Science news: Fossils found in 3 meteorites

NOTE: There has been plenty of doubt put on this article, and NASA itself doesn’t support this finding. Add to that, the original report WAS from Fox News, who is known for untrustworthy science reporting. The scientific journal isn’t regarded very highly, either, and is considered biased toward Earth’s life coming from other planets. The “fossils” are widely considered to be random pits in the meteorites.

I can’t believe I actually read that entire paper in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal(well, I skimmed most of it). Very detailed, very fascinating. Even more astounding, I heard about this finding from a tweet from Weird Al Yankovic! I did read the entire news report on Yahoo! News that he linked to, though.
I’ll sum the huge paper up for ya, and even throw in tidbits that the Yahoo! News article didn’t mention, like the fact that there were THREE meteorites studied.
Late Friday night(March 4, 2011), Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, published his report about microfossils similar to Cyanobacteria being found in 3 different meteorites, all being witnessed as freshly-fallen in 1806(France), 1864(Also in France), and 1938(in Tanzania). These were recently opened up and scanned with Environmental (ESEM) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) to reveal bacteria fossils. Why so long after the falls? Well, we didn’t really have this technology back then, did we? The fossils are definitely not contamination from Earth, either, because first; they’ve been inside the meteorites all this time, and second; they’re fossils!
These 3 meteorites are the kind that originate from asteroids and comets, so they definitely aren’t from Earth. This type of meteorite also contains water and organic compounds, which makes them prime candidates for finding this sort of stuff.
The only way I can think of that the bacteria could have come from Earth is if the bacteria was ejected from Earth(dinosaur-killer asteroid/comet/meteorite) millions of years ago shortly before the comet or asteroid passed by, then was fossilized on it. Personally, I find this less likely than life on other planets, which I already consider to be roughly 1,000,000 to 1. Still, it’s a possibility, so I’m throwing it out there.

My optimism for finding intelligent life on another planet has just gone up now that we’ve found SOME form of life out there, even if it’s long-dead. What matters is that it’s not from Earth.

So why am I mentioning this on Kenny Chronicles? Well, it’s cool! That’s why! I don’t plan on introducing aliens in the comic, because quite frankly, the mutant animals are weird enough. Also, I consider the chances of intelligent aliens reaching earth to be 1,000,000,000 to 1, optimistically.

Sources
Original report from the scientific journal(huge, filled with science talk): http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html
News article I found out about this from(much easier to read than the original report, but stay away from the comments, which are mostly off-topic): http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/nasascientistfindsevidenceofalienlife
Weird Al’s tweet: http://twitter.com/#!/alyankovic/status/44262235186528256




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