Evidence For Comet-Borne Microfossils Supports Panspermia 169
New submitter onyxruby writes "On December 29th of last year a comet exploded over Sri Lanka. When examined by Cardiff University one of the comet samples was found to contain micro-fossils akin to plankton. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center tested additional samples with similar results. The research paper was published in the Journal of Cosmology. In practice this means that the argument that life did not start on Earth has gained additional evidence."
Update: 03/12 16:59 GMT by S : On the other hand, Phil Plait says the paper is very flawed; the sample rocks the researchers tested may not even be meteorites.
Re:Why is this not an even bigger story? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wickramasinghe has been "proving" panspermia for decades. This isn't any bigger a story than the last dozen times.
He once claimed that influenza was from space because it struck everywhere simultaneously - a patently false claim. You can learn more than he knows about it on Wikipedia.
He should give it up and go into creationism, where there's money to be had.
Re:Why is this not an even bigger story? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there is no proof, and not even any evidence for it.
It's been pretty thoroughly debunked, and at most it seems to be proof of Chandra Wickramasinghe's incompetence as a scientist, lackluster con man abilities, or both.
Oh, and certain slashdot editors accepting bad articles without spending two minutes on Google first.
Miller–Urey experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
Miller–Urey experiment created amino acids in the lab with lightning. This is the most likely source of life on earth. Not Mars, not comets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment
Re:"Panspermia" (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. Panspermia saying "life came from space" is no different than a new isolated lake being formed from meltwater in a frigid environment and over a period of thousands of years being filled with an entire ecosystem as the environment warms. The inhabitants of the lake (if they were intelligent enough) ask how life arose spontaneously in their little world because to them that lake is their world. But to us it's obvious life arrived there from the vast ecosystem that surrounds it -- an ecosystem the inhabitants of the lake can't see. Even in this day and age people still have the prejudice that the Earth is the center of the universe. Being "certain" the life arose on Earth and attacking the idea that it came from space as if it were some kind of heresy demonstrates that human psychology doesn't change. Some of us are just more enlightened thinkers.
Re:"Panspermia" (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, Panspermia solves the issue of the unlikelihood of life developing sporadically on Earth, by saying "Space did it", which is the scientific equivalent of "God did it".
But... technically, space did do it. We are, after all, the example of space doing it.
Question: If we send a probe to Europa, contaminate it with Earth-born bacteria, and 2 billion years from now that moon is crawling with life, does that mean "God did it" too?
Or perhaps panspermia is not the equivalent of 'god dun it' anymore than evolution is.
The idea of panspermia still requires evolution to take place somewhere.