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Science

Bacteria @ 41km 52

Posted by Hemos from the finding-the-new-life dept.
Makarand writes " According to this article in The Times of India, air samples collected using balloon-borne cryosamplers at altitudes of around 25 miles contained bacteria that are believed extra terrestrial. This was revealed recently by legendary Indian astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar, who supervised the experiments last year. The article throws light on the brilliant Indian efforts to find if there is anyone out there. Here is an older article announcing the launch of this project. "
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Bacteria @ 41km More

Bacteria @ 41km

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  • sounds dubious (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tps12 ( 105590 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @08:55AM (#4546846) Homepage Journal
    If I collected stuff with a balloon, I'd probably hold off on assuming its extra-terrestriality. Unless it's some kind of super space balloon, but I don't think we have those yet.

    And what's with the repeated mention of the guy's Indian-ness? Can we try to keep the nationalism out of Science, please? (Oh, wait, I guess that would be "multiculturalism," since he's swarthy.) And what's with calling him "legendary?" That sounds almost like WWF (or whatever it's called these days).

    In any case, this sounds like only so much limelight-grabbing. I'm placing my bet now on peer review punching a hole in this guy's metaphorical balloon.

    • Re:sounds dubious (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Cydonian ( 603441 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @11:47AM (#4548348) Homepage Journal
      And what's with the repeated mention of the guy's Indian-ness? Can we try to keep the nationalism out of Science, please?

      Personally, I think it's a response to the general anti-Indian bashing that Indians apparently face on most international newsgroups. Add the fact that India is only now coming out of its socialist hibernation and you have a perfect situation for some oh-I'm-so-Indian chest beating. (Disclaimer:That's not a troll. I might have something in common [passport.nic.in] with Indians.)

      But you're right; I agree that's a tad too gooey. Science is beyond nationalism and even (presumed) patriotism.

      As for the experiment, I've read about this before. Andromeda Strain [amazon.com] anyone? :-D

      • Personally, I think it's a response to the general anti-Indian bashing that Indians apparently face on most international newsgroups. Add the fact that India is only now coming out of its socialist hibernation and you have a perfect situation for some oh-I'm-so-Indian chest beating.

        True, but this article only gives more ammunition to the anti-Indian bashers. I wouldn't want to be associated with this guy:

        a) He's not the first person [newscientist.com] to make this claim about extraterrestrial microbes.

        b) This isn't good science. What, he sticks a balloon above some theoretical "barrier" in the atmosphere, finds some microbes, and then claims they MUST be extraterrestrial? That's a silly claim.

    • Re:sounds dubious (Score:3, Informative)

      by gene_tailor ( 601527 )
      I agree: dubious seems to be the correct attitude for now. The authors have a manuscript [cf.ac.uk] on line, linked from the Indians' UK collaborators at Cardiff [cf.ac.uk] Centre for Astrobiology but I can't find any indication any of this has been published in a peer reviewed journal. The evidence in the mss is:

      1) some electron micrographs showing some clumpy things (putatively cells) and

      2) the fact that some clumpy things in their samples can be dyed with flourscent dyes that stain the membranes of viable Earth bacteria.

      While I might accept this as weak evidence there are some unknown organisms at high altitude, it is far from proving they are extraterrestial! Besides, why do they assume that an extraterrestial organism would have the same type of cell membrane as an Earth bacterial cell?

      • I can't find any indication any of this has been published in a peer reviewed journal.

        I can't either. A search for "Narlikar JV" in the web of science [isinet.com] returns a couple of papers on cosmology, but nothing on this subject.

    • I had the same feeling by the time I reached the end of the article.

      How sure are they that the very bacteria that they've discovered at that height doesn't come from the Earth? 41km doesn't seem too far off into the space for me...

    • What's the big deal? I've found alien bacteria on papadums at cheap Indian buffets. And they were darned tasty, too.

  • What? (Score:2, Funny)

    by FoxIVX ( 104861 )
    Bactera? Isn't that a car by Nissan?

    • Re:What? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )
      Bactera? Isn't that a car by Nissan?

      Don't know, we'll have to take samples using a Ford Probe to find out.

  • Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Funny)

    by BigChigger ( 551094 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:27AM (#4547097)
    These bacteria are 41km from Earth, a bazillion light years from somewhere else, thus, they are from somewhere else.

    good logic.

    BC

  • Brilliant? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by uradu ( 10768 )
    > legendary Indian astrophysicist
    > brilliant Indian efforts

    Sounds just like ole time communist propaganda. Our brilliant scientists figured out how to convert 4-ply toilet paper into 2-ply paper that will last twice as long. Soon India will take over the world.

