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Life From Space? (Panspermia; Lithopanspermia)

Mythopoeika said:
Ghostisfort said:
An abundant clean energy supply for all, something that academic science has no interest in.

Really? What about all the billions that are being poured into fusion energy research?
Sixty years without results is an engineers nightmare and were the engineers not working for scientists, I'm sure they would have decided to return to basics and reassess basic principles... :(
A white elephant like the LHC. :D
 
Ghostisfort said:
Mythopoeika said:
Ghostisfort said:
An abundant clean energy supply for all, something that academic science has no interest in.

Really? What about all the billions that are being poured into fusion energy research?
Sixty years without results is an engineers nightmare and were the engineers not working for scientists, I'm sure they would have decided to return to basics and reassess basic principles... :(
A white elephant like the LHC. :D

You're probably right that it is a white elephant, but I wouldn't say it's 'something that academic science has no interest in'.
 
Ghostisfort said:
kamalktk said:
Surely they are nice, but why are these necessary? Do you subscribe to the "violent civilizations will blow themselves up first" school of thought? Some rather brutish cultures (both internally and towards other cultures) have made some large technological strides historically, in fact pretty much all history is rather brutish.

The brutish civilisation is us and we don't need to blow ourselves up. The spiralling cost of energy leading to food shortages will do the job.
This is not about the emotion of being nice, it's about survival.
I left the energy part out of your quote on purpose. I assumed clean free energy. Not sure how the rest inevitably result in self destruction.
 
Ghostisfort said:
I think my own feelings on SETI can be summed-up with reference to the Drake Equation:
N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L - very impressive and scientific sounding, but totally meaningless, with not one single variable that anyone can put a number to.
Why would an advanced civilisation want to signal to us?
What could they possibly have to say that would not put them in danger of being attacked by American guns?

You do know that the Drake equation is a thought experiment and not an actual scientific hypothesis, right?

Oh, and mods, he just ad-hommed an entire country!
 
rev_dino said:
Ghostisfort said:
I think my own feelings on SETI can be summed-up with reference to the Drake Equation:
N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L - very impressive and scientific sounding, but totally meaningless, with not one single variable that anyone can put a number to.
Why would an advanced civilisation want to signal to us?
What could they possibly have to say that would not put them in danger of being attacked by American guns?

You do know that the Drake equation is a thought experiment and not an actual scientific hypothesis, right?

Oh, and mods, he just ad-hommed an entire country!

He also ad-hommed Patrick Henry.
 
rev_dino said:
You do know that the Drake equation is a thought experiment and not an actual scientific hypothesis, right?

Oh, and mods, he just ad-hommed an entire country!

Wow! You mean like relativity, multiple universes and nuclear fusion?
I think it's time we were told just what is and what's not a thought experiment?
Get out of jail cards.
LHC's, cathedrals to the gods of rationality.
And students are burning the shops.
A rebellion against authority and academic science is authoritarian mind control.
Start thinking for yourself.
Wake-up and smell the freedom.
No need for looting.
 
kamalktk said:
I left the energy part out of your quote on purpose. I assumed clean free energy. Not sure how the rest inevitably result in self destruction.

If you consider that around eighty percent of the world population is hard-up and becoming unable to afford tractor-fuel to plough their fields?
 
Impacts 'more likely' to have spread life from Earth

Asteroid impacts on the Earth may have scattered more life-bearing debris to Mars, Jupiter or beyond our Solar System than previously thought.
Vast computer simulations of debris thrown up from Earth impacts show 100 times more particles end up on Mars than prior studies have shown.
The highest-energy impacts drive debris all the way to Jupiter, which hosts two moons that may be amenable to life.
Only the hardiest of Earth's organisms could have survived the trip, however.

The study considers a reverse of the "panspermia" idea that occupies much of meteoritic research - namely, that the precursors to life, or life itself, may have been delivered by an impact on the early Earth.

Equally, however, Earth impacts may throw up debris that could be loaded with microbes or small, hardy organisms like water bears - which have already demonstrated the ability to survive the harsh conditions of space.
Other simulations have tackled the probability that Earth impacts seeded life in the Solar System, suggesting that significant amounts could have made it to the saturnian moon Titan.

Now, Mauricio Reyes-Ruiz of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his colleagues have carried out five simulations, each of more than 10,000 particles being ejected from the Earth's surface, described in their as-yet unpublished manuscript.

Each simulation considered impacts of varying violence, with the particles shooting off at ever-increasing speeds.
The particles were then allowed to escape the Earth's gravitational pull and then move according to the gravity of the Sun and the planets for 30,000 simulated years.

