Astrobiologists discover fossils in meteorite fragments, confirming extraterrestrial life

reply to post by Vasa Croe


I think you are getting to your own conclusion too fast and perhaps misread this?

''To this end, the researchers found very low levels of nitrogen (which is nearly always present in modern-Earth organisms)''

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by goou111

 

The researchers at Cardiff are now reporting that they’re sure that these fragments come from an extraterrestrial meteorite

The trouble is, those are the same researchers. There has been no independent verification and still no peer review.

The trouble for sceptics is that with this announcement odds are droping really fast that there's life out there.
I know you've been cautious Phage, like always, but come on, don't you want this results to be positive?

reply to post by zilebeliveunknown

It would be very exciting if it were shown to be true.

But let's wait for independent analysis of the "meteorite" to be performed. Let's wait for something other than "it looks like a diatom so it must be a diatom fossil" before we get too excited about it.

Wickramasinghe's history is not that great when it comes to this sort of thing.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by goou111

 

The trouble is, those are the same researchers. There has been no independent verification and still no peer review.

What is your opinion on these? I ask you because I respect your opinion and would like to know.

reply to post by goou111


Great find, Im not suprised though, it's about time people start smelling the roses urrrm, I mean algae

Good things

reply to post by goou111


Brilliant thread, the asteroid belt is the most likely origin of this object but every fifty thousand year's or so the solar system passed through the galactic plane, a bit like a needle on a wonky record, I firmly believe that life does exist else were in the cosmos and it is quite common, it would be interesting to compare the micro structure's in the rock to the one's in the marts meteorite sample that caused quite a stair a few year's back,.

reply to post by LABTECH767

Brilliant thread, the asteroid belt is the most likely origin of this object but every fifty thousand year's or so the solar system passed through the galactic plane, a bit like a needle on a wonky record,

The authors think it was a piece of a comet, nothing to do with the asteroid belt.

The solar system does not pass through the galactic plane every fifty thousand years or so. Closer to 32 million years. Last time we did it was about 3 million years ago.

Why is it always "fossils" of life found on meteorite?

Wake me when "living life" is found on one.

Interstellar sperms is BS. We would have found it by now on all the multi thousands of tons of stuff raining down.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by goou111

 

The researchers at Cardiff are now reporting that they’re sure that these fragments come from an extraterrestrial meteorite

The trouble is, those are the same researchers. There has been no independent verification and still no peer review.

Actually they're not the same researchers, they're not the discoverers.

The Cardiff researchers ARE the peers reviewing the evidence and are independently saying the evidence is strong that what they are finding is...life, ancient non-terrestrial fossil life, but still.

I don't suppose some people will be satisfied until a thumbs up is given from literally everyone alive engaged in that field of research.

This isn't the first time this circus has happended either folks...remember Martian meteorite ALH84001 from 1996?

Despite electron microscope images of bacteria-like fossil remains contained within it, science first said it wasn't bacteria (or analogues to bacteria), but was just mineral deposits....then science decided it was bacteria-like fossils, but that the bacteria crawled into the meteorite after it had landed on Earth.

Now, apparently due to advances in microscopy (or advances in policy - you decide) the scientific consensus is that ALH84001 does contain strong evidence of ancient fossil, non-terrestrial microbes.

The NASA team's report says that magnetite fossils "with unusual chemical and physical properties" in the meteorite are "intimately associated within and throughout these carbonate disks".

They believe this is clear evidence that the fossils are microbes from Mars and not bugs from Earth that contaminated the rock in the last few thousand years. The new findings appear in a 46-page scientific paper being published this month in the respected journal of the Geochemical and Meteoritic Society

That was a quote from 'Scientific American' 2009.
Scientific American ALH84001 Microbe

Being researched by a NASA team, and published by a well respected peer review journal, is a reasonably solid endorsement. Not solid enough for some armchair critics...but for most it is.

Having said that, we have to decide if we trust the word of science at all these days. They can't even decide if the Universe is actual random matter or is a designed, holographic projection of some kind..which would also presumably include all of us, and the fossil bacteria...

