A team of British scientists believe that they’ve discovered organisms in earth’s environment that originate from outer space.
As demanding as that may be to judge, Professor Milton Wainwright, the team’s leader, insists that this is unquestionably the instance.
The team, from the University of Sheffield, discovered the little organisms (misleadingly known as ‘bugs’ by quite a lot of persistent journalists) living on a research balloon that had been sent 16.7 miles into our atmosphere throughout last month’s Perseids meteor shower.
In keeping with Professor Wainwright, the microscopic creatures could not have been carried into the stratosphere with the balloon. He said, “Most people will imagine that these biological particles should have just drifted up into the stratosphere from Earth, but it’s usually accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, as an example, 27km. The one known exemption is by a violent volcanic explosion, none of these occurred within three years of their sampling trip.”
Wainwright maintains that only salient conclusion is that the organisms originated from space. He went on to mention that “life isn’t restricted to this planet also it almost definitely did not originate here”
However, not everyone is so persuaded. Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) project stated, “I’m very skeptical. This claim may be made beforehand, and dismissed as terrestrial contamination.” The team responds to this by saying that they were thorough as they readied the balloon before the experiments started.
Yet, they do acknowledge that there could be an strange reason for these organisms to achieve such altitudes. It must also be well-known that microbal organisms discovered in the 1980’s and 1990’s and named ‘extremophiles’ stunned the scientific community by living in environments that would instantaneously kill the bulk of life on earth.
These creatures have always been observed living deep under Glacial ice and even 1900 feet below the ocean floor. In March of this year, Ronnie Glud, a biogeochemist at the Southern Danish University in Odense, Denmark was quoted as saying “In the most secluded, harsh places, you can even have higher activity than their surroundings,” and that “You can find microbes all over the place – they’re very malleable to conditions, and stay alive where they are,” so it seems more plausible that either the team is in error, or that this is solely another case of microscopic life showing up in an extraordinary place.
Additionally, it is not the 1st time this particular team has come under fire for making such statements, either. Back in January of this year, astrobiologist Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe reported that ‘fossils’ found inside a Sri Lankan meteorite were proof of extraterrestrial life, an assertion that’s commonly criticized by scientific community.
Other scientists have complained that there frankly isn’t enough indication to generate such a claim, as the theory this vital would need a huge body of proof to prove its validity.
What that says to this reporter is that microorganisms can survive almost anyplace and it simply isn’t good science to jump to wild conclusions like aliens each time a more plausible answer is most likely present. Science shouldn’t be subject to such wild leaps of elaborate. Imagination is a good aid to science, however it isn’t a science in and of itself. Unfortunately, Dr. Wainwright and his group look to be seeing what they want to observe.
SOURCES:
http://www.livescience.com/27954-microbes-mariana-trench.html
http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/09/22/news/entertainment/have-we-found-alien-life/
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/alien-bugs-discovered-earths-atmosphere-152253962.html#13B0NDB
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