  • No explanation != Amazing Discovery (Score:5, Insightful)

    by helix400 ( 558178 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:47AM (#4547300) Journal
    Here is the text of the article explaining what was found:

    The probes sucked air at four different heights. Some bacteria were found in the air samples. These were not common contaminants.

    Nor had they been used in the laboratory where the test was held. Moreover, no such growth was found on control membranes.
    (End of Document)

    Now how in the world does this mean its extraterrestial?

    -----
    Abortions for some...miniature American flags for others! - Kodos

  • Surely you mean bacterii?
  • Anyone remember that book? Any one out there with one of those vapor-chilled cases, keep an eye out on your rubber gaskets.
    • Yeah, watch out for them suckers, cuz bacteria and smaller organisms don't die in vacuum. They can hibernate for billions of years and then start multiplying a millisecond after the right condition applies. This is how life is thought to have come to earth... the idea of the primordial soup is no longer viable (at least not here).

      The aliens science fiction theme thus has a valid physiological background.
      • One thing that bugs me everytime someone brings up this theory. What conditions might have existed on another planet which would make it any more likely to cause the origin of life? Over the first billion years of Earth's existance, conditions changed quite a bit (cooling temperatures, formation of oceans, etc.). The right conditions presumably would have occured at some point during that period. And, how the heck would microbes have found their way to our little planet. Space is awfully big to rely on random chance (granted it was "smaller", less spread out, 5 billion years ago) to deliver a rare substance (life) to one little planet. And, it would have to have occured within the first billion years of earth's existance, since fossil organisms of that age have been found in (or off the coast of) Australia.

  • DNA? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BCGlorfindel ( 256775 ) <klassenk AT brandonu DOT ca> on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:29AM (#4547695) Journal
    I wonder, does this "extraterrestrial" life have DNA in it? If it does shouldn't that raise a few questions? Like perhaps contamination from terrestrial sources? Attention grabbing headlines like this are rather unscientific if they are so premature as to not even do basic tests.

    • Re:DNA? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Sir Holo ( 531007 )
      I wonder, does this "extraterrestrial" life have DNA in it? If it does shouldn't that raise a few questions? Like perhaps contamination from terrestrial sources? Attention grabbing headlines like this are rather unscientific if they are so premature as to not even do basic tests.

      Of course it raises questions. These issues are probably being investigated. Scientists cannot wait until they "know everything" because we will never know everything. Note that this is something he said during a presentation. Scientists often conversationally give a glimpse of recent results, especially if they might spark interest. It's not premature at all.

      Note also that this is a newspaper article, not a scientific article, thus all of the attention-grabbing language. The article's author was only reporting on one bit of a presentation. What probably happened in this case (and generally in cases where the press blows something out of proportion, though they didn't do it here) was that he said something like this: "We took great precautions to avoid contamination. The results imply that the bacteria were extraterrestrial. Studies of these bacteria will yield more information." And so on.

      Be sure that you consider the source before making quick judgements. And remember that newspaper article reports of new scientific issues are often written by people who don't understand the topic. Due to space limitations, they never give you all of the details, and often get those that they include wrong. i.e. Grain of salt.
      • Dumb.

        They STILL should do BASIC tests before yelping out anything deemed of great significance to the rest of the scientific community. Doing otherwise surves the only purpose of humiliating their own sorry selves.

        • They probably *did* do a BASIC test:

          10 INPUT "Was this bacteria found 41 kilometers in the atmosphere? (Y/N)" ;A$
          20 IF A$ = "Y" THEN GOTO 40
          30 PRINT "Not extraterrestrial." : END
          40 PRINT "Extraterrestrial." : END
    • I wonder, does this "extraterrestrial" life have DNA in it? If it does shouldn't that raise a few questions?

      It would be fun to freak the scientists out by building your own life-form from scratch and make its DNA be written in that funky Brainfuck language, then release it into the upper atmosphere. I couldn't wait to see the front-page of the NY Times read:

      "Aliens made of Brainfuck!"
    • In their paper [cf.ac.uk], they mention that "Further work on culturing and PCR analysis is in progress". PCR is hard to get right, but you would think that after one year they could at least have checked the universal probes for terrestrial microbes.

      (PCR selectively amplifies DNA fragments, making it easy to detect them. Google is your friend)

  • Considering how long ago the experiment was done, the article was amazingly short on "what tests we've done on the strange new bacteria we found" details. (Or is the Indian new year not Jan 1, so "last year" is more recent?)

    Pretty boring if there was a glitch and the bacteria really didn't come from 41km up. An astrophysics expert probably isn't so expert in preventing biological contamination.

    It may be that the bacteria are Earthly, but natives of the upper atmosphere. Bacteria have turned up frequently in places where "everybody knew" that nothing could live, and are recently suspected of living in the atmosphere of Venus.

