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$h%t on Richard Hoover’s discovery, and Fox News’ ‘exclusive’. Maybe Hoover really has found life (probably not). But it’s not news, and it’s far, far from certain.
However, in his zeal to dismiss Fox News as a propaganda outlet for NASA, or engaging in tabloid journalism, I guess Chen missed Andrew Revkin’s piece over at the NY Times:
The buzz is building over a paper by Richard Hoover, an award-winning astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, concluding that filaments and other features found in the interior of three specimens of a rare class of meteorite appear to be fossils of a life form strongly resembling cyanobacteria.
While this so-called discovery may be entirely correct, perhaps Hoover should have called up the Union of Concerned Scientists instead of Fox News in order to peddle his wares. Revkin publishes first then promises to follow up later:
Rudy Schild, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the paper that reactions to the research, “both pro and con,” will be published on the journal’s Web site between March 7 and 10. I’ll check back in then of course, and I’m reaching out to Hoover and others working in this field now.
Is this a legitimate press release by a scientist with a profound new discovery or another example of “science by press release”? We report, you decide — or you follow up on your own, as in the case of the Ole Gray Lady. Alternatively, just use Google and find a very similar press release from 2004:
Evidence for Indigenous Microfossils in a Carbonaceous Meteorite
Also, don’t forget the discovery and undiscovery of new planets in our galaxy (October 12, 2010). Supposed new planet 20-light years away has been undiscovered
John McDonald says:
March 6, 2011 at 7:59 am (Edit)
“As a fossil hunter I scream B#$%^&.
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.”
John, the few hundred rocks they examined have been filtered out of a large population of meteorites collected globally over many years. The few hundred rocks they selected are those whose chemical profiles match those of Mars, and thus are credibly *from* Mars.
The question remaining is whether you are a *fossilized bacteria* hunter or not…
Pamela Gray-
And why isn’t the fact that the huge majority of meteorites coming from other places make it more likely the life did?
Also, the science shows these things are not of earth (at least some of them):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v330/n6150/abs/330728a0.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V61-472J77V-BP&_user=10&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F1983&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1667089247&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bad0a43f0ffb4d94ad3d552f401fc51d&searchtype=a
“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).”
Gosh, thank you for that insight, as someone who has been a biochemist for almost 30 years, and had two papers on the quantification of different types of DNA damage last year, that one just flew past me.
Brad, DNA is a long term information storage medium and as such fidelity of replication is somewhat important. Uracil undergoes amide/imidic acid tautomerizeation. in the amide form it binds adenine very well, but in the imidic acid form it can bind the other bases; we use this unique ability of uracil in the TUNEL/ddTUNEL assays.
The methylation of uracil is a marker stating “This is the letter U(T)”, especially during duplication.
In the same way the 2’deoxyribose indicates, “This is long term storage media”.
The move from a double stranded RNA, UA/GC based system of information storage into a double stranded deoxy-RNA Me-UA/GC long term and single stranded RNA, UA/GC short term storage system of information is pretty much universally accepted.
Using both dNTP’s and NTP’s allows cells to have two pools of information media and also allows it to get information from the size of the pools; the levels of dNPT are used for measuring quite distinct things than from the APT/ADP or GTP/GDP ratios.
The only really good one we have now is the role of dATP in the activation of Caspase-3; but dGTP levels also fluctuate during the cell cycle.
MikeLorrey-
Glad you find it funny, but please read the paper. The number of meteroites is much smaller than you posit, for excellent reasons.
Gotta post again —
Another thing that bothers me about all of this with respect to evolution: DNA and RNA do not survive heat well or radiation. In fact, two wonderful sterilization methods are heat and radiation. If bacteria got blasted off the surface of another planet (think super heating) traveled through outer space getting blasted with radiation and then fell through our thick atmosphere (super heating again) and then survived — WOW! Let’s evaluate that possibility: we take billions of cans of food and put a little heat on them and that is enough to kill any bacteria and virus’ so that billions of people can safely eat each day even when those cans are full of broken down DNA, amino acids, etc. What are the odds that bacteria on a rock survived space travel, land in a location where DNA can survive – oh about the same as a NASA find two space rocks with fossils in 10 years! One of the big proponents of this was Fred Hoyle, yes, the same guy who thought that matter was self-creating.
This is the same problem I have with people who believe that life originated from boiling mud pots, etc. DNA, RNA without massive special protection dies in heat super fast. This is why we are more healthy in the summer time as opposed to the winter time as virus’ etc. disintegrate on our hands, door knobs, and surfaces faster in the summer heat.