When considering the fraction of particles that eventually collide with Venus and the Moon, or simply spiral back toward the Earth, the team's results are consistent with prior simulations.
But they show a marked increase in the number that make it to Mars - and published the first likelihood that an impact particle would make it to Jupiter: a chance of just 0.05% when the particles are launched with a speed of 16.4km per second.

Steinn Sigurdsson, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University in the US, is also carrying out simulations of these "impact ejecta", and his colleage Rachel Worth presented preliminary results at January's American Astronomical Society meeting suggesting similar impact fractions may result.

"Previous studies are definitely 'lower bounds'," Dr Sigurdsson told BBC News, explaining that new limits on impacts come not from new physics, but from better computers.
"They were computationally limited, in the sense that you could only do so much with what you could do back then. The numbers [in the new study] are in the right ballpark. We're getting even higher impact rates than they are, because we're going for much longer. They're doing a large number of particles for short times; we're going to 10 million years."

The real question is whether any ejecta will carry living cargo that can fulfill the "panspermia" hypothesis, but Dr Sigurdsson says that evidence of the hardiness of life has already been found closer to home.
"There are viable bacterial spores that have been found that are 40 million years old on Earth - and we know they're very hardened to radiation."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14637109
 
Liquid lakes close to moon's skin
By Jennifer Carpenter, Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists have found the best evidence yet for water just beneath the surface of Jupiter's icy moon, Europa.
Analysis of the moon's surface suggests plumes of warmer water well up beneath its icy shell, melting and fracturing the outer layers.
The results, published in the journal Nature, predict that small lakes exist only 3km below the crust.
Any liquid water could represent a potential habitat for life.

From models of magnetic forces, and images of its surface, scientists have long suspected that a giant ocean, roughly 160km (100 miles) deep, lies somewhere between 10-30km beneath the ice crust.
Many astrobiologists have dreamed of following in the footsteps of Arthur C Clarke's fictional character David Bowman, who, in the novel Odyssey Two, discovers aquatic life-forms in the deep Europan sea.

But punching holes through the moon's thick, icy outer layers has always seemed untenable.
The discovery of shallow liquid water by an American team makes a space mission to recover water from the moon much more plausible.
The icy eddies could transfer nutrients between the surface water and the ocean's depths.
"That could make Europa and its ocean more habitable," said lead author Britney Schmidt from the University of Texas at Austin, US, who analysed images collect by the Galileo spacecraft launched in 1989.

Glaciologists have been studying the surface of Europa for many years, trying to work out what formed its scarred, fractured surface.
By looking at Antarctica, where we see similar [features] - glaciers, ice shelves - we can infer something about the processes that are happening on Europa, said glaciologist Martin Siegert from the University of Edinburgh.

He explained that the new study tells us how upwelling of warmer water causes melting of surface ice, forming cracks.
"You get freezing [water] between the cracks... so you end up with the existing ice cemented in with new ice."
"The underside then freezes again, which causes the uplifting; its pretty neat," Dr Siegert told BBC News.

The US and Europe are working on missions to Europa, and Jupiter's other moons, which they hope to launch either late this decade or early in the 2020s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15754786
 
We should scour the moon for ancient traces of aliens, say scientists
Online volunteers could be set task of spotting alien technology, evidence of mining and rubbish heaps in moon images
Ian Sample, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 December 2011 16.31 GMT

Hundreds of thousands of pictures of the moon will be examined for telltale signs that aliens once visited our cosmic neighbourhood if plans put forward by scientists go ahead.

Passing extraterrestrials might have left messages, scientific instruments, heaps of rubbish or evidence of mining on the dusty lunar surface that could be spotted by human telescopes and orbiting spacecraft.

Though the chances of finding the handiwork of long-gone aliens are exceptionally remote, scientists argue that a computerised search of lunar images, or a crowd-sourced analysis by amateur enthusiasts, would be cheap enough to justify given the importance of a potential discovery.

Prof Paul Davies and Robert Wagner at Arizona State University argue that images of the moon and other information collected by scientists for their research should be scoured for signs of alien intervention. The proposal aims to complement other hunts for alien life, such as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti), which draws on data from radiotelescopes to scour the heavens for messages beamed into space by alien civilisations.

"Although there is only a tiny probability that alien technology would have left traces on the moon in the form of an artefact or surface modification of lunar features, this location has the virtue of being close, and of preserving traces for an immense duration," the scientists write in a paper published online in the journal Acta Astronautica.
"If it costs little to scan data for signs of intelligent manipulation, little is lost in doing so, even though the probability of detecting alien technology at work may be exceedingly low," they add.

The scientists focus their attention on Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has mapped a quarter of the moon's surface in high resolution since mid-2009. Among these images, scientists have already spotted the Apollo landing sites and all of the Nasa and Soviet unmanned probes, some of which were revealed only by their odd-looking shadows.

