NASA Scientist finds proof of alien life

[Tyralak 12,068]

This could change a lot about the way we view ourselves. NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life

 

 

 

Aliens exist, and we have proof.

 

 

 

That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

 

 

 

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover, who has spent more than 10 years studying meteorites around the world, told FoxNews.com in an interview. “This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

 

 

 

Hoover discovered the fossils by breaking apart the CI1 meteorite, and analyzing the exposed rock with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to detect any fossil remains. What he found were fossils of micro-organisms, many of which he says are strikingly similar to those found on our own planet.

 

 

 

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,” said Hoover. Some of the fossils, however, are quite odd. “There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stump.”

 

 

 

In order to satisfy the inevitable hoard of buzz-killing skeptics, Hoover’s study and evidence were made available to his peers in the scientific community in advance of the study’s publications, giving them a chance to thoroughly dissect his findings. Comments from those who decided to sift through the evidence will be published online, alongside the study.

 

 

 

“Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis,” writes Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Dr. Rudy Schild, who serves as the Journal of Cosmology’s editor-in-chief. “No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published.”

 

 

 

Needless to say, if Hoover’s conclusions are found to be accurate, the implications for human life will be staggering. Here’s to hoping that he’s right.

[NX-01 519]

Great, we've discovered alien bacteria and microrganisms. Wake me when we find/the government acknowleges the existence of humanoid/humanoid-like aliens.

[Praeothmin 532]

Great, we've discovered alien bacteria and microrganisms. Wake me when we find/the government acknowleges the existence of humanoid/humanoid-like aliens.

 

 

 

They have.

 

They're called "Red-Necks"...

[Khas 12,158]

So, NASA found evidence of Jason's origins?

[enigma 521]

So, NASA found evidence of Jason's origins?

 

 

 

Nope. Those creatures are too intelligent to be related to Jason in any conceivable and inconceivable way. You, sir, have insulted the space bacteria! Apologize, or it is pistols at dawn!

[Khas 12,158]

Sorry space bacteria.

[enigma 521]

Sorry space bacteria.

 

 

 

Aye.... I guess I'll have to put away my duelin' pistols. *sighs*

[enigma 521]

May not be real aliens after all.

[Kor_Dahar_Master 0]

ZOMG DID YOU GUYS NEVER WATCH THE "SPECIES" MOVIES!!!!!!!....

 

 

 

We are doomed.

[Ado Mortumee 500]

Remind me to drop a few asteroids on Fox News later:

 

 

 

Pharyngula]

 

Did scientists discover bacteria in meteorites?

 

 

 

No.

 

 

 

No, no, no. No no no no no no no no.

 

 

 

No, no.

 

 

 

No.

 

 

 

Fox News broke the story, which ought to make one immediately suspicious — it's not an organization noted for scientific acumen. But even worse, the paper claiming the discovery of bacteria fossils in carbonaceous chondrites was published in … the Journal of Cosmology. I've mentioned Cosmology before — it isn't a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth. It doesn't exist in print, consists entirely of a crude and ugly website that looks like it was sucked through a wormhole from the 1990s, and publishes lots of empty noise with no substantial editorial restraint. For a while, it seemed to be entirely the domain of a crackpot named Rhawn Joseph who called himself the emeritus professor of something mysteriously called the Brain Research Laboratory, based in the general neighborhood of Northern California (seriously, that was the address: "Northern California"), and self-published all of his pseudo-scientific "publications" on this web site.

 

 

 

It is not an auspicious beginning. Finding credible evidence of extraterrestrial microbes is the kind of thing you'd expect to see published in Science or Nature, but the fact that it found a home on a fringe website that pretends to be a legitimate science journal ought to set off alarms right there.

 

 

 

But could it be that by some clumsy accident of the author, a fabulously insightful, meticulously researched paper could have fallen into the hands of single-minded lunatics who rushed it into 'print'? Sure. And David Icke might someday publish the working plans for a perpetual motion machine in his lizardoid-infested newsletter. We've actually got to look at the claims and not dismiss them because of their location.

 

 

 

So let's look at the paper, Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites: Implications to Life on Comets, Europa, and Enceladus. I think that link will work; I'm not certain, because the "Journal of Cosmology" seems to randomly redirect links to its site to whatever article the editors think is hot right now, and while the article title is given a link on the page, it's to an Amazon page that's flogging a $94 book by the author. Who needs a DOI when you've got a book to sell?