    With native high-atmosphere bacteria around Earth and/or Venus, there would be plausable prospects for occasional cross-contamination via speeding bits of space dirt.

    Select comets & a few other places in the solar system might have been able to produce or harbor bacteria that wound up here. Extra-Solar origins would be ultra-significant...but how could you prove it?

  • Extraordinary claims... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdot AT stefanco DOT com> on Monday October 28, 2002 @12:42PM (#4548916) Homepage Journal
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

    Which is more likely: That bacteria from Earth managed to travel 41km into the sky sometime in the last 4.5 billion years, and then survived in that environment; or that bacteria travelled millions-trillions of miles through space from some other system and just happened to find Earths atmosphere?

    Hey, I like the "intergalactic spores" theory as much as anybody, but I think this scientist is ignoring the obvious.

  • Bacteria already found in clouds (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @02:22PM (#4549795) Journal
    There's already plenty of existing evidence of bacteria in clouds, why do they think it's extraterrestial?

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=U TF -8&q=bacteria+clouds

    Makes me wonder why the astrophysicist is called legendary.
  • This article [spacedaily.com] appeared on SpaceDaily over a year ago, and provides a bit more detail:

    New Evidence Of Living Bacteria From Space
    Cardiff - July 29, 2001

    Claims of evidence of living bacterial cells entering the Earth's upper atmosphere from space has come from a joint project involving Indian and UK scientists.

    The first positive identification of extraterrestrial microbial life will be reported on Sunday, 29 July 2001 at the Astrobiology session of the 46th Annual SPIE meeting in San Diego, USA by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University. He will speak on behalf of an international team led by Professor Jayant Narlikar, Director of the Inter-Universities Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India.

    Samples of stratospheric air were collected on 21 January 2001 under the most stringent aseptic conditions by Indian scientists using the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) cryogenic sampler payload flown on balloons from the Tata Institute Balloon Launching facility in Hyderabad. Part of the samples sent to Cardiff were analysed by a team at Cardiff University led by Professor David Lloyd and assisted by Melanie Harris.

    Commenting on the results, Professor Wickramasinghe said: "There is now unambiguous evidence for the presence of clumps of living cells in air samples from as high as 41 kilometres, well above the local tropopause (16 km), above which no air from lower down would normally be transported."

    The detection was made using a fluorescent cyanine dye which is only taken up by the membranes of living cells. The variation with height of the distribution of such cells indicates strongly that the clumps of bacterial cells are falling from space. The daily input of such biological material is provisionally estimated as about one third of a tonne over the entire planet.

    This new evidence provides strong support for the Panspermia theory of Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe.

    "We have argued for more than two decades that terrestrial life was brought down to Earth by comets and that cometary material containing microorganisms must still be reaching us in large quantities," said Professor Wickramasinghe.

    --
    1 Corinthians 1:18-31 makes even more sense since Watson and Crick, doesn't it?
  • The mis-statement here appears the use of extra terrestrial, which could actually apply to any organism that lives independent of the earth's surface.
    Not actually Alien, just outside the predominant biosphere.

    The asumption that they come from 'out-there' is groundless, they could have as easily come from the surface at some time in past as the result of asteroid impact backwash, super volcanic erruption, or an unusual storm.

    They are an important discovery and there needs to be more study in the means of nourishment in near nothingness, as well and the ecology the this exoterrestrial flora or fauna.

  • I find some comments on the report particularly derisive. Consider: It's a *newspaper* report on an *informal* talk; there's a good deal of context missing; It's been processed by a science reporter who had a few column inches to fill. So, the report should be treated with the respect that IMO it deserves: take it with huge doses of salt and wait to see a proper publication before you judge anyone.

    As for Mr. Narlikar, Jayant V. Narlikar worked with Hoyle on the Steady State theory of the universe. Legendary? Maybe not. Try Subrahmaniam Chandrashekar.
  • if what they MEANT by extra-terrestrial was it originated from some other place than earth, it would be simple to test. Simply start sequencing some of the more common genes found in terrestrial bacteria. It would positively identity the strain if it were terrestrial, and if it were extra-terrestrial... well I assume we would observe something (eg differences, no common genes, completely different metabolism) never-before-seen.

    Shame on /. for posting such a WEAK excuse for science.

  • Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are (/were) pretty well known as on a planet of their own. Their claims vary from believing illnesses like flu arrive on Earth from comets to believing there is a megaintelligent being at the end of the universe communicating with us via quantum uncertainty. If you don't believe me just pick up the books that they have written - it's all published.
  • The only way these things are "extra terrestrial" is if that means they don't live on the ground.

    -

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