Nasa has made more than 340,000 LRO images public, but that figure is expected to reach one million by the time the orbiting probe has mapped the whole lunar surface. "From these numbers, it is obvious that a manual search by a small team is hopeless," the scientists write.

One way to scan all of the images involves writing software to search for strange-looking features, such as the sharp lines of solar panels, or the dust-covered contours of quarries or domed buildings. These might be visible millions of years after they were built, because the moon's surface is geologically inactive and changes so slowly.

The seismometer on Nasa's Apollo 12 mission detected only one impact per month from roughly grapefruit-sized meteorites within a 350km radius. According to Davies and Wagner, it could take hundreds of millions of years for an object tens of metres across to be buried by lunar soil and dust kicked up by these impacts.

An alternative approach would be to send tens of thousands of amateur enthusiasts images over the internet for examination, though this could lead to disagreements over what constituted an unusual, and potentially alien, feature.

The easiest artefact to find would probably be a message left behind intentionally. This might be held in a capsule and left in a large fresh crater like Tycho in the moon's southern highlands, the scientists write. Some longer-lasting messages could be buried at depth but fitted with transmitters that penetrate the lunar surface, they add.

Alien life might once have set up a lunar base in the underground networks of lava tubes beneath the moon's dark, basaltic plains, and perhaps have left rubbish when they departed. "The same factors that make lava tubes attractive as a habitat imply that any artefacts left behind would endure almost indefinitely, undamaged and unburied," the scientists write

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... ces-aliens
 
The Grauniad said:
An alternative approach would be to send tens of thousands of amateur enthusiasts images over the internet for examination, though this could lead to disagreements over what constituted an unusual, and potentially alien, feature.
That's for sure. We tried interpreting some images here on the FT forum; some people could see all sorts of artificial structures in images that other people could see nothing in. Asking 'amateur enthusiasts' to look for artificial structures is a strategy that could have its own peculiar difficulties.
 
eburacum said:
Asking 'amateur enthusiasts' to look for artificial structures is a strategy that could have its own peculiar difficulties.
Presumably they're thinking of doing it on the lines of http://zoo1.galaxyzoo.org/ and its successors. With a big enough set of responses, only those flagged up by a significant fraction of the responses would be looked at, since that indicates something that looks odd to a number of people, and not just to a few isolated loonies (to coin a phrase! ;) ).
 
Vid, images and full text at link.

Slow-moving rocks better odds that life crashed to Earth from space
September 24th, 2012 in Space & Earth / Astronomy

(Phys.org)—Microorganisms that crashed to Earth embedded in the fragments of distant planets might have been the sprouts of life on this one, according to new research from Princeton University, the University of Arizona and the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) in Spain.

The researchers report in the journal Astrobiology that under certain conditions there is a high probability that life came to Earth—or spread from Earth to other planets—during the solar system's infancy when Earth and its planetary neighbors orbiting other stars would have been close enough to each other to exchange lots of solid material. The work will be presented at the 2012 European Planetary Science Congress on Sept. 25.

The findings provide the strongest support yet for "lithopanspermia," the idea that basic life forms are distributed throughout the universe via meteorite-like planetary fragments cast forth by disruptions such as volcanic eruptions and collisions with other matter. Eventually, another planetary system's gravity traps these roaming rocks, which can result in a mingling that transfers any living cargo.

Previous research on this possible phenomenon suggests that the speed with which solid matter hurtles through the cosmos makes the chances of being snagged by another object highly unlikely. But the Princeton, Arizona and CAB researchers reconsidered lithopanspermia under a low-velocity process called weak transfer wherein solid materials meander out of the orbit of one large object and happen into the orbit of another. In this case, the researchers factored in velocities 50 times slower than previous estimates, or about 100 meters per second.

"Slow-moving rocks better odds that life crashed to Earth from space." September 24th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-09-slow-movin ... space.html
 
Update on the Drake Equation.

At last, how many alien civilizations are there?
December 3rd, 2012 in Space & Earth / Astronomy

Frank Drake writes out his formula for estimating alien life in the galaxy, the Drake Equation.

During the space age, 1961 was a special year: the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit Earth, while the American astronomer Frank Drake developed the now famous Drake Equation. This equation estimates the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy, supposing our present electromagnetic detection methods. The Drake equation states:

N = Ns x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x fL
N = number of alien civilizations in the Milky Way
Ns = estimated number of stars in the Milky Way;
fp = fraction or percentage of these stars with planets on its orbits;
ne = average number of these planets with potential to host life as we know it;
fl = percentage of these planets that actually develop life;
fi = percentage of these planets that actually develop intelligence on human level;
fc = percentage of these civilizations that actually develop electromagnetic radiation emitting technologies;
fL = percentage of these civilizations that keep emitting electromagnetic signals to space. This factor is extremely dependent on the lifetime a civilization remains electromagnetic communicative.