 

 

 

Reading the text, my impression is one of excessive padding. It's a dump of miscellaneous facts about carbonaceous chondrites, not well-honed arguments edited to promote concision or cogency. The figures are annoying; when you skim through them, several will jump out at you as very provocative and looking an awful lot like real bacteria, but then without exception they all turn out to be photos of terrestrial organisms thrown in for reference. The extraterrestrial 'bacteria' all look like random mineral squiggles and bumps on a field full of random squiggles and bumps, and apparently, the authors thought some particular squiggle looked sort of like some photo of a bug. This isn't science, it's pareidolia. They might as well be analyzing Martian satellite photos for pictures that sorta kinda look like artifacts.

 

 

 

The data consists almost entirely of SEM photos of odd globules and filaments on the complex surfaces of crumbled up meteorites, with interspersed SEMs of miscellaneous real bacteria taken from various sources — they seem to be proud of having analyzed flakes of mummy skin and hair from frozen mammoths, but I couldn't see the point at all — do they have cause to think the substrate of a chondrite might have some correspondence to a Siberian Pleistocene mammoth guard hair? I'd be more impressed if they'd surveyed the population of weird little lumps in their rocks and found the kind of consistent morphology in a subset that you'd find in a population of bacteria. Instead, it's a wild collection of one-offs.

 

 

 

There is one other kind of datum in the article: they also analyzed the mineral content of the 'bacteria', and report detailed breakdowns of the constitution of the blobs: there's lots of carbon, magnesium, silicon, and sulfur in there, and virtually no nitrogen. The profiles don't look anything like what you'd expect from organic life on Earth, but then, these are supposedly fossilized specimens from chondrites that congealed out of the gases of the solar nebula billions of years ago. Why would you expect any kind of correspondence?

 

 

 

The extraterrestrial 'bacteria' photos are a pain to browse through, as well, because they are published at a range of different magnifications, and even when they are directly comparing an SEM of one to an SEM of a real bacterium, they can't be bothered to put them at the same scale. Peering at them and mentally tweaking the size, though, one surprising result is that all of their boojums are relatively huge — these would be big critters, more similar in size to eukaryotic cells than E. coli. And all of them preserved so well, not crushed into a smear of carbon, not ruptured and evaporated away, all just sitting there, posing, like a few billion years in a vacuum was a day in the park. Who knew that milling about in a comet for the lifetime of a solar system was such a great preservative?

 

 

 

I'm looking forward to the publication next year of the discovery of an extraterrestrial rabbit in a meteor. While they're at it, they might as well throw in a bigfoot print on the surface and chupacabra coprolite from space. All will be about as convincing as this story.

 

 

 

While they're at it, maybe they should try publishing it in a journal with some reputation for rigorous peer review and expectation that the data will meet certain minimal standards of evidence and professionalism.

 

 

 

Otherwise, this work is garbage. I'm surprised anyone is granting it any credibility at all.

 

 

 

Want more dismissive reviews? Read David Dobbs and Rosie Redfield. We have concensus!

[Praeothmin 532]

ZOMG DID YOU GUYS NEVER WATCH THE "SPECIES" MOVIES!!!!!!!....

 

 

 

We are doomed.

 

 

 

Yes, doomed to have the entire planet populated by Natasha Henstridge clones hell-bent on fucking all men and taking us to blissfull heaven before killing us... I can live (or die) with that...

[Kor_Dahar_Master 0]

Yes, doomed to have the entire planet populated by Natasha Henstridge clones hell-bent on fucking all men and taking us to blissfull heaven before killing us... I can live (or die) with that...

 

 

 

 

 

....er....a.......bu.........point conceeded.

[Afishymeadow 534]

 

 

 

I hope those ARE microfossils & of ALIEN life.

 

 

 

The significance of that is so awesome.

 

 

 

TOO AWESOME!

 

 

 

[Jason 27]

So, NASA found evidence of Jason's origins?

 

I intelligence life form much more intelligence then bacterias I can write on the internet.

[Khas 12,158]

Oh, this had more to do with a joke theory I had at the time that you were really an extraterrestrial trying to learn about Earth culture by visiting sci-fi boards.

[Praeothmin 532]

I intelligence life form much more intelligence then bacterias I can write on the internet.

 

 

 

So you say!

 

Half the time, no one here is even sure you are using any know language...