Post by Ryan Maue
You may have seen the breathless coverage on Fox News of the alien life discovery from NASA’s Dr. Hoover — in some fancy meteorite. The “exclusive” nature of the discovery was hailed as evidence that we are not alone. Last week, we discovered that tangentially with the self-professed origination of Charlie Sheen from Mars. Anyhow, Adrian Chen at Gawker has found that this research is hardly new, and simply an update or recycling of claims made since 2004 by Dr. Hoover:
So, we’re calling bull$h%t on Richard Hoover’s discovery, and Fox News’ ‘exclusive’. Maybe Hoover really has found life (probably not). But it’s not news, and it’s far, far from certain.
However, in his zeal to dismiss Fox News as a propaganda outlet for NASA, or engaging in tabloid journalism, I guess Chen missed Andrew Revkin’s piece over at the NY Times:
The buzz is building over a paper by Richard Hoover, an award-winning astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, concluding that filaments and other features found in the interior of three specimens of a rare class of meteorite appear to be fossils of a life form strongly resembling cyanobacteria.
While this so-called discovery may be entirely correct, perhaps Hoover should have called up the Union of Concerned Scientists instead of Fox News in order to peddle his wares. Revkin publishes first then promises to follow up later:
Rudy Schild, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the paper that reactions to the research, “both pro and con,” will be published on the journal’s Web site between March 7 and 10. I’ll check back in then of course, and I’m reaching out to Hoover and others working in this field now.
Is this a legitimate press release by a scientist with a profound new discovery or another example of “science by press release”? We report, you decide — or you follow up on your own, as in the case of the Ole Gray Lady. Alternatively, just use Google and find a very similar press release from 2004:
Evidence for Indigenous Microfossils in a Carbonaceous Meteorite
Also, don’t forget the discovery and undiscovery of new planets in our galaxy (October 12, 2010). Supposed new planet 20-light years away has been undiscovered
Maybe the “muslim outreach” thing has them a little off-stride over at NASA right now.
If there truly would be some alien bacteria from outer space, do we have the antibiotics to get ridd of them if they turn out to be of the nasty kind ?
Eric Anderson-
Evolution is all about leaving more offspring in future generations, and if a palm developed a floating coconut it did leave more offspring in future generations and thus become the dominant island palm over time. It has everything to do with selection and selective preuure.
Mike-
Journals use editors to review all the time, editors are generally the best scientists in the field.
As for picking reviewers, that is very strange and makes me doubt the paper.
I really enjoy the Wikipedia definition of Astrobiology:
Wikipedia then proceeds to contradict itself…
So it appears that Astrobiology actually studies Biology on Earth… which implies that Astrobiology doesn’t really exist… so perhaps we need a new definition:
Astrobiology is the search for a magic ingredient that generates an avalanche of funding for their interdisciplinary witches brew.
Sounds kinda familiar 🙂
For your reading pleasure, a few more papers in actual peer reviewed journals that show relevant facts here are below. I actually looked into working with one of our physicists back in my college prof days and was amazed at how much work has been done on sproes surviving the rgors of open space – they seem to do it pretty darn well all things considered.
Number 1: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3S-47STFGW-6&_user=10&_coverDate=10%2F31%2F1994&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1666929787&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=594d421657c2116f6318c71ce11920f3&searchtype=a
Number 2: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3S-4725V02-KJ&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F1981&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1666930657&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d99d6c4b3c0d4c5c2dd906b8216da5ff&searchtype=a
Number 3: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3S-472CDPF-1F7&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F1992&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1666931737&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=05932d7b983741435a7465da9c8e36d9&searchtype=a
Do your own search, click here: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=meteorites+spores&as_sdt=0%2C16&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
Finally, there is no such thing as pre-adaptation, there is only selection. It is all pretty sensible actually:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#Natural_selection
See the rest of the Wiki ffor a good genetics 101 level of understanding of evolution, it makes perfect sense folks!
Distances in time and space are probably just too vast. (And becoming more vast all the time!) For all practical purposes we are alone. Very unsettling. I think that’s one reason UFO sightings were so popular in the 50’s. When people are truly isolated they tend to hallucinate.