If we do trust it, science has detected precursor molecules for Amino acids, both in our own Solar System, and around other Stars, we've found fossil microbes in rocks from Mars, and are speculating from a position where we are individuals among Billions of other forms of life on Earth...and now another meteorite has been peer reviewed and found to 'strongly indicate' non-terrestrial fossil organic life.

As far as i know, nobody is claiming these bacteria flew here in artificial 'spaceships' (holographic or not), those so inclined to rabid scepticism for the sake of it in a thread, can save your energies for routinely dubunking UFO threads as per usual..ancient bacteria is not a threat to ego or perceived online reputation.

It just means microbial life is or was existent 'out there'...which as most sane people who live on a rock populated by uncountable trillions of them, don't find that particularly surprising or controversial.

reply to post by MysterX

Actually they're not the same researchers, they're not the discoverers.

Actually, they are the same researchers. They aren't the ones who found the "meteorite" but they are the same ones who made the original claim. Take a look at the names.

The first paper:
N. C. Wickramasinghe, J. Wallis D.H. Wallis, Anil Samaranayake

The second paper.
N. C. Wickramasinghe, Jamie Wallis, Anil Samaranayake

They need to allow others to independently analyze the "meteorite". They need to allow others to independently review their work. So far that has not been done.

Now, apparently due to advances in microscopy (or advances in policy - you decide) the scientific consensus is that ALH84001 does contain strong evidence of ancient fossil, non-terrestrial microbes.

No. Again, that article was from the original group members (including McKay) that thought they had found evidence of extraterrestrial life. There is no consensus that ALH84001 contains evidence of life. On the contrary, the consensus is more this:

It is concluded that morphology cannot be used unambiguously as a tool for primitive life detection.

proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org...

And that's the problem, just because something looks like a fossil, doesn't mean it is.

reply to post by Vasa Croe


one would think they would have checked that before releasing information saying its extra terrestrial life.

reply to post by Vasa Croe


one would think they would have checked that before releasing information saying its extra terrestrial life.

Originally posted by Vasa Croe

Originally posted by Chrysalis

Originally posted by Vasa Croe
Very interesting. I wonder what the chances are that this meteorite was ejecta from an older impact of the Earth that finally made it's way back with fossils that were originally of Earthly origin?

What are the chances ? Something like the quality of this comment : near ZERO.

They said they ruled out the meteorite being of earth origin. Did you actually read what it said of you just distort things to suit your vision.

Here it is again for you.

the researchers found very low levels of nitrogen (which is nearly always present in modern-Earth organisms), and their oxygen isotope analysis “shows [that the samples] are unequivocally meteorites.” The meteorite’s atomic makeup, coupled with the fossils being fused with the rock matrix, is a strong indicator that the organisms aren’t terrestrial in origin.

Yes I did read it....thanks for posting it again and contributing so much to the thread. Maybe you should focus on contributing? My reasoning is if an impactor initially struck Earth a VERY long time ago and sent ejecta into space with pieces of the original impactor combined with pieces of the Earth and microbial life, could it be possible that it has made it's way back around after travelling in space for a while.

Glad you are here to be the post police though...without you we might not survive. I thank you for being on ATS to make sure we all uphold your standards.

just to expand on that slightly , it stated low levels of nitrogen more commonly found in MODERN earth organisms.... so it couldnt of been ejcta from earth if it is comparable to those levels of modern earth organisms...not unless i have been asleep and we have recently had a collision with something along the magnitude of what killed of the dinosaurs, thats the only thing i think thats powerfull enough to throw the kind of ejecta in to space that your talking about, but by all means somebody correct me if i have this wrong.....

PEACE!!

reply to post by FreeThinkerbychoice


The problem though is that some people throughout the site think everything smells like roses, including the sh*t.

Dare question a story to be called narrow minded. So great idea, just take it all as fact, every story, lizards and rodants on mars included, the whole heap. Embrace ignorance

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by MysterX

 

Actually they're not the same researchers, they're not the discoverers.

