British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/british-scientists-claim-to-find-first-evidence-of-alien-life-1.1533442

by nigekelly • 13 years ago

19 32 13 years ago

fleitz2• 13 years ago

Life is constantly surprising us, it's well known that there is bacteria on the outside of the ISS, it could well be that life is falling down rather than up.

I'd like to see a DNA sample that doesn't point to existing earth life, for me just seeing diatoms seems a little too early to reach this conclusion.

mathattack• 13 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. Of course if life is falling down to earth, it may be hard to tell apart, but there should be some hints of life optimized for earth versus optimized for elsewhere.

I find the bacteria on the ISS fascinating. Can you point me to a good article?

Someone• 13 years ago

I don't know specifically about the ISS, but I found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade fascinating. Multicellular, and "can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, pressures about 6 times stronger than pressures found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than would kill a person, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce."

It's "some of them will survive in outer space", though.

fleitz2• 13 years ago

http://rt.com/news/iss-bacteria-mir-mutation-765/

Also while looking for that I found this which shows bacteria grows larger in space.

http://www.space.com/21886-space-bacteria-grows-strange-ways...

anigbrowl4• 13 years ago

Paper: http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf

The journal of Cosmology is regarded as a low-quality publication by many scientists. I can't judge the assertions in the paper but the methodology seems good.

jerf2• 13 years ago

What flags this for me is that if you have an organism in hand, it's easy to do more analysis to provide evidence that it is not terrestrial. At the moment, I'd still say that the hypotheses of "their probes was contaminated", "our model of what particles are in the stratosphere are wrong and this is fully terrestrial life", and "they're flat-out lying" remain higher odds based on this evidence than "they found extraterrestrial life". In our own atmosphere.

They even mention a test they could run, but they did not wait to run the test before announcing. Not a good sign. Especially since that is not a lengthy test to run, compared to the speed of publication....

I of course reserve the right to change my mind based on more evidence; I have no problem with the idea that our stratosphere models may be wrong, for instance, and if extraterrestrial really is raining down on our stratosphere, so be it. Let facts be the judge. But some sort of biochemical or isotope evidence this is not just another extremophile would be nice.

anigbrowl4• 13 years ago

I would buy the stratospheric model being wrong, but assuming good faith I think they've addressed the contamination objection - you'll note that they did a control with the same procedures except for opening the sample drawer and it came back clean. This is highly reproducible so I'm going to assume they're reporting in good faith.

mturmon• 13 years ago

For reference, here is the front page of the Journal of Cosmology:

http://journalofcosmology.com

The paper contains almost no detail about the methods used, and lacks involvement of a diverse group of authors. This indicates that the authors are not thinking hard enough about alternative theories to explain what they have found.

For instance, the paper contains this sentence:

"It is also unlikely that the fragment could have come from commercial aircraft, which fly below well below our stratospheric sampling height."

And goes no further. Completely unacceptable.

astrodust• 13 years ago

Unless they have a completely sterile, sealed container that is open only at certain altitudes to collect material in a filter, they will have nothing to stand on.

NASA had a satellite that was sent up to collect samples of debris along a particular orbital belt and worked like this. They were doing tests to see how much space junk had accumulated and would open one of the compartments for a fixed period of time, then re-seal it before switching to another.

lolcraft• 13 years ago

That is a well known crackpot article, already debunked by biologists and astronomers alike: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/16/diatomsiiiiin-...

scott_s• 13 years ago

I think it's a different crackpot article, by the same authors.

anigbrowl4• 13 years ago

Please read your link. That addresses deficiencies in a paper about a meteorite. This paper is about samples collected from a weather balloon. And while the criticisms in your link are well-founded, I feel sure you can find equally well-founded criticisms without all the distracting ad-hominem insults.

_of• 13 years ago

Until they do more rigorous analysis of this it is not convincing.

DanielBMarkham• 13 years ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but still, this is good to see.

I imagine this discussion in the scientific community will go on for many years, perhaps decades. I'm still not convinced that Viking didn't find some evidence of life on Mars back in the 70s.

danmaz743• 13 years ago

"In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere, we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space" so, just because we don't KNOW of any mechanism by which large particles could be transported to the stratosphere, we conclude that the particles originated from space - even if we obviously don't KNOW of any mechanism by which life could originate from space and fall on Earth? This looks like very very weak reasoning.

bayesianhorse4• 13 years ago

The mechanism to get these particles there would both have to be very powerful and very not obvious.

The scientists don't say that these particles must be from space, it's just possible, or even very likely.

danmaz743• 13 years ago

Possible, yes. Very likely... from your handle, you should know about Bayesan reasoning. Considering that we know for sure that there is life on Earth (p=1), while having free-floating life in outer space is a very remote hypothesis (0<p<<1), what of the following three are more likely using Bayesian inference?

a) the sample was contaminated, or there was some other error in the experiement

b) those life forms originated from Earth

c) those life forms originated from outer space

nerfhammer• 13 years ago

Meanwhile, a more reputable report against life on Mars:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/science/space/mars-rover-c...

alphaBetaGamma• 13 years ago

If they have protein in their samples and find amino acids of both chirality, then get exited. If they only find the chirality naturally occurring in earth based life: forgetaboutit

My bet is on the latter.

bayesianhorse4• 13 years ago

If our aminoacids came from space, you would sort of expect them to be in "incoming" organisms also.

Bioinformatics might be able to bring further light into this problem. If they do find DNA/RNA then they can tell when terrestrial life and whatever this is parted ways. If this root can be pinpointed after known mutations from fossil records, then this must be terrestrial life.

strictfp• 13 years ago

One possible mechanism would be a weather balloon.

luscious• 13 years ago

I wonder what it smells like. Does it get happy or sad?

krapp• 13 years ago

Will it think our brains taste better with mustard or ketchup?

bencollier49• 13 years ago

It's life, but it doesn't have DNA to test?

lutusp2• 13 years ago

If the cell has DNA, that's evidence that it came from the surface, not space. There may be life out there, but it won't have DNA (an ad hoc solution to a problem unlikely to be repeated).

bayesianhorse4• 13 years ago

They should do sequencing and metagenomics on this alleged alien life.

Strands, sequences, twisting, separating, joining. Abathur would be pleased...

Honk if you played Heart of The Swarm...

BoppreH• 13 years ago

Published on the Journal of Cosmology: http://journalofcosmology.com/

Wikipedia lists no less than 6 references questioning the credibility of this journal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology#Reliabili...).

I think this discovery should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

lutusp2• 13 years ago

On its return they found organisms that were too large to have originated from Earth.

Too large? They had two choices -- too large and too small.

To be "too large", the organism would have had to be larger than an ostrich egg yolk, the single-cell record-holder for size.

To be "too small", the cells would have to be very small indeed -- the smallest earthly cells are extremely small.

In any case, if the cell has DNA, it's from here, so first run the test, find the DNA, then don't publish this ridiculous claim.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." -- Carl Sagan

British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life

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