Astrobiologists are examining what could be evidence of extraterrestrial microfossils inside a meteorite that fell to France 140 years ago. The Orgueil meteorite, a type of space rock known as a carbonaceous chondrite, has long sparked questions about potential traces of life from space, as noted in David Darling's Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy and Spaceflight. But those simmering questions were brought to a boil this month when NASA astrobiologist Richard Hoover shared his research team's preliminary findings at SPIE's International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology.Photomicrographs of Orgueil samples, now posted on the Cosmic Ancestry Web site, showed what appeared to be fossilized traces of cyanobacteria within the soft rock. Biologists have come to believe that life might have gotten its start in Earth's oceans in the form of cyanobacteria - but to find such traces in a rock that apparently spent millions of years in space rather than in water came as a surprise.Any scientist's first thought would be that the biological structures were the result of earthly contamination, but Hoover said the structures' composition argues strongly against that. "The organic matter ... contains isotopes that absolutely could not be from terrestrial contamination," he said.Hoover was reluctant to discuss the findings in depth, because he's still preparing a manuscript for submission to a peer-reviewed publication. But Brig Klyce, trustee of the Astrobiology Research Trust and webmaster for Cosmic Ancestry, came away from the Denver meeting impressed."I think this is the real deal," Klyce said.
View: Full Article | Source: MSNBC