Looking to the Drake equation factors, it is obvious that none can be precisely determined by modern science. More than that, as we move from the left to right in the equation, estimating each factor becomes more controversial. The later terms are highly speculative, and the values one may attribute to each of them might tell more about a person's beliefs than about scientific facts.

Gaussian or bell curve showing the probability of finding the nearest extra terrestrial civilization from Earth. Credit: Maccone (2010)

But the Drake equation must not be evaluated only by the numerical values it produces. Some say the Drake equation is a way to organize our ignorance. By exposing the extraterrestrial intelligence hypothesis mathematically, we limit the real possibilities to each term and approach the final answer: how many alien civilizations are there?

The L term is considered the most important one in Drake equation. We have no idea how long a technological civilization can last. Even if only one extraterrestrial civilization lasts for billions of years, or becomes immortal, the L factor would be enough to reduce Drake's equation to N = L. Actually, Frank Drake recognizes this in his license plate: " NEQLSL "

Among dozens of papers written about the Drake Equation, some have suggested new considerations for the formula. One such paper stands out for adding well-established probabilistic principles from statistics. In 2010, the Italian astronomer Claudio Maccone published in the journal Acta Astronautica the Statistical Drake Equation (SDE). It is mathematically more complex and robust than the Classical Drake Equation (CDE).

The SDE is based on the Central Limit Theorem, which states that given the enough number of independent random variables with finite mean and variance, those variables will be normally distributed as represented by a Gaussian or bell curve in a plot. In this way, each of the seven factors of the Drake Equation become independent positive random variables. In his paper, Maccone tested his SDE using values usually accepted by the SETI community, and the results may be good news for the "alien hunters".

Although the numerical results were not his objective, Maccone estimated with his SDE that our galaxy may harbor 4,590 extraterrestrial civilizations. Assuming the same values for each term the Classical Drake Equation estimates only 3,500. So the SDE adds more than 1,000 civilizations to the previous estimate.

Another SDE advantage is to incorporate the standard variation concept, which shows how much variation exists from the average value. In this case the standard variation concept is pretty high: 11,195. In other words, besides human society, zero to 15,785 advanced technological societies could exist in the Milky Way.

If those galactic societies were equally spaced, they could be at an average distance of 28,845 light-years apart. That's too far to have a dialogue with them, even through electromagnetic radiation traveling in the speed of light. So, even with such a potentially high number of advanced civilizations, interstellar communication would still be a major technological challenge.
Still, according to SDE, the average distance we should expect to find any alien intelligent life form may be 2,670 light-years from Earth. There is a 75% chance we could find ET between 1,361 and 3,979 light-years away.
500 light-years away, the chance of detecting any signal from an advanced civilization approaches zero. And that is exactly the range in which our present technology is searching for extraterrestrial radio signals. So, the "Great Silence" detected by our radio telescopes is not discouraging at all.

Our signals just need to travel a little farther – at least 900 light years more – before they have a high chance of coming across an advanced alien civilization.

Source: Astrobio.net

"At last, how many alien civilizations are there?." December 3rd, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-12-alien-civilizations.html
 
[T]he universe is so huge, and offers so many different environments, that the probability is very high that life (or its constituents) first evolved 'out there' somewhere, rather than on the planet we call home.

In fact, I started this thread, back in 2002, with these words:
This page details lab experiments that show that amino acids, essential building blocks of proteins, and hence essential for 'life as we know it', can be created in interstellar gas clouds.
'this page' linked to an article in Spaceflight Now which is still on the web:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0205/31life/

Even if these life constituents needed to be on a planet with suitable resources in order for life to evolve further, the chances are that this happened long ago, and far away from here. After all, the Universe is about 13.7 billion years old, while the Earth is a mere 4.5 billion years old!
 
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Where did Mars get its oxygen so early?
Prof Wood explained that, as oxidation was what gave Mars its distinctive colour, it is likely that the planet was "warm, wet and rusty" billions of years before Earth's atmosphere became oxygen-rich.

He added: "The principal way we would expect to get oxygen is through photolysis of water - water vapour in Mars' atmosphere interacting with radiation from the Sun breaks down to form hydrogen and oxygen.

"Most of that hydrogen and oxygen recombines back to water. But a small fraction of the hydrogen is energetic enough to escape from the planet. A small amount of hydrogen is lost leaving an oxygen excess.

