Alien life found in Earth's stratosphere ?

[Billyf]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2416761/Scientists-claim-evidence-ALIEN-LIFE-Balloon-sent-edge-atmosphere-picks-organisms-come-space.html

[seeder]

so then there's no way its not just earthly stuff? We do have volcanoes and tornados and other harsh weather to blow things up there dont we?

Im waiting till they have grown some in a petri dish before getting excited. Good story tho, but we have known for sometime there is stuff in the atmosphere

[seeder]

from the link

Claim the algae could only have come from space or a volcanic eruption

Sounds like they're not that sure then doesn't it?

typos

Edited September 10, 2013 by seeder

[seeder]

I knew Id heard a similar story before, now Ive found it

Loads of Microbes Found High in Atmosphere January 28, 2013

Many miles above the ground, microbes thrive in the sky.

A large number and wide variety of microorganisms were detected in the atmosphere 5 to 10 miles (8 to 15 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, according to a study published today (Jan. 28) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The results suggest that the community of high-atmosphere life is large and ever-changing. Some of the microbes appear to be transient visitors, while others seem stick around; a significant number of these little life-forms are likely able to survive by breaking down and making a meal of organic (or carbon-containing) chemicals floating in the high atmosphere, said study co-author Kostas Konstantinidis, an environmental microbiologist at Georgia Tech.

"There are a few species that are quite abundant," Konstantinidis told OurAmazingPlanet. "That becomes very interesting — what are all these cells doing up there, and how do they survive?" It's too early to know the answer to this question, however, he said

http://www.livescience.com/26645-microbes-in-the-sky.html

[Sundew]

Occam's razor. The more likely solution is that they came from the earth. Now if you get something that has completely different DNA from known Earth organisms, then you have something more likely to be extra-terrestrial.

I will say this makes the possibility of life on Mars more likely, for these organisms live exposed to intense radiation, freezing temperatures, sub-freezing cold and thin, very dry atmosphere. Perhaps these organisms would be good for terraforming if Mars proves to be a dead world.

[CORK_SNIPER]

Was interested in reading until I noticed the link was to the dailymail. Sorry but I cant take em any little bit serious. Example Ronaldo, Messi & Neymar are set to sign for chelsea. The bs stories this crowd come out with really annoys me

[qxcontinuum]

In fact similar types of algae was told it was given to The people of Israel while escaping from Egypt otherwise named manna. It was said was falling down from sky in such large quantities that someone should have just laying on the ground with his mouth open and will fill his mouth in just seconds.

After reading news about this discovery i was carried right away to the biblical facts

[qxcontinuum]

Also you might want to read about the red rain from India in 2001

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala

but a study commissioned by the Government of India concluded that the rains had been colored by airborne spores from locally prolific terrestrial algae.[5]

Edited September 11, 2013 by qxcontinuum

[psyche101]

Also you might want to read about the red rain from India in 2001

http://en.wikipedia...._rain_in_Kerala

but a study commissioned by the Government of India concluded that the rains had been colored by airborne spores from locally prolific terrestrial algae.[5]

That link also says:

Other researchers have noted recurring instances of red rainfalls in 1818, 1846, 1872, 1880, 1896, and 1950, including one described by Charles Darwin,^[50] and several times since then.^[57] Most recently, colored rainfall occurred over Kerala during the summers of 2001, 2006, 2007, 2008,^[58] and 2012; since 2001, the botanists have found the same Trentepohlia spores every time.^[50] This supports the notion that the lichen spores are a seasonal local environmental feature, rather than Kerala being some kind of a magnet for alien-microbe infested meteors.

In fact similar types of algae was told it was given to The people of Israel while escaping from Egypt otherwise named manna. It was said was falling down from sky in such large quantities that someone should have just laying on the ground with his mouth open and will fill his mouth in just seconds.

After reading news about this discovery i was carried right away to the biblical facts

Imagination tends to work like that.

[psyche101]

I completely expected to old mate Chandra Wickramasinghe to be at the link and I was not disappointed.

I have nothing against the Panspermia Hypothesis, but Wickramasinghe is getting a little tiring with his Chicken Little Antics. Every six months he thinks aliens are falling from the sky. He has never been right. I respect his qualification, but his zealous nature has turned him into the boy who cried Wolf.