Actually, they are the same researchers. They aren't the ones who found the "meteorite" but they are the same ones who made the original claim. Take a look at the names.

The first paper:
N. C. Wickramasinghe, J. Wallis D.H. Wallis, Anil Samaranayake

The second paper.
N. C. Wickramasinghe, Jamie Wallis, Anil Samaranayake

They need to allow others to analyze the "meteorite". They need to allow others to review their work. So far that has not been done.

 

Now, apparently due to advances in microscopy (or advances in policy - you decide) the scientific consensus is that ALH84001 does contain strong evidence of ancient fossil, non-terrestrial microbes.

No. Again, that article was from the original group members (including McKay) that thought they had found evidence of extraterrestrial life. There is no consensus that ALH84001 contains evidence of life. On the contrary, the consensus is more this:

It is concluded that morphology cannot be used unambiguously as a tool for primitive life detection.

proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org...

And that's the problem, just because something looks like a fossil, doesn't mean it is.

edit on 3/11/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

No, Sri Lankan researchers from Sri Lankan Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health in Colombo discovered the 'curious features' within the meteorites.

Who then called in Sri Lankan Geologists who agreed there were several 'curious features' worthy of further study, who then prepared and sent samples to Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe at Buckingham Center for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, England.

Professor Wickramasinghe performed an initial microscopic analysis and detected what he saw as diatoms, or microscopic algae.

After publishing his findings, and the resulting and expected firestorm of controversy, THEN the samples were sent to the team at Cardiff, Wales.

reply to post by MysterX


Please refer to both original articles. The first Included N. C. Wickramasinghe of Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology as well as J. Wallis of Cardiff University. The second included those same authors.

The first included Anil Samaranayake of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The second included Anil Samaranayake of Colombo, Sri Lanka.


It was the same team on both papers. That is not independent review, that is self review. That is not independent analysis, it is self confirmation.

Originally posted by zilebeliveunknown

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by goou111

 

The researchers at Cardiff are now reporting that they’re sure that these fragments come from an extraterrestrial meteorite

The trouble is, those are the same researchers. There has been no independent verification and still no peer review.

The trouble for sceptics is that with this announcement odds are droping really fast that there's life out there.
I know you've been cautious Phage, like always, but come on, don't you want this results to be positive?

We've only explored a very very very very small amount of space. I refuse to say "there's no life beyond earth." Because frankly, we do not know. I personally want it to turn out positively, but doesn't matter what I want. If the facts show it isn't a fossil diatom, then it's not a fossil diatom. Simple as that.

I will be waiting to see how this turns out. You can bet it will be big if true.


However, often I see and have seen what are called pseudofossils.
en.wikipedia.org...

What causes me to bring those up is this quote from the scource.

These findings aren’t a slam dunk, though. According to our in-house biologist John Hewitt, there’s a strong possibility that the fossils aren’t actually biological in nature — they simply look biological.

Interesting none the less.

Raist

reply to post by goou111


Magnetotactic bacteria was discovered in a Martian meteorite that landed in Antarctica in 1984. I've seen the pictures from the 1996 paper. NASA confirmed the data analysis. Then, the whole thing got swept under the carpet. I've included a few papers below, but most people in the scientific community are ignorant to this information or ignore it.

aem.asm.org...
www.sciencemag.org...

reply to post by Phage


So Phage what does this mean to you??? Just trying to understand your skepticism on why you try to disprove potential evidence that may attribute to life elsewhere in this vast universe???

I am going to put my tinfoil hat and throw this in...

The problem with "peer" reviews is that it get's PTB attention. And if you follow the "money", this can be easily written off as just space rocks. This is basically agenda driven.

And yet again, more of the same status quo stuff gets preached and preached until it's stored so deep in one's psychic, and that if anything that be contradictory to mainstream ideology can be refuted, we get the some ol repeated reference of yet more of same "status quo" explanations.

And so the drama continues...
.
Oh yeah that's just tinfoil comments...

Peace