If a group of scientists are correct, tiny fossils uncovered inside a meteorite found in Sri Lanka in December are proof of extraterrestrial life.
In a detailed paper called "Fossil Diatoms In A New Carbonaceous Meteorite" that is appearing in the Journal of Cosmology, Chandra Wickramasinghe claims to have found strong evidence that life exists throughout the universe.
An electron microscope was used to study the reported remains of a large meteorite (see image below right) that fell near the Sri Lanka village of Polonnaruwa on Dec. 29.
Wickramasinghe is the director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham in the U.K. In December, he and his colleagues found "a microstructure and morphology characteristic of a wide class of terrestrial diatoms." The group concluded that "the presence of structures of this kind in any extraterrestrial setting could be construed as unequivocal proof of biology" -- in other words, proof of life outside of planet Earth.
Wickramasinghe and the late English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle co-developed a theory known as "panspermia," which suggests that life exists throughout the universe and is distributed by meteoroids and asteroids.
"We conclude ... that the identification of fossilised diatoms [as shown in the image below] in the Polonnaruwa meteorite is firmly established and unimpeachable. Since this meteorite is considered to be an extinct cometary fragment, the idea of microbial life carried within comets and the theory of cometary panspermia is thus vindicated," Wickramasinghe wrote in the research paper.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Below is a video of this meteor as it fell over Sri Lanka in Dec of 2012.
The picture shows microbe fossils, not living. I'm a layman in the field of biology, so please help me understand this. Is he theorizing that the microbes in meteors during the early era of the solar system were still living and viable after being blasted off their planet, travelling through space, and entering earth's atmosphere? I suppose they would need to be deep inside a huge meteorite to survive all that, right?
ReplyDeleteHas this "Johnny Appleseed" theory ever been tested somehow? If those microbes could survive being blasted off their home planet, orbiting the sun for many years, and entry into earth's atmosphere, they must be pretty tough! Why haven't we ever found meteorites containing living microbes? Why only fossils?
ReplyDeleteThink about it Gary Davis. If every little thing found outside of earth was revealed. This planet would be in chaos. Like most objects found or seen, they r hidden or kept secret. Only every now and then are things let out. Sometimes even by accident
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