[Amerix]

You guys know Daily Mail is a tabloid right?

[psyche101]

You guys know Daily Mail is a tabloid right?

What, the Daily Fail! Say it isn't so!

LOL, yeah, but this story has many sources, the DM was just the one that somebody happened to choose. It really is not unusual for Chandra to make a bi yearly announcements on Panspermia.

Edited September 11, 2013 by psyche101

[Sundew]

You guys know Daily Mail is a tabloid right?

Haha, well every decade or so even tabloids like the National Enquirer break a real news story, so you never know......

[bison]

The scientific source of the story appears legitimate, even if the newspaper in which the story appeared has a less than sterling reputation. The claim of finding relatively large microorganisms at extreme altitudes appears the most interesting. If it is correct that these are too heavy to remain suspended in the atmosphere for more than a day or so, and could have only been propelled to such heights by a volcanic eruption, we have a simple problem. Was there a volcanic eruption, in the same part of the world, within a day or so before the samples were taken? If not, an extraterrestrial origin of the organisms, presumably carried to Earth by meteoroids, should be considered a legitimate possibility.

[Troublehalf]

I love when people mention Occam's Razor, because I can't help but think "True, but centuries ago, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunami's, plagues and whatever would have been explained as 'Gods Wrath' - That WAS the simplest explanation, doesn't make it right."

Edited September 11, 2013 by Troublehalf

[Calibeliever]

By Chanra Wickramasinghe's logic the ISS should be coated with this stuff right?

So just to clarify: A) Balloon started on the ground, B ) went high into the air, C) came back to the ground. Absolutely no way it was contaminated at any stage?

Edited September 11, 2013 by Calibeliever

[qxcontinuum]

i'll say could have been contaminates in all 3 stages lass the start one, but once airborne , the wind could have added the algae .

[pallidin]

Yeah, I would tend to agree with everyone here.

While it's a possibility, a more like scenario is distruptive terrestrial events that sends the algae so high.

Now, if they are discovered in the atmosphere of other planets, such as Venus, that would be interesting as well.

If they are found on or within asteroids or whatever, than that's a game changer for me.

[Troublehalf]

Didn't some guy claim to have found fossilised bacteria in an asteroid? It's not enough, let us hope the manned asteroid missions will yield something. I still like the conspiracy theory that NASA discovered life on Mars and had to tell Obama (people said NASA went to Obama soon after the interview) which resulted in the scientist changing his story on no less than 3 occasions.

Still, wouldn't we KNOW if it was terrestrial, by, you know, studying it? If it's nothing we've seen before, that would add credibility to the claim. Also, those people claiming it couldn't of survived in space, remember there is terrestrial bacteria which uses arsenic as respiratory metabolites. Arsenic is very poisonous to most multicellular life.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Troublehalf

[seeder]

By Chanra Wickramasinghe's logic the ISS should be coated with this stuff right?

So just to clarify: A) Balloon started on the ground, B ) went high into the air, C) came back to the ground. Absolutely no way it was contaminated at any stage?

see this

Chandra Wickramasinghe replies…and fails hard

After the public scouring of Wickramasinghe’s claims that he’d found diatoms in a meteorite, the godawful HuffPo has, of course, given him a free and credulous article in which to defend himself. The amazing thing is that even in a puff piece that doesn’t challenge him at all, he shoots himself in the foot.

Plait claims that the diatoms Wickramasinghe found, "a type of algae, microscopic plant life," are simply a freshwater species found on Earth. Wickramasinghe doesn’t deny that the meteorite sample his team studied contains freshwater diatoms.

"But — there are also at least half a dozen species that diatom experts have not been able to identify," Wickramasinghe said.

Boom, we’re done. That is an open admission that his sample is contaminated. It doesn’t matter that some portion of his sample is unidentifiable — and most likely, it’s the stuff he calls ‘filaments’ and ‘red rain cells’ that aren’t even biological … he cannot claim that the only possible source of that material is outer space.

And then there’s this vague bit:

Critics have also asserted that the meteorite in question may not, in fact, be from outer space. Could it simply be an Earth rock?