"But the gravity on Mars is one third of that on Earth, so hydrogen would be lost more easily. So the oxygen build-up could be enhanced on Mars relative to Earth."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22961729
 
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That's right. But Mars is also not big enough to keep hold of oxygen in the long term, either. Any oxygen not absorbed by the crust would be lost to space over a period of a gigayear or more.
 
Alien life found living in Earth's atmosphere, claims scientist
Aliens do exist and have been found living in the clouds above the Peak District, according to new claims by scientists.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
4:54PM BST 19 Sep 2013

Researchers from the University of Sheffield and Buckingham University claim to have found evidence for microscopic organisms living 16 miles up in the atmosphere between Chester and Wakefield. :shock:
The scientists used a specially designed balloon to gather samples in the stratosphere during the recent Perseid meteor shower.
They found the fragments of single celled algae known as a diatom.

They argue that this could be the first evidence to show how life may have arrived on Earth from space, perhaps carried here by meteorites.
It is not the first time organisms have been found in the atmosphere and indeed the skies are thought to be teeming with microscopic life.
Many scientists, however, insist these microorganisms are carried up into the atmosphere by storms and other natural processes.

Professor Milton Wainwright, from the department of molecular biology and biotechnology at the University of Sheffield who led the work, said: “Most people will assume that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth.
“But it is generally accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27km.
“The only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of the sampling trip.

“In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space.
"Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here.”

The findings are published in the Journal of Cosmology, a scientific journal that often publishes papers on astrobiology but is highly controversial among scientists.
It has often been criticised by the scientific establishment for publishing papers of a more fringe variety.

Two years ago it controversially published a paper that claimed to have identified fossils of microbiotic life in a meteorite, sparking a blaze of publicity, but some astronomers were highly sceptical of the findings.

Professor Wainwright and his colleagues claim that their findings could be “revolutionary” and will “completely change our view of biology and evolution”.
They collected their samples after launching the balloon into the atmosphere near to Chester on 31 July 2013.
It carried microscopic studs in a drawer that opened for 17 minutes in the stratosphere so that particulate material in the atmosphere would attach to them.
The samples were taken at altitudes between 13 miles and 16 miles.

The balloon landed close to Wakefield and was taken to the laboratory where the studs were placed under an electron microscopes to search for signs of life.
The researchers insist they swabbed the balloon with alcohol before launch and took other precautions to prevent contamination of the samples.

Earlier this year scientists working with Nasa announced they too had discovered bacteria living between four and five miles above the Earth’s surface.
Air samples taken from the upper troposphere by an aircraft revealed 314 different types of bacteria in the air above the Atlantic Ocean and the US.
However, they concluded that much of the bacteria, which accounted for 20 per cent of the particles they collected, were thrown up there by the movement of air as hurricanes formed.

A team of British researchers, who are separate from the scientists in Sheffield, have this week also set off on a 2,000 mile expedition to take samples from clouds in an effort to search for signs of life.
The Cloud Lab expedition, which is being filmed by the BBC, will use Nasa instruments to analyse samples for signs bacteria and fungi in clouds at up to 8,000 feet.

It is thought these microorganisms may play a key role in cloud formation by catalysing the formation of ice crystals, leading to water to condense around them to produce clouds.
Many of these organisms would likely fall to earth in rain drops.

Felicity Aston, the lead meteorologist on the Cloud Lab expedition and a former researcher at the British Antarctic Survey, said: “One of the holes in our knowledge about clouds is exactly how a cloud droplet grows and what makes it fall out the sky.
It is really interesting to look not only at how life is affected by weather but how weather is affected by life – what role do these organisms play in cloud formation.”

Professor Wainwright and his colleagues now hope to carry out further tests using balloons next month to coincide with the Haley's Comet-associated meteorite shower.
Prof Wainwright said that he hoped to conduct tests on any organisms found to help unravel where they are coming from.
He added: "If the ratio of certain isotopes gives one number then our organisms are from Earth, if it gives another, then they are from space.
"The tension will obviously be almost impossible to live with." ;)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... ntist.html
 
Alien life in Earth's atmosphere

Seem to be diatoms but how would they get up there? Note also that the journal publishing is also not one of the premier scientific ones. Great story all the same.

