorites are studied not only for what they can tell us about earth's early properties, but also for what they contributed.

nature.com

Geologist Bruno D'Argenio and molecular biologist Giuseppe Geraci claim the bacteria were wedged inside the crystal structure of minerals (srcool down to the fifth bullet point on the page): panspermia-theory.com


There have been a few such discoveries, all of them (as we have seen above) inconclusive

.

Simply stating that a finding is inconclusive is not in the least convincing. It is also intellectually dishonest to lump different findings together without addressing them individually. The bacterium was found within a crystal lattice, after having been sterilized with heat and alcohol. I m not sure what it would actually take to be recognized beyond that; perhaps a large brick made of ET bacterium slamming into the back of Stephen Hawking's head?

reply to post by Nightspore

Originally posted by Astyanax
Yes, indeed. Now broaden the focus a little bit, and what do we see? That everything comes from space. The very planet is a condensate of spaceborne dust and debris. The water on it came from space, too. Every atom of which Earth is composed, living or dead, came originally from space. But it does not follow that Earthly life originated anywhere but on Earth.

Originally posted by Nightspore
This is a clear equivocation.

Equivocation? I'm not sure I follow. All matter on Earth comes from space, but that does not mean Earthly life was imported from outer space; it could have evolved from nonliving matter here on Earth itself, and like most educated people, I believe it probably did. Panspermia is a not a valid scientific theory; it's just speculation. There – is that unequivocal enough for you?

It certainly does not follow that developing planetary bodies will be identical to comets, space dust and asteroids simply because they all "come from space".

It certainly doesn't, and I never implied that it did. What are you talking about?

In fact what we see is that each of the planets in our solar system are highly unique, both in their development and physical properties.

Which tends to suggest that life evolving on one planet (or asteroid, or moon, or comet, or whatever) is likely to have quite a struggle to establish itself on another. The variability of planetary and other environments argues against panspermia, not for it.

Simply stating that a finding is inconclusive is not in the least convincing. It is also intellectually dishonest to lump different findings together without addressing them individually. The bacterium was found within a crystal lattice, after having been sterilized with heat and alcohol. I m not sure what it would actually take to be recognized beyond that; perhaps a large brick made of ET bacterium slamming into the back of Stephen Hawking's head?

Falsifiable evidence would be nice.

Meanwhile, have a read of the Wickramasinghe article I posted. It shows how frail is the tissue of speculation from which panspermia hypotheses are woven. It's all just wishful thinking, really.

reply to post by Astyanax


Well who funds all the so-called 'credible' scientists?
Governments! Step aside from the high-priests of mind-swill and you get your funding cut!
Dogma is as dogma does...

The mistake many people make including eminent scientists is to think of Earth or the solar system being isolated. It is not, it moving on a superhighway through space for billions of years. It is also intercepted by comets that come in at different angles across the milky way. Then remember that there are many isolated planets that have been ejected from orbits but unseen. Now imagine the highway earth travels passing through deserts but then lucious jungles, if often passes in the wake of other solar systems too.

We are not so isolated and static, we are part of the milky way ecosystem.
It just happens that Earth has a better habitat for some reasons to allow bacteria to evolve and prosper on it's surface.

Bacteria are far more adaptable than we initially assumed. I believe there are some common species of bacteria which are fully adapted to deep space life and therefore act as seeding agents across the galaxy. The dandelion weeds of the galaxy. Weeds are our ancestors!

It took far longer for multicellular life to get started on earth than any life to get started, that's also a very interesting fact.

Lastly ignore occams razor, it's only as good as your last data point , it's a very poor way of dealing with this type of question because it depends solely on our technological
ability to sense things in this case.

Originally posted by Arken
So, they have alredy found extraterrestrial life?

What they hide?

Off course! long time ago.

What they're hiding though are their f%^k ups. Seriously. Over these many years a good number of people have lost their lives. How will they ever explain that? That would be more harder to explain then the phenomena itself.

Think about it.