According to Wickramasinghe, "This was also the guess of the Sri Lankan geologists who first looked at the rock. They had considered the possibility that the rock may be … a rock that was struck by lightning. We examined this possibility and found it to be untenable. From all the evidence we possess (and we are planning to publish this), I personally have no doubt whatsoever that this was a stone that fell from the skies."

So the expert geologists tell him it’s a terrestrial rock, and then declares on the basis of unpublished evidence that he won’t describe that it can’t be. Right. I’m unconvinced. It doesn’t even matter if it is a meteorite or not at this point — it’s contaminated, and he published it as if it were not.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/18/chandra-wickramasinghe-repliesand-fails-hard/

[seeder]

"No, Diatoms Have Not Been Found in a Meteorite"

[uPDATE (Mar. 12, 2013): The authors of this very shaky "life in a meteorite" paper described below published another paper recently, causing a minor media frenzy. In it they try to show the samples are meteorites, but the evidence they present is in many ways even worse than the outrageous claims they made in the first paper! I have written a take-down of that paper as well; but you should read this one here first.

If there’s a story practically guaranteed to go viral, it’s about evidence of life in space. And if you have pictures, why, that’s going to spread like, well, like a virus.

So the moment I heard that a paper had been published saying that diatoms—a type of algae, microscopic plant life, that have hard outer shells made of silica and come in a variety of shapes and forms—had been found in a meteorite, I knew I’d get flooded with emails and tweets and Facebook messages because LIFE IN SPACE!

And so I did. People are really curious about this!

But then I read the actual paper, and guess what? Let me be delicate: It’s wrong. Really, really wrong. Way, way, way ridiculously oh-holy-wow-how-could-anyone-publish-this wrong.

The paper was published online on a site called The Journal of Cosmology. I’ll get back to that august publication in just a moment. The lead author is N. C. Wickramasinghe, and as soon as I saw his name alarm bells exploded in my head. Wickramasinghe is a proponent of the idea of panspermia: the notion that life originated in space and was brought to Earth via meteorites. It’s an interesting idea and not without some merits.

However, Wickramasinghe is fervent proponent of it. Like, really fervent. So much so that he attributes everything to life in space. He’s said that the flu comes from space. He’s said SARS comes from space. He’s claimed living cells found in the stratosphere come from space. (There is no evidence at all they do, and it’s far more likely they are terrestrial.) He’s said a weird red rain in India was from space (when it’s been shown conclusively that it isn’t). The list goes on and on. Wickramasinghe jumps on everything, with little or no evidence, and says it’s from outer space, so I think there's a case to be made for a bias on his part.

read the rest!!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/01/15/life_in_a_meteorite_claims_by_n_c_wickramasinghe_of_diatoms_in_a_meteorite.html

[pallidin]

Yeah. If I recall correctly, interplanetary landing crafts are, before launch, thoroughly infused with some type of non-conductive gas that kills all earth microbes. The craft is of course "sealed" to let the gas work.

The idea behind this is just what you said... to help prevent "false positives" from contamination, or of spreading earth microbes.

Obviously, the same can not be said for meteorites, so "positive" results are inherently difficult to authenticate.

[seeder]

Yeah. If I recall correctly, interplanetary landing crafts are, before launch, thoroughly infused with some type of non-conductive gas that kills all earth microbes. The craft is of course "sealed" to let the gas work.

The idea behind this is just what you said... to help prevent "false positives" from contamination, or of spreading earth microbes.

Obviously, the same can not be said for meteorites, so "positive" results are inherently difficult to authenticate.

Well I did post on another section, that the huge Russian meteorite has been found in the lake bed, a half ton of it. I wonder if it will reveal any inner secrets when cut up

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=254467&hl=

[zoser]

Also you might want to read about the red rain from India in 2001

http://en.wikipedia...._rain_in_Kerala

but a study commissioned by the Government of India concluded that the rains had been colored by airborne spores from locally prolific terrestrial algae.[5]

Not sure if it's related but here is another similar well known incident that occurred in Oakville Washington in 1994.

http://rense.com/ufo/flubber.htm

[Spacenut56]

Not sure if it's related but here is another similar well known incident that occurred in Oakville Washington in 1994.

http://rense.com/ufo/flubber.htm

I think I have heard about this, or read about it. Not sure where Oakville, Wash. is. Will have to check that out. Probably on the west side of the state.