The ironic thing to me is back in the 80’s in an upperclassman petrology class I was taking, our professor was an ex-Apollo program geochemist. He left Nasa because of the politics, and we often discussed his predictions.. He had 2 based on his belief that Nasa had become all about the funding, and therefor had become public relations led: 1. He was sure NASA would focus on man’s impact on climate (at the time it was all about the “ozone hole”) and would continue there, good science or otherwise. 2. the other was the search for ET life. This particular professor did a lot of work on tektites, and understood that organic material from earth surely would find its way into space, sometimes with an escape velocity, sometimes maybe even landing on a planet like Mars. He was convinced eventually NASA would “announce” they had found evidence of life in space, the media would run with it, and would twist the science (knowing full well that such “life” was actually earth based and the results of an impact throwing material space-bound). Of course if such life could exist I suppose it could “seed” another planet, but people seem to forget the multitude of independent parameters to support simple life, not to mention supporting higher species.
30 years later, although I am out of the field of Geochemistry, I certainly remember those lectures..
Another subject I know too little about.. damn! However a quick review suggests that lots of serious people have contributed little bits to a growing body of knowledge about biological elements in rocks thought to be of Extraterrestrial origin.
So if Hoover’s findings are real.. the obvious imaginative jump is to assume that this confirms the missing planet hypothesis and so point us at the problem that bode’s law poses about pluto being in Neptune’s orbit. I have no clue how real this is or how to explain it if it is, but here’s a bet: some warmist will RSN announce proof it blew up after over-heating…
“Brad says:
I think you are actually arguing the opposite, the beauty of life travelling in meteorites to seed new planets would be the most beautiful form of life, just as a cocnut evolved to float so it could move between disparate islands, why coiuldn’t cyanobacteria evolve to move from planet to planet in meteorites – that would be pretty cool evolution, and perfectly reasonable and selected for under the theory”
I have no problem with xenobiotica seeding planets, traveling through space,, as you state, like coconuts.
I do however have a problem with cyanobacteria as intergalactic travelers. Now cyanobacter appeared 2.8 billion years ago and are the guys who changed the atmosphere from a reducing to an oxidizing one. In evolutionary terms, cyanobacteria are the most important species that evolution has produced, they have changed the biosphere more than any other species. The evolution of Photosystem II (water-plastoquinone oxidoreductase) changed everything.
However, we know from a study of all cyanobacteria’s other genes that these organisms evolved on Earth, they have the same nuclear genomic proteins, same nitrogenase and all the other stuff that older <3.5 billion years, have.
So, if the first replicants came from space, no problem, but cyanobacteria were not in any way shape of form the first living organisms on Earth. Nor did they arrive later. They evolved here.
Occam's razor needs to be applied. Life from space would need to look like the original Earthly replicants, very small, very primitive, and very hardy.
The codons in mRNA suggest an initial two letter code and space; with the three letter codon coming later. The shift from RNA to DNA as a storage media is also very likely. A xenobiotic seedling would be very small, very hardy, have uracil instead of 5-methyluracil (Thymine). These cells would not look like cyanobacteria; to use an analogy, cyanobacteria is to the first replicant what a F-22 Raptor is to a Otto Lilienthal glider.
TomRude points out that this came up at least as early as 1997. I recall it a few years earlier, but I do NOT trust my recall. I can find no prior reference. (I’d appreciate the help if anyone finds.) My recall is based on thinking I saw Carl Sagan address the topic (on TV) and use his oft quoted quip, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I suspect my mind has contrived the visual. Oh well. (Human recall is a fickle thing.)
Anyway, in the 90s, I researched the claims as well as was possible then. The claims are sound, but certainly inconclusive. The original report was a meteor almost certainly from Mars. (I don’t question that part.) The electron micrographs were taken with utmost care, and contamination is unlikely, though possible. (I don’t figure they were contaminated.) The hard part comes with considering the things imaged as fossil life forms. Interesting, but unconvincing.
Sagan liked to say we should be open minded, but not so much as to let our brains fall out. (Of course, these sayings of his predate him. The “extraordinary” one was used by a contemporary, and predates to Laplace and Hume.)
For what it’s worth, I expect we will find living microbes everywhere we find liquid water. Other than that, there is no other life in our galaxy. None. Forget about it. We are not being visited. I base my assertion on time and energy considerations. There has been more than enough time by any standard. Either we are them, and they are hiding the fact from us for unknowable reasons, or they ain’t there. The energy requirement is too extreme. Such trips could be oneway ONLY.
“Dave Worley says:
The odds of life existing on other worlds are surely good.
The odds of a meteorite carrying a sample of it to our little speck, and someone finding it, are not so good.”