Charles the moderator: a lot of us have posted here for years and enjoy this site. I don’t like snitty political comments about “persecuted minorities, etc.” Perfectly, fine to limit debate to certain topics. Unnecessary insults are a good way to kill off traffic to a website. Welcoming all ID, Creationists, and Evolutionists to comment on climate science while avoiding those topics is a very reasonable position. However, if this is going to become yet another website where only Darwinian Evolutionists are welcome on certain posts with their non-scientific, mathematically impossible theories and anti-God agenda, then I have less of a desire to come here or have my children read Watts up with that.
It’s can be like finding pieces of a Ford Model T embedded inside of a carbonaceous chondrite. A person could argue the magnetic iron from a piece of the Model T has an ultimate extraterrestrial origin due to its magnetic properties and extraordinary details in crystalline structure. You would, on the other hand, have an impossible task of explaining an extraterrestrial origin for the Made in U.S.A. lettering stamped into the metal plate. Of course, it would be a very very interesting experience to explain just how it happened that a Ford Model T eneded up inside of a carbonaceous chondrite (smile).
While cyanobacteria may require an origin on Earth due to the origins of its inherent biochemical structures, that does nothing to necessarily exclude or include extraterrestrial origins for some earlier ancestor of the organism. The only thing we can be confident about is the origin of the species of chemical elements in the supernova of an earlier shortlived supermassive star or stars in our arm of the galaxy. The Phosphorus and Calcium in our bones were forged in the core of a supermassive star where the pressures were great enough for the thermonuclear reactions to form the more complex chemical elements now found in our own bodies, Sun, and Solar System. So, these elements can be said to have extraterrestrial origins. Extraterrestrial origins for organic organisms requires their own circumstances to exist and maintain their existence. Unless a unique extraterrestrial origin for the biochemical structures of the organisms under discussion can be demonstrated, their unique characteristics must have an origin on Earth if even one of their biochemical characteristics are unique to the cyanobacteria known to have developed from earlier biochemical ancestors on the Earth.
“Brad; Why isn’t fully developed life taking over the planet quickly perfectly consistent with panspermia from meteorites instead of slow evolution?”
it isn’t. Again Brad, you must know what cyanobacter are.
These are the guys who changed the whole nature of the Earths ecosystem during the great oxygen extinction. They caused the atmosphere to switch from an anaerobic reducing atmosphere covering acidic oceans containing huge levels of dissolved transitions metals into what we have today. We know for sure when they appeared and we know what the survivors of this catastrophic event look like; the obligate anaerobes.
We can construct molecular clock’s, using sequence divergence of proteins, tRNA’s and other tricks to look at the evolutionary linkages between these organisms.
The biosphere does not consist of a cyanobaterial common ancestor. No way at all. The common ancestor was much more primitive and far, far older.
Mike —
Stand back and think for a minute.
First, I seriously doubt that they have a few hundred rocks with Martian profiles.
Next, even if they do have a few hundred that I’m not aware of. These rocks would have presumably been selected at random from the Martian surface. If you select at random rocks on Earth’s surface — rest assured they will contain no fossils to a 99.9999999% chance. I know I’ve done it.
Yes, I’ve looked for bacteria fossils and piles of rocks under microscopes. The rocks I’ve looked at DO NOT contain more bacteria fossils. It is difficult enough for the rock to make an imprint of a massive thing like a leaf, many times the imprint of the leaf with major structures is hard to see. If the average fossil rock cannot even imprint a 1 or 2 mm feature, how is that rock going to contain something of the resolution of a bacteria!
Think about it — this means that ONLY rocks which have the mineralization content of a resolution of the bacteria can contain the fossil. Sandstone, Mudstone, and even your average limestone is simply to porous and with too large of grain sizes to get a bacterial imprint. So even the vast majority of fossil bearing rocks will not show bacteria. This is all laughable silliness.
And yes, I’ve looked at very old rocks too. Big Mountain in W. Washington is made from the ancient deep sea floor — a very interesting place to look. And I fully agree that some rocks on Earth do contain either fossil bacteria, or bacteria that had full mineralization go on. According to papers on this — these are not widespread and very rare. I have not been able to find them in my years of looking.
So if less than 99.9999999999999% of the earth’s surface has bacterial fossils given all the bacteria here. Why do we think in just a few hundred rocks (if that) we can magically find bacteria fossils. It is rubbish. Even if Mars were a lush green planet teeming with bacteria – I’d scream B#$%^
The idea of seeding is an interesting one. Whether it be from “out there” or from “here” would lead us to speculate that said evidence of “seeding” would be quite abundant. It is not. Planets relatively close to Earth have to be searched high and low to find such evidence. And then the search is way more futile than it is fertile. For me, the theory that continues to hold quite well against other arguments is that of slow extra-species macro-evolution (from dinos to birds), combined with fast intra-species evolution (such as is found in common house flies).
