This looks to be a huge story, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life, if it holds up. I would remind readers that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence“. This needs to be confirmed by others in the science community before it can be taken seriously.
This is from a recent meteorite find in December 2012. A large fire ball was seen by a large number of people in Sri Lanka on December 29th 2012, during that episode a large meteorite disintegrated and fell to Earth in the village of Araganwila which is few miles away from the city of Polonnaruwa.
Look at what the electron microscope shows of a sample purported to be from the meteorite:
It looks convincing, and the paper says: “Contamination is excluded by the circumstance that the elemental abundances within the structures match closely with those of the surrounding matrix.“, but I remain skeptical of the claim.
At first I thought this was somebody mistaking a Tektite (Earthly origin ejecta from impact that makes it into space briefly) but this meteorite found in Sri Lanka does not appear to fit that category, being a chondrite. Further, this is a (supposedly) peer reviewed paper in the Journal of Cosmology, just published, but looking at the Journal of Cosmology, I have some doubts about its veracity.
I asked our resident solar expert Dr. Leif Svalgaard what he thought of it:
Credible? Yes and No. Several good scientists that I know personally have published in the Journal. There is also a good deal of junk. The kind of stuff that gets trotted out at WUWT by our resident [commenters] asking us to ‘open our minds’. So, there is both. It is difficult for a layman to sort the wheat from the abundant chaff.
Wickramasinghe is a credible scientist, student and long-time collaborator of Fred Hoyle. I assume you know Hoyle’s theory of continuous creation of matter at just the right rate to make the Universe expand as we observe it in order to keep the density constant. Hoyle coined the ‘derogatory’ [from his point of view] term The Big Bang. Hoyle’s greatest achievement was to co-author the epoch-making paper that explained in quantitative detail how all elements heavier than Lithium are formed in our universe [in supernovae explosions].
So, the jury is still out on the journal, though the scientist gets a +1.
According to the paper:
…the parent body of the Polonnaruwa meteorite would have had most of its interior porous volume filled with water, volatile organics and possibly viable living cells. A remarkable coincidence that should be noted is that within several days of the meteorite fall, an extensive region around the site of the fall experienced an episode of red rain. The red rain analysed at the MRI in Colombo has been shown to contain red biological cells that show viability as well as motility. Preliminary studies from EDX analysis show that these cells are similar to the cells found in the red rain of Kerala that fell in 2001, cells that have not yet been identified with any known terrestrial organism (Louis and Kumar, 2006; Gangappa et al, 2010). Abnormally high abundances of As and Ag in the Sri Lankan red rain cells have been provisionally reported, thus favouring a non-terrestrial habitat, possibly connected with a cometary/asteroidal body, the fragmentation of which led to the Polonnaruwa meteorite fall (Samaranayake and Wickramasinghe, 2012).
The paper is (h/t to Willis Eschenbach):
FOSSIL DIATOMS IN A NEW CARBONACEOUS METEORITE
N. C. Wickramasinghe*1, J. Wallis2, D.H. Wallis1 and Anil Samaranayake+3
1Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, University of Buckingham, Buckingham, UK
2School of Mathematics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
3Medical Research Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka
ABSTRACT
We report the discovery for the first time of diatom frustules in a carbonaceous meteorite that fell in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka on 29 December 2012. Contamination is excluded by the circumstance that the elemental abundances within the structures match closely with those of the surrounding matrix. There is also evidence of structures morphologically similar to red rain cells that may have contributed to the episode of red rain that followed within days of the meteorite fall. The new data on “fossil” diatoms provide strong evidence to support the theory of cometary panspermia.
The full paper is here:
Source from the University of Buckingham website: http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Polonnaruwa-meteorite.pdf
Here is a news story on the paper, including an interview with Wickramasinghe
I always thought Bill Bryson nicely listed the ‘necessary ingredients for life’ in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything.
1. Excellent location; the right distance from the right sort of star.
2. The right kind of planet; molten interior whose out gassing helped to build an atmosphere, provided us with a magnetic field that shields us from cosmic radiation and plate tectonics.
3.The right size of moon; the moon’s steady gravitational influence provided the necessary stability to the earth for the long incubation process required for the development of life.
4. Timing “If a long and unimaginably complex sequence of events stretching back 4.6 billion years or so hadn’t played out in a particular manner at particular times…………you might well be six inches long with whiskers and a tail and reading this in a burrow”.
denniswingo says:
January 14, 2013 at 10:26 pm
“As for this meteorite, there seems to be some confusion in the description. It is called a chondrite (presumably an ordinary chondrite) yet the description is of a carbonaceous chondrite. I have actually held a piece of the Tagish Lake carbonaceous chondrite and it looks and feels like dirt. An ordinary chondrite is much like a rock.”