Alien life found living in Earth's atmosphere, claims scientist

Researchers from the University of Sheffield and Buckingham University claim to have found evidence for microscopic organisms living 16 miles up in the atmosphere between Chester and Wakefield.
The scientists used a specially designed balloon to gather samples in the stratosphere during the recent Perseid meteor shower.
They found the fragments of single celled algae known as a diatom.
They argue that this could be the first evidence to show how life may have arrived on Earth from space, perhaps carried here by meteorites.
It is not the first time organisms have been found in the atmosphere and indeed the skies are thought to be teeming with microscopic life.
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Many scientists, however, insist these microorganisms are carried up into the atmosphere by storms and other natural processes.
Professor Milton Wainwright, from the department of molecular biology and biotechnology at the University of Sheffield who led the work, said: “Most people will assume that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth.
“But it is generally accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27km.
“The only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of the sampling trip.
“In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space.
“Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here.”
The findings are published in the Journal of Cosmology, a scientific journal that often publishes papers on astrobiology but is highly controversial among scientists.
It has often been criticised by the scientific establishment for publishing papers of a more fringe variety.
Two years ago it controversially published a paper that claimed to have identified fossils of microbiotic life in a meteorite, sparking a blaze of publicity, but some astronomers were highly sceptical of the findings.
Professor Wainwright and his colleagues claim that their findings could be “revolutionary” and will “completely change our view of biology and evolution”.
They collected their samples after launching the balloon into the atmosphere near to Chester on 31 July 2013.
It carried microscopic studs in a drawer that opened for 17 minutes in the stratosphere so that particulate material in the atmosphere would attach to them.
The samples were taken at altitudes between 13 miles and 16 miles.
The balloon landed close to Wakefield and was taken to the laboratory where the studs were placed under an electron microscopes to search for signs of life.
The researchers insist they swabbed the balloon with alcohol before launch and took other precautions to prevent contamination of the samples.
Earlier this year scientists working with Nasa announced they too had discovered bacteria living between four and five miles above the Earth’s surface.
Air samples taken from the upper troposphere by an aircraft revealed 314 different types of bacteria in the air above the Atlantic Ocean and the US.
However, they concluded that much of the bacteria, which accounted for 20 per cent of the particles they collected, were thrown up there by the movement of air as hurricanes formed.
A team of British researchers, who are separate from the scientists in Sheffield, have this week also set off on a 2,000 mile expedition to take samples from clouds in an effort to search for signs of life.
The Cloud Lab expedition, which is being filmed by the BBC, will use Nasa instruments to analyse samples for signs bacteria and fungi in clouds at up to 8,000 feet.
It is thought these microorganisms may play a key role in cloud formation by catalysing the formation of ice crystals, leading to water to condense around them to produce clouds.
Many of these organisms would likely fall to earth in rain drops.
Felicity Aston, the lead meteorologist on the Cloud Lab expedition and a former researcher at the British Antarctic Survey, said: “One of the holes in our knowledge about clouds is exactly how a cloud droplet grows and what makes it fall out the sky.
“It is really interesting to look not only at how life is affected by weather but how weather is affected by life – what role do these organisms play in cloud formation.”
Professor Wainwright and his colleagues now hope to carry out further tests using balloons next month to coincide with the Haley's Comet-associated meteorite shower.
Prof Wainwright said that he hoped to conduct tests on any organisms found to help unravel where they are coming from.
He added: "If the ratio of certain isotopes gives one number then our organisms are from Earth, if it gives another, then they are from space.
"The tension will obviously be almost impossible to live with."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...ng-in-Earths-atmosphere-claims-scientist.html
 
Those flying plasma jellyfish have to eat something, after all.
 
I should have thought if fish can be lifted into the atmosphere it's not too difficult for diatoms to be lifted into the stratosphere.
 
Complex organic molecule found in interstellar space
By Michael Eyre, Science reporter

Scientists have found the beginnings of life-bearing chemistry at the centre of the galaxy.
Iso-propyl cyanide has been detected in a star-forming cloud 27,000 light-years from Earth.
Its branched carbon structure is closer to the complex organic molecules of life than any previous finding from interstellar space.
The discovery suggests the building blocks of life may be widespread throughout our galaxy.

Various organic molecules have previously been discovered in interstellar space, but i-propyl cyanide is the first with a branched carbon backbone.
The branched structure is important as it shows that interstellar space could be the origin of more complex branched molecules, such as amino acids, that are necessary for life on Earth.

Dr Arnaud Belloche from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy is lead author of the research, which appears in the journal Science.
"Amino acids on Earth are the building blocks of proteins, and proteins are very important for life as we know it. The question in the background is: is there life somewhere else in the galaxy?"

The molecule was detected in a giant gas cloud called Sagittarius B2, an active region of ongoing star formation in the centre of the Milky Way.
As stars are born in the cloud they heat up microscopic dust grains. Chemical reactions on the surface of the dust allow complex molecules like i-propyl cyanide to form.
The molecules emit radiation that was detected as radio waves by twenty 12m telescopes at the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (Alma) in Chile.