“John, This is the same problem I have with people who believe that life originated from boiling mud pots, etc. DNA, RNA without massive special protection dies in heat super fast. This is why we are more healthy in the summer time as opposed to the winter time as virus’ etc. disintegrate on our hands, door knobs, and surfaces faster in the summer heat.”
We know that neolithic man moved using his legs and nowadays people move by automobile. HOWEVER, cars cannot travel without roads. It is impossible for people to transition from universal bipeds into road users, as roads didn’t exist and roads are useless without cars. THEREFORE a supernatural entity created modern man, cars and asphalt roads at the same time.
Do not imagine, that you can imagine, the nature of the first replicants and their ecosystem, until you have studied a little more of the biodiversity of the microbial biosphere. Just because you can’t imagine something, does not mean that it didn’t exist.
Patterson and DocMartyn-
Thanks doc, and I post-doc’ed at the MIT genome center under Lander and ran my own lab at U of I.
The isomerization is less important to long term stability, it is important to replication efficiency as you note. You seem to completely ignore the biology, as most chemists do, and talk about DNA stability in a the lab. Please read up on spore development, the genetics of which is incredibly neat in B. sibtilis (mom commits suicide via the spoK gene).
I have cited paper after paper to support my positions, please find some facts that are supported and RELEVANT to the discussion before you spew more spittle.
This arguemnt has developed two strands that are becoming intertwined. The first is does the metorite show living organisms well away from our solar system. I see no evidence that makes that rgument strongly, but lots of evidence that create smoke. The second argument is panspermia which would allow seeding from inter-solar system sources which is perfectly consistent with all we know and the evidence we have. Proven? No, but plausible for sure.
Carbonasceous meteorites showing life:
1) The metoerites are not from earth based on their inorganic makeup.
2) The metoerites contain things that look like living things on EM to some folk with lots of expertise.
3) The makeup of the organics and nitrogen are consistent with living things, fossilized.
On panspermia (or life on earth originatins elsewhere):
1) Spores (NOT DNA OR RNA) can survive long periods in space if protected from UV (as they would be inside a meteor), certainly more than enough to survive interplanetary journeys if not outside the solar system (and Doc Martyn may be correct that no information carrier could do that…but it is irrlevant to the real issue about ex-earth origins).
2) Cyanobacteria are consistent with the earliest known, proven life on earth, and cyanobacteria today can survive in space
3) We have zero strong evidence of any ancestor to these early organisms.
All these points are supported by actual papers cited in this string.
Andy Revkin distinguishes himself again. When I want an arbiter of good science, he’s the guy I’ll go to (not!).
Anyone credulous enough to publish this stuff shouldn’t be allowed to hold a crayon, much less have his own column on science.
Pamela-
Agree completely on your points on modern evolution and how it functions. As for “fast” versus “slow” that really has more to do with generation time, offspring numbers, and selective pressure – but I get your point. The genetics and biochemistry of mammals, furit flies, and even yeast are much more similar than they are different.
Your point on seeding goes to what are the real requirements for life, and the places we have looked are close and easy to get to, but were never good candidates. Read Hoover’s paper, he covers some very good places to look in the solar system, and if we were not spending so much making us feel good by spending hudreds of billions to orbit the planet, we probably would already have probes going there.
I am not sure why ‘seeding’ is being discussed with the topic of fossils found in these ‘mars’ rocks. I think the thing that is supposed to be fascinating associated with this ‘discovery’ is not whether life started elsewhere and immigrated to our planet, but if life could start here, could it have started elsewhere in this universe. This is just ‘evidence’ that yes it is possible for life to start elsewhere.
‘assuming this pans out’
Hobo
M
Brad, here is a rather nice site showing the branching order of Bacterial Phyla, this is an overview; but the position of cyanobacteria is pretty much where other reconstructions indicate.
http://www.bacterialphylogeny.info/bacteria.html
Cyanobacteria are far, far too advanced to be the original replicants and fit into the main sequence of core functional protein rather nicely.
No one, can state with any authority if life originated on Earth or else where and was then transported to Earth. I have no problem with a RNA based originating in some other planetary/exo-planetary biosphere and inoculating the Earth <3.8 billion years ago. However, the original relpilicant wouldn't look like a cyanobacteria.
