A team of Uk scientists believe that they have revealed organisms in earth’s atmosphere that originally come from space.
As hard as that may be to judge, Professor Milton Wainwright, the team’s leader, insists that this is unquestionably the instance.
The team, out of the University of Sheffield, exposed the little organisms (misleadingly referred to as ‘bugs’ by a great deal of overeager journalists) living on a research balloon that was sent 16.7 miles into our environment throughout last month’s Perseids meteor shower.
In keeping with Professor Wainwright, the minuscule creatures could not have been carried into the stratosphere on the balloon. He said, “Most people will presume that those biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth, but it is normally accepted a particle of the volume found can’t be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27km. Really the only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of their sampling trip.”
Wainwright maintains that the only salient conclusion is that organisms originated from space. He went on to mention that “life is not restricted to the planet but it almost definitely did not originally come here”
However, not everyone seems to be so convinced. Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) project said, “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 when they prepared the hot-air balloon before the experiments started.
Yet, they do acknowledge that there might be an unknown reason for those organisms to reach such altitudes. It must also be renowned that microbal organisms discovered within the 1980’s and 1990’s and called ‘extremophiles’ shocked 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 or 1900 feet below the sea floor. In March of this year, Ronnie Glud, a biogeochemist at the Southern Danish Uni in Odense, Denmark was quoted as saying “Inside the most isolated, harsh areas, you are able to actually have higher motion than their surroundings,” which “Yow will discover microbes in all places – they’re exceptionally adaptable to circumstances, and survive where they are,” so it seems more plausible that any the team is in error, or that this is solely one more case of microscopic life showing up in an unusual place.
In addition, it is not the 1st time this unique team has come under fire for making such claims, either. Back in January of this year, astrobiologist Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe reported that ‘fossils’ found from a Sri Lankan meteorite were evidence of extraterrestrial life, an assertion that is commonly criticized by the scientific community.
Other scientists have complained that there basically is not enough indication to make this type of claim, as a theory this important would need a sizable body of proof to prove its authority.
What that says to the reporter is that microorganisms can exist pretty much anyplace and that it simply is not good science to jump to wild conclusions like aliens when a more plausible solution is most certainly present. Science shouldn’t be subject to such wild leaps of elaborate. Imagination is a great aid to science, but it really is not a science in and of itself. Unfortunately, Dr. Wainwright and his team seem to be seeing what they need to see.
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
Extraterrestrial Life Discovered...Maybe
No comments:
Post a Comment