Each molecule produces a different "spectral fingerprint" of frequencies. "The game consists in matching these frequencies… to molecules that have been characterised in the laboratory," explained Dr Belloche.
"Our goal is to search for new complex organic molecules in the interstellar medium."

Previously discovered molecules in the Sagittarius B2 cloud include vinyl alcohol and ethyl formate, the chemical that gives raspberries their flavour and rum its smell.
But i-propyl cyanide is the largest and most complex organic molecule found to date - and the only one to share the branched atomic backbone of amino acids.
"The idea is to know whether the elements that are necessary for life to occur… can be found in other places in our galaxy."

Prof Matt Griffin, head of the school of physics and astronomy at Cardiff University, commented on the discovery.
"It's clearly very high-quality data - a very emphatic detection with multiple spectral signatures all seen together."
Prof Griffin added that the quantity of i-propyl cyanide detected is significant.
"There seems to be quite a lot of it, which would indicate that this more complex organic structure is possibly very common, maybe even the norm, when it comes to simple organic molecules in space.
"It's a step closer to discovering molecules that can be regarded as the building blocks or the precursors… of amino acids."

The hope is that amino acids will eventually be detected outside our Solar System. "That's what everyone would like to see," said Prof Griffin.
If amino acids are widespread throughout the galaxy, life may be also.
"So far we do not have the sensitivity to detect the signals from [amino acids]… in the interstellar medium," explained Dr Belloche. "The interstellar chemistry seems to be able to form these amino acids but at the moment we lack the evidence.
"Alma in the future may be able to do that, once the full capabilities are available."

Prof Griffin agreed this could be the first of many further discoveries from the "fantastically sensitive and powerful" Alma facility.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29368984
 
DNA 'can survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere'
Scientists who attached small double strands of DNA to the outer casing of a rocket discovered it could survive temperatures soaring to more than 1,000 degrees Celsius
By Keith Perry
4:36PM GMT 26 Nov 2014

DNA can survive re-entry into the atmosphere, raising the possibility of extraterrestrial life molecules arriving on Earth from space, research has shown.
The discovery came as a total surprise to scientists who attached small double strands of DNA to the outer casing of a rocket.
Despite temperatures soaring to more than 1,000 degrees Celsius during the short flight to sub-orbital space and back, much of the DNA emerged intact.

Up to 53 per cent was recovered from the grooves in screw heads and more than a third remained fully functional.
The ''plasmid'' DNA carried genes for fluorescence and antibiotic resistance.

Dr Cora Thiel, one of the scientists from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said: ''We were completely surprised to find so much intact and functionally active DNA.''

Colleague Professor Oliver Ullrich, from the same university, said: ''This study provides experimental evidence that the DNA's genetic information is essentially capable of surviving the extreme conditions of space and the re-entry into Earth's dense atmosphere.''

Many scientists believe comets may have brought organic building blocks of life such as amino acids to the Earth early in its history.
But some go further and suggest that DNA - the essential molecule of life itself - could reach the Earth in meteoric dust, 100 tons of which hit the planet each day.

The TEXUS-49 mission launched from the European base of Esrange in Kiruna, northern Sweden, was originally intended to study the influence of gravity on the genes of human cells carried inside the rocket.
But scientists decided, in addition, to test the effects of space travel on DNA carried at three positions on the rocket's outer casing.

The research suggested that scientists conducting space missions to other planets needed to be careful about contamination, researchers said.
Prof Ullrich said: ''The results show that it is by no means unlikely that, despite all the safety precautions, space ships could also carry terrestrial DNA to their landing site.
''We need to have this under control in the search for extraterrestrial life.''


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... phere.html
 
Face the facts people, there is no life on Mars
The Universe is big. Huge. But we're so alone. Get used to it
By Michael Hanlon
7:16PM BST 24 Jul 2015

Suddenly, space is getting interesting again. After decades of going boldly nowhere in low Earth orbit, Man, or rather his robotic emissaries, have made some startling discoveries in our Solar System.
Cold, distant Pluto is – who would have thought it? – turning out to be one of the most interesting planets (yes, it is a planet) in the Solar System. Before the New Horizons probe turned up earlier this month, astronomers assumed it would be a dull, grey cratered rock.
Instead, little Pluto’s surface is a rather splendid palette of reds and yellows, and it has huge ice-fields which look like they were made yesterday, by volcanic forces that simply shouldn’t be there on such a cold world. There are mountain ranges as big as the Alps and no one can explain what we see. Isaac Asimov once said that the most interesting conclusion in science is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny…” And Pluto is funny-peculiar indeed.