Larry Niven postulated a complex non-planetary in his novel The Smoke Ring in 1987.
He has a neutron star with a gas giant orbiting just outside its Roche limit. The gas giants is insufficient to hold its atmosphere, which has been pulled loose into an independent orbit around the neuton star, forming a Gas Torus—one million kilometers thick—. This allows life, but the escape velocity would be very low indeed.
Now imagine life evolving in such a system, or indeed in any gas cloud, it could seed planets that pass through or nearby.
Having authors suggest reviewers isn’t that uncommon with “second tier” journals.
Just google the words: suggesting reviewers. Looks like Science Mag even had an article on it (unfortunately, behind a paywall).
Heck, even PNAS used to grease the skids for members and their buddies.
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56194/
How peer review ever became associated with the phrase “gold standard” is beyond me. Maybe the coiner of the phrase actually meant “god standard”.
Is it just me, or am I the only one that missed how in the world this is supposed to ‘seed’ life. How does any material from a crashing meteorite have any value? You’re talking about embedded material floating out there for millions of years and then crashing with nuclear bomb force… and then Alakazam, you’re ‘seeded’? I call BS if you said that material here on Earth after millions of years, embedded in rock, could be of any value to the early stages of evolution. It seems like people are willing to believe just about anything.
On yesterday’s radio news every hour there were stories on NASA , how there new robot was delivered to the space station, gee first robot in space don’t you know, blurbs from astronauts, “look I can see the amazon basin from here, ain’t it pretty and various other warm fuzzy stories, and then at the end, by the way our new satellite didn’t quite make it into orbit. I can see the damage control room now, hair all ablaze. Here’s what we need to know: 400 million dollars wasted, borrowed and put on our children’s tab. NASA, like every nook and cranny of gov should be trimmed way back, then let them do something, if only one thing very well with the money they have. Second project failure in two years.
“All mods, delete ID and Creationism comments at will.”
What was the purpose of this post? To deride the gawker hatred for Fox News or to talk about the science behind the Fox story? If the post was for the ‘science’ then why was gawker even mentioned. Have you read the comments at gawker? Very hateful towards Christians, much as can be expected from the lefties that also make up the AGW crowd. I am not here to discuss Creationism, but others may wish to post, and it seems legit in light of the bash gawker post they are replying too.
Thumbsdown to the WUWT mods on this one.
Lonnie E. Schubert says: March 6, 2011 at 6:55 am: “For what it’s worth, I expect we will find living microbes everywhere we find liquid water. Other than that, there is no other life in our galaxy. None. Forget about it. We are not being visited. I base my assertion on time and energy considerations. There has been more than enough time by any standard”
Mr Schubert, I respectfully disagree. Years ago I calculated that we could only detect an intelligence equivalent to our own at a maximum distance of about 100 light years – a volume of space perhaps including a few hundred planets that have sustained liquid water on their surfaces for several hundred million years (I am sure many would disagree). However (and relating to a point earlier in this thread) material from our own planet could have reached all of these other planets within about 70,000 years, and vice versa. Given the many orders of magnitude further in both time and space that we need to take into consideration in order to make philosophical assumptions on this matter, my own view is that it is incredible to believe we are the only intelligent life form in the universe.
I have a long standing bet with someone that intelligent life will be discovered within my lifetime. Unfortunately for me I am now 58, and it has not happened. Unfortunately for him – how is he going to get his pint of beer when I am dead?
As a fossil hunter I scream B#$%^&.
Here is the reason. First, the earth is teeming with life with Gazillions of bacteria. However, the massive majority of rocks on earth contain ZERO fossil evidence. 99.9999%. I can go out and search for days in many locations and find NOTHING – passing by hundreds of thousands if not millions of rocks. Many types of rocks have no chance of containing fossils.
So what NASA is trying to tell us is: in the matter of one decades and a few hundred rocks they have managed to find bacteria TWICE! Laughing so hard my eyes water.
In fact finding a fossil on our abundant earth is so tough that it really pays to have someone like me tell you were to specifically look — Drive 20 miles east, go up this little dirt road, search this tiny outcrop. Yeah and for the first 19 miles there is nothing and even when you know where to look sometimes it is tough to find one. I’ve never found an non-sea animal fossil in all my years of looking. Now understanding this: Did NASA have anyone directing them where to look? If they can find two random rocks from outer space full of fossils in less than 10 years, then we should be finding life everywhere we look — more diverse and abundant than what we see on earth. In fact, the first NASA “fossil” rock contained bacteria 1000x smaller than anything on earth. Laughing some more.