Based upon numbers and probabilities, it can be reasonably argued that lt is virtually a 100 percent certainty that life has developed from inorganic matter innumerable times throughout this and other galaxies in the Universe. Based upon numbers and probabilities, it can also be argued that it is highly probable that the suspected fossils originated on Earth before returning to Earth. Earth is the closest presently known source of organic organisms, so it would logically appear to be the most prolific source of such meteorites within its local area of interplanetary space.
While it can be a plausible assumption that rocks bearing lifeforms which originated in extraterrestrial and interstellar regions of space are capable of arriving on the Earth in meteorites, it is even moe plausible and likely that nearly all of the life bearing meteorites arriving on the Earth would have originated from the surface of the Earth in the impact ejecta. How many additional life bearing meterorites arriving on the Earth originated from intrplanetary origins in this Solar System or interstellar origins beyond this Solar System is an interesting reseearch question which remains to be answered.
Doc-
I guess I will take the rest of the astrobiolgists who have studied this over your characterizations. I never said it was a modern cyanobacteria, and it is very likely the ancestor only vaguely resembles anything here now, do to the oxygenation and the organic matter everywhre now (very different than when they arrived or developed). It is likely, since the ancestor almost assuredly used nucleic acid as an information carrier and some type of protein, that many of the same limitations were in place, that any spore former used something similar to today. THAT is the point.
Have a great weekend, you might spend some of it on google scholar reading some interesting papers on astrobiology. I was a skeptical as you at one point, then I started to study the facts.
You gave the impression of talking about cyanobacteria, modern or otherwise, with your following earlier comments.
Your remark gave the impression of suggesting it was possible or likely for extraterrestrial lifeforms to develop with biochemical characteristics similar enough to be recognized or mistaken for the cyanobacteria with origins on the Earth.
From Fox: “In it, Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites — only nine such meteorites are known to exist on Earth………….Though it may be hard to swallow, Hoover is convinced that his findings reveal fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites.”
Question ……….
How do we know these critters didn’t get into the meteorite after it hit the earth? If it’s been laying around here for a few million – billion – zillion years – who knows what extraneous matter may have invaded or been absorbed by the carbonaceous material?
Maybe it’s hard as a rock now – but was it always?
Without speaking for Charles, I think the point is that, while everyone is welcome, discussions on the subject of Darwinian evolution versus ID/Creationism are off-limits. The reason, I assume, is that such discussions quickly become interminable, and often generate nasty arguments.
The question for this thread is whether or not some meteorites plausibly contain fossil evidence of microscopic living things, and not whether such life originated as an act of Nature or one of God.
/Mr Lynn
In response to Roger Longstaff, I’ll expand my comment. I’ll start with Anthony’s own post regarding Michael Crichton and his flippantly titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton/
Mr. Longstaff, you indicate your calculations indicate a rock randomly ejected from earth at little more than escape velocity would reach 100 light-years distance in 70ky. (I’ve interpolated and added my own assumptions. Please correct me if I misunderstand or mistake you.)
If we can agree upon an assumption of longevity, that our human descendants will continue for hundreds of thousands of years, then I assert our descendants will inevitably populate all habitable planets within the galaxy within the next several ten-thousands of years. Note, I make no assumption of faster-than-light travel capabilities. I assume ONLY that that technology will advance as it has historically, and people will do what they have historically, and that is to expand their sphere of influence. It will likely be ugly at times, but with Tolkien’s dwarves, I assert what can be done will be done, and I assert that it can.
If I am confident that human descendants will populate the galaxy within a few hundred millennia (and I am), how can I assume other self-actualizing beings will do otherwise?
If, in the few billions of years before life took hold on our planet, any similar scenario of life played out on some supposed planet in any corner of our galaxy why would they not be here yet? In fact, why would they not have been here millennia ago before homo-earliest even had a chance? The earth was a right nice place to live starting eons ago (even when it was ~14°C warmer than today). If they are out there, why are they not here? It is ridiculous to suppose they are out there BECAUSE they are not here. Even given a Roddenberry moral sense on their part to maintain a Prime-directive type stance, wouldn’t they have let us in on the secret by the time of the Sumerians?
Honestly, to me, these arguments are still trivial compared to the power requirements. The energy required to travel such distances, and the logistical support requirements involved make interstellar commerce laughable. I believe the trips are possible, but the crews must necessarily be generational, and the trips MUST be one-way. If we go to “Pandora,” we are there to stay. We either coexist with them, or we wipe them out. (Or, of course, they wipe out us.)