Then there is the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Little Philae, the first object we have ever landed on one of these flying snowballs, came back from the dead, having been lost in space then found again. Who knows what it has discovered in the long months since last contact?
And, of course, there are the aliens. Most rocket scientists are too po-faced to admit it, but the reality is that space exploration is almost entirely prevaricated on the quest to discover whether or not we are alone. This week a Russian tycoon called Yuri Milner has pumped $100 million of his fortune into SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This will buy thousands of hours of time at three powerful telescopes, which will spend years scanning nearby stars for radio and laser signals from putative nearby civilisations.

If we find life of any kind out there – whether it be Martian microbes (we have several probes prodding the Martian surface and observing it from orbit) or a signal from super-intelligent (or even mildly brainy) aliens – it will change everything. ET will force us to confront a deep truth; that humans are not the only game in town, that we live in a possibly crowded (and quite probably threatening) universe.
But here’s the thing. What if they don’t find anything? What if, 10 years, a 100 years, a 1,000 years hence, endless sky-surveys, proddings and pokings of Mars and elsewhere, turn up nothing, save rocks, gas, ice and vacuum. We had better be prepared for this because, I am beginning to believe, this seems to be the most likely result.
ET should be out there. As the physicist Enrico Fermi famously pointed out more than 60 years ago, in a universe of great antiquity and size such as ours, there ought to be many, many civilisations in space, some of which will be far in advance of our own. It is, he said, a paradox that we have not seen any evidence of this.

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...he-facts-people-there-is-no-life-on-Mars.html

Who is Hanlon?
The Guardian calls Hanlon "a top science writer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hanlon

He's sceptical about Life in Space, but he's flexible enough to change his mind:
"Hanlon turned heads, including that of Ed West, when he abandoned his skepticism about global warming." (Wiki again.)


What next?!
 
Face the facts people, there is no life on Mars
The Universe is big. Huge. But we're so alone. Get used to it
By Michael Hanlon
7:16PM BST 24 Jul 2015

Suddenly, space is getting interesting again. After decades of going boldly nowhere in low Earth orbit, Man, or rather his robotic emissaries, have made some startling discoveries in our Solar System.
Cold, distant Pluto is – who would have thought it? – turning out to be one of the most interesting planets (yes, it is a planet) in the Solar System. Before the New Horizons probe turned up earlier this month, astronomers assumed it would be a dull, grey cratered rock.
Instead, little Pluto’s surface is a rather splendid palette of reds and yellows, and it has huge ice-fields which look like they were made yesterday, by volcanic forces that simply shouldn’t be there on such a cold world. There are mountain ranges as big as the Alps and no one can explain what we see. Isaac Asimov once said that the most interesting conclusion in science is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny…” And Pluto is funny-peculiar indeed.

Then there is the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Little Philae, the first object we have ever landed on one of these flying snowballs, came back from the dead, having been lost in space then found again. Who knows what it has discovered in the long months since last contact?
And, of course, there are the aliens. Most rocket scientists are too po-faced to admit it, but the reality is that space exploration is almost entirely prevaricated on the quest to discover whether or not we are alone. This week a Russian tycoon called Yuri Milner has pumped $100 million of his fortune into SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This will buy thousands of hours of time at three powerful telescopes, which will spend years scanning nearby stars for radio and laser signals from putative nearby civilisations.

If we find life of any kind out there – whether it be Martian microbes (we have several probes prodding the Martian surface and observing it from orbit) or a signal from super-intelligent (or even mildly brainy) aliens – it will change everything. ET will force us to confront a deep truth; that humans are not the only game in town, that we live in a possibly crowded (and quite probably threatening) universe.
But here’s the thing. What if they don’t find anything? What if, 10 years, a 100 years, a 1,000 years hence, endless sky-surveys, proddings and pokings of Mars and elsewhere, turn up nothing, save rocks, gas, ice and vacuum. We had better be prepared for this because, I am beginning to believe, this seems to be the most likely result.
ET should be out there. As the physicist Enrico Fermi famously pointed out more than 60 years ago, in a universe of great antiquity and size such as ours, there ought to be many, many civilisations in space, some of which will be far in advance of our own. It is, he said, a paradox that we have not seen any evidence of this.

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...he-facts-people-there-is-no-life-on-Mars.html

Who is Hanlon?
The Guardian calls Hanlon "a top science writer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hanlon

He's sceptical about Life in Space, but he's flexible enough to change his mind:
"Hanlon turned heads, including that of Ed West, when he abandoned his skepticism about global warming." (Wiki again.)


What next?!


if we don't find life in "10 years, a 100 years, a 1,000 years" it doesn't mean there is none. It just means space is big and we've not bumped into anyone else yet.

If evolution has taught me one thing, even the top dog, (human, erm should read cat), species can f*ck things up meaning that we don't get far off world.
 
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