I was in a mining exploration camp on Tagish Lake (Yukon, Canada) 30 years before the meteorite arrived – dang I already feel born too soon on many other accounts!
I’ll go along with everyone else saying that since that is obviously a terrestrial diatom, and apparently not a deep-space diatom, the picture is either a tektite or a fake. Probably a fake.
Mike
Just a first impression, but this is not credible IMO. There’s almost no way an “alien” lifeform would look just like a terrestrial diatom. It should look like nothing seen before…
I recall watching a documentary years ago on this subject, algea if i remember properly. Or possibly
Red rain at skeptoid
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4224
Red Rain contains spores of a lichen-forming alga belonging to Trentepohlia. It is from planet Earth.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002EO000250/abstract
Leif Svalgaard says: January 14, 2013 at 7:39
It is not a given that all life has to based on DNA. I do agree that DNA [namely us] will colonize the whole Galaxy in a few hundred million years [if we survive ourselves for the next couple of hundred years]. Which may provoke Fermi’s question “Where is everybody”.
______________________________________
Well, if you are on the other side of the galaxy, or in another galaxy, its going to take you a very long time to get here. Light speed may mean that many technical civilisations are born, live and perish, all in splendid isolation. (And I doubt that advanced civilisations will use radio frequency communications for long, in their development.)
.
concerning the distant future and the distribution of intelligent life in the cosmos – there is one explanation that fits all observed data to this point, and yet it is surprising how even the most rigidly scientific minds react against it so viscerally. It’s precisely that revulsion that leads me to at least suspect it may be the truth.
potential explanation: Sentience is fascinating to us because we possess it, but in itself it conveys no long term survival advantage to those species which develop it, and in fact may hinder survival. (self-sacrifice for the next generation is more reliable when it’s purely instinctual, for example) For that reason sentience may arise briefly in a number of worlds which support life, but it rather quickly burns itself out and vanishes without leaving much behind. Combined with the light speed barrier which forever bars significant contact between worlds, sentience can be seen as a mildly interesting byproduct of this universe but one which is transitory and of no great significance.
The reason we hear nothing from space is because there is nothing there, and we won’t be here much longer either.
You can’t prove it’s not true! (heh)
It is highly likely that collaboration with Wickramasinghe with his SciFi science was responsible for Fred Hoyle not getting a Nobel Prize for his theory of the creation of most of the elements of the periodic table (heavier than C). The Nobel Prize went to collaborators in California (Fowler etc.) even though the idea was Hoyle’s. I think the Nobel Committee didn’t want to give the prize to a cuckoo who, along with Wickramasinghe were pushing a universe bubbling with life. It probably didn’t help that Hoyle was also a science fiction writer. A lot of Nobel Prizes have been given out to much lesser scientific discoverers than Hoyle before his time. Since his time, they are handed out like Crackerjack prizes.
@Leif Svalgaard
We just have to consider all the possibilities — we’re the first, there is nobody else out there, Carl Sagan’s thesis about self-destruction from nuclear warfare, and of course, they’re out there, they know about us and they don’t care.
Myself, I consider the conditions necessary for creating intelligent life and an advanced civilization rare. Our moon protects us from comets, as does Jupiter, to some extent. Without either of these, we likely wouldn’t be here today.
I’ve not much knowledge of diatoms, but we’ve had similar situations before where inorganic mineralization and crystal-growth in meteorites were claimed as being due to ET life forms.
Put enough pieces of bread into a toaster and one of them is bound to come out looking like Jesus or the Prophet. Look at enough grains of sand under a microscope and you will find one that looks like Abraham Lincoln.
I agree with all those who point out that the timing is extremely suspicious.
There is just no way that careful diligent science was done on this 29 Dec 2012 meteorite and a paper produced and published in two weeks (which included the New Years holiday season).
It appears to be a rush-to-confirm-my-pet-theory job.
No matter what happens now, there will be no way to erase that error — that rush-to-judgement-error. If this were a police investigation, the evidence would have to be thrown out as there is no way it could have resulted from approved, normal, necessary chain-of-evidence protecting procedures. The speed with which this ‘result’ was produced condemns it and will always, hereafter, cast suspicions on it.
It would have been oh so much better had Wickramasinghe obsessively followed procedures necessary to forestall accusations of contamination — and called in steady, conservative co-authors to steady the boat.
Unless the dates given are wrong, I am afraid that no one will ever accept his findings.