Steven Hawking is probably enough smarter than me to know better whether faster-than-light travel might be possible at some possibly attainable (and economically bearable) energy cost, but I think he is no better than the scifi writer when he asserts that we should avoid “them” as long as possible. “They” are not out there.
If “they” ever existed, they started approximately 3byo ± 12by. Does it make sense why I say they are not out there? It will not take us a billion years to get the “them.” Given that “they” could have had up to a 12 billion year head start makes it laughable to think “they” may show up any day now.
So, we are left with the possibilities that we are they, or they are not there. Perhaps they were there but never survived long enough to get off their planet. Perhaps we won’t either. That rock is out there. (Global warming is not.)
Regarding “life” surviving interplanetary journeys, I’m not sure there is any question that it is possible if one looks at what is involved.
Impacts are extremely chaotic and hard to model. Most anything that can happen is likely to happen, at least on the nano-scale. Self interstitials in the lattice of a metal are so unlikely as to be safely discounted, unless one is in an environment of 14MeV neutrons (D-T fusion), then you better account for them. The atoms are doing unimaginable things with all that energy on the per-atom scale. (Unimaginable until one has thoroughly studied the subject and worked through a significant portion of the mathematics.) Of course, metals of interest in reactors to get all those neutrons and then investigate are essential to the modeling and proofing of the mathematics. EBR-II comes to mind. 🙁
Brad: “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.”
My point was more nuanced. Namely, the “evolving” part of the scenario is a happenstance occurrence (unless anyone wants to posit a directed evolution mechanism). Thereafter I agree that there could be a selection pressure that results in more offspring of a particular phenotype over another. It is not clear that this is what happened with the coconut, but I realize you weren’t making that argument necessarily, just offering an analogy, so I don’t want to belabor the coconut point.
In the case of life being seeded from another planet, however, I would argue that the selection pressure, if it even exists, does not operate in the same fashion. Specifically, instead of having an environment in which particular phenotypes are favored, thus resulting in a somewhat pervasive and relatively constant selection pressure, we are talking about a once in a lifetime event in which a collision causes some piece of matter to escape its natural environment and travel across interstellar space. The requirements for traveling across interstellar space cannot have been a selective pressure in any normal sense of moving the population in a particular direction. Rather, it would be, again, pure happenstance that an organism that had for some totally unnecessary reason developed and retained the ability to travel across interstellar space, also happened to be the organism that was caught up in the collision, got blasted into space and traveled in just the right trajectory to get to Earth. It is an interesting idea, but exceedingly speculative, almost to the point of not being scientific . . .
I can see two potential rebuttals to my points above:
– Perhaps life originated in the depths of space, in which case there could be a selective pressure that would favor an ability to survive the extremes of space. (Others in the comments above have alluded to such theories.)
– Perhaps life is much more robust to interstellar travel in general. Again, some have alluded to this above, but so far the findings have been limited to very short duration exposures.
@John McDonald says:
March 6, 2011 at 9:09 am
John, you seem to be laboring under the misconception that all fossils are imprints, and that therefore, fossil bacteria are scarce because they are smaller than the grain size of most rocks.
Some fossils are indeed imprints, some are molds or casts, some are the result of chemical replacement, and some are composed of original biological material with some degree of chemical alteration.
Microfossils are very abundant indeed, but you have to know what to look for. In my work as a wellsite geologist, I see larger-scale microfossils in nearly every well that I work on. Fish scales, fish teeth, and fragments of fish bones are easy to recognize under a 20X microscope. I get to see the odd Foram and Ostracod, and countless fragments of clam shells. Big, showy fossils that catch your eye, and look good on the mantelpiece are indeed harder to find, and I will never find them in drill cuttings that are ground to the size of kitty litter, but I have found the odd one when taking a walk away from the rig.
Fossils of terrestrial animals are very rare indeed, because rocks of terrestrial (as opposed to marine) origin are themselves rare, and because scavengers usually make short work of any animals that simply topple over and die. It takes pretty special circumstances for terrestrial animals to be preserved as fossils.
You say you live in Western Washington? There are some pretty spectacular fossil palm logs along the shore of Chuckanut Bay directly south of the city of Bellingham. And then there’s the Rhinoceros Cave in the Columbia Plateau volcanics; that’s on my own “want to visit” list.
DocMartyn says:
March 6, 2011 at 10:18 am
“Cyanobacteria are far, far too advanced to be the original replicants and fit into the main sequence of core functional protein rather nicely.”
You’re conflating genotype with phenotype. The two aren’t joined at the hip, so to speak. The thing found in the meteorite was a fossil with a shape similar to a modern bacteria. Nothing about its genotype can be determined from just the shape of it.