This is so stupid I could write for a year on the subject – but why waste the time.
These folks do damage to their own efforts with this type of nonsense. The evidence should be irrefutable and thoughtful. It would pay these astro-biologists 🙂 to spend a little time doing earth based fossil hunting so they don’t make fools out of themselves.
Would I like to have life on other planets — yes, MOST DEFINITELY. But, making up pseudo-science may get one funded, but it does not advance science.
I would also agree the Gawker piece is a hate piece aimed at Fox and has little to do with the science.
Doc Martyn-
Some of what you say is worng, some is right. First, the biggest difference between RNA and DNA is the 2′ hydroxyl on the phosphate backbone (thus the names, ribo- and deoxyribonucleic acid).
Here is an article from the great Carl Woese on taxonomy and evolution:
http://www.pnas.org/content/87/12/4576.short
Now to specific facts, early life before 3.5 billions years ago is cotroverisla (look to the Greenland samples). BUT 3.5 billions years ago it is well accepted:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/237/4810/70.abstract
IN FACT, they are being studied to determine where they fit in the modern cyanobacteria:
http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/36/4/555
And it is well accepted: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1472-4669.2006.00076.x/full
John McDonald-
And most of the rocks you find on the surface are less than billions years old, and most much less. Go find older rocks:
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/37/7/631.abstract
Yes, agreed. Their comments that the samples represented cyanobacteria instantly suggesed an origin on Earth, because cyanobacteria would necessarily include a genetic history linking it to earlier and simpler precursor lifeforms on Earth, regardless of any possible ultimate earlier origin/s of the precursor organics on or off of the Earth. There are certain characteristics recorded in the genetic code which have been replicated throughout the descendant lifeforms. A xeno-lifeform although exhibiting similar charactristics must be expected to vary in genetic details not shared with equivalent lifeforms from Earth. Something as simple as the direction of the rotation of the molecular chain can signal unrelated biochemical origins for an organism.
It would seem that cyanobacteria should be so far along Earth’s biochemical evolutionary chain as to leave practically no doubt about their origin on Earth, if they are cyanobacteria. If they lack the biochemical or genetic characteristics common to the lifeforms on Earth, then the problem will be to provide adquate experimental evidence that no such life exists or ever did exist on Earth with similar biochemical characteristics.
The crashing together of orbiting debris in our Universe has provided many such hurling rocks. Who’s to say this particular hurling rock originally came from this planet, was blown out to space, and found its way back?
We may indeed find life forms in these rocks. The question is, where did the rock come from? Just because it is there in that rock does not mean we have found life elsewhere. We might have stumbled upon a cousin come home from a trip abroad.
D. Patterson-
Why? If you dismiss panspermia then you are correct, they must be ties to earlier forms (of which can find little or no evidence in the fossil record). Instead, we have cyanobacteria appearing and dominatin (see link in prior emails). Why isn’t that consistent with them beingf seeded by metoerites?
You need to find organisms older than 3.5 billion years old to support your supposition, so far the only stuff older is highly controversial:
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/33/1/77.abstract
JasonS says:
March 6, 2011 at 7:18 am (Edit)
“Is it just me, or am I the only one that missed how in the world this is supposed to ‘seed’ life. How does any material from a crashing meteorite have any value? You’re talking about embedded material floating out there for millions of years and then crashing with nuclear bomb force… and then Alakazam, you’re ‘seeded’?”
JasonS,
Meteorites dont actually crash with nuclear bomb force. For a layman’s class on meteorites, I highly recommend the popular science channel program “Meteorite Men”, which is about two fellows who travel the world hunting for meteorites. It includes quite a bit of science about meteorites that is clearly understandable for the layperson.
Anyways, meteorites typically strike earth at a few hundred miles per hour, unless they are very large. Most meteorites are not large when they reach Earth’s surface. They are typically rubble piles that break up on reentry, and only their outer surfaces are heated significantly. Most all meteorites you can pick up with your bare hands as soon as they land. Basically the subsonic trip from 50,000 ft or so cools them significantly.
Hypersonic meteorites have to be rather massive and solid enough to not break up on entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The smaller the meteorite, the more surface area per kg of mass, ergo the mass load per square cm is much lower for smaller meteorites and thus they generate high drag with low momentum and slow down to a typical terminal velocity of a few hundred kph.