Climate Ace says:
January 14, 2013 at 9:20 pm
In general, jungles tend to be rather depauperate in large critters of any kind, and therefore especially depauperate of dangerous critters
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The most dangerous creatures in the jungle are among the smallest. Most often they attack you on the lower leg, and once they get hold they are almost impossible to stop. They most definitely regard humans as food. Go live in the tropics. It is rare to find someone that doesn’t bare the scars. As a visitor without the immunity developed in childhood you make a fine meal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_ulcer
Thanks Dr Watts for posting this.
If its true, it is most important and others havent picked it up.
The most interesting thing to me is that it resembles life on earth so much.
REPLY: Mr. Watts, no Dr. here, but thanks for thinking of me that way – Anthony
Mr. Berple:
You’re right about the jungle.
Famed reporter Maggie Higgins died of leishmaniasis contracted in Vietnam.
Jack Simmons says:
January 15, 2013 at 2:15 am
Leif, would you be so kind as to list a few of what you consider to be good journals?
Value judgments are always a bit subjective, but scientists themselves have a measure [albeit imperfect, but an indicator nevertheless]. It is called the ‘impact factor’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor
“The impact factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones.”.
The top two are Nature and Science for general science. The Astrophysical Journal, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Geophysical Research are tops in my own field(s). Needless to say, I have published in all five [and others]. Why? Because I think they are good and that my work would get to a wider audience than with lesser journals. That these journals also routinely reject about half of what I try to publish in them tells me that they are good [and ruthless when needed].
Silver Ralph says:
January 15, 2013 at 7:01 am
Well, if you are on the other side of the galaxy, or in another galaxy, its going to take you a very long time to get here.
Three hundred million years is a very long time. To colonize our own Galaxy. Reaching other galaxies may be a different matter.
fos·sil·ize
[fos-uh-lahyz] Show IPA verb, fos·sil·ized, fos·sil·iz·ing.
verb (used with object)
1.
Geology . to convert into a fossil; replace organic with mineral substances in the remains of an organism.
There are no fossilized diatoms. Diatoms have a skeleton made of silicon. The remains of dead diatoms are the actual skeletons themselves. How could the surrounding material be the same as the actual skeleton? This story makes no sense.
wws says:
January 15, 2013 at 7:09 am
Combined with the light speed barrier which forever bars significant contact between worlds.
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The light speed barrier only exists for the observer.
At 1 g acceleration a spaceship can travel about 1/4 of the way across the observable universe within 1 human lifetime. To people on earth it will appear that the trip took some 10 billion years, but on the space ship only some 70 years will have passed. Such a trip would feel the same as standing on the surface of the earth.
Life exists everywhere we look on earth. Why should the rest of the universe be any different? The earth only has a finite number of particles with finite energy levels. The laws of probability dictate that it cannot be unique in an infinite universe. Eventually every pattern must repeat.
If the universe is not infinite, then what lies outside? Doesn’t the universe include everything, past present and future? Impossible exists more in the mind than in reality.
ferd berple says:
“The laws of probability dictate that it cannot be unique in an infinite universe. “
It does? How come there’s only 0ne “42” on an infinite number line?
Living here north of the Red River, West of Red Rock Canyon and in the midst of Redlands this, that and the other, I think I’ll put on a Red Dirt Rangers disc and secretly enjoy thinking about a red rain somewhere else on the planet.
Michael Moon says:
“How could the surrounding material be the same as the actual skeleton?”
My guess is that it is some type of filiform crystal growth, that would explain why it would have the same chemical makeup of the matrix.
Paul Westhaver says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:48 pm
Oh God….
Watts. Not good. Science here only, SVP.
I don’t believe any of this hyperbolic alien-hyping shite.
So you believe that God created life in seven days on planet earth? And the rest of the cosmos, billions upon billions of other worlds, have no life? How touching.
I think the paper was accidentally released early: it was meant for publication on April 1.
/sarc (for those that find it necessary)
ferd berple says:
January 15, 2013 at 8:19 am
Life exists everywhere we look on earth. Why should the rest of the universe be any different? The earth only has a finite number of particles with finite energy levels. The laws of probability dictate that it cannot be unique in an infinite universe. Eventually every pattern must repeat.
Thank you, Fred, This is so obvious as to validate the speculation that a primary source of so-called “skepticism” over life on other worlds is an unexamined hangover of religious literalism, which like any other hangover lasts long after the original joy is gone.
***
Silver Ralph says:
January 15, 2013 at 7:01 am
And I doubt that advanced civilisations will use radio frequency communications for long, in their development.
****
Not sure what else they’d use. Lasers are fine for unobstructed short-range, but doesn’t penetrate gas/dust. IMO, they’d use broadband, encrypted radio that would be indistinguishable from radio noise if you don’t have an encryption key.