Comments on: Meteorites Could Preserve Evidence of Alien Life

By: Louis

Louis — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:58:25 +0000

this is getting dangerously exciting! hahaha
It'll be nice seeing our galactic neighbors!
But we have to be prepared that this big rocky babe don't go baddy.. haha lol..
i just hope this is not a trap or a threat to earth..

By: KnowMonger

KnowMonger — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:58:09 +0000

"If this is the case, let's sit back and wait for the next meteorite to land (this sounds like another novel approach for WETI!). "

That comment was hilarious. WETI is stupid. Its basically what we were doing from the day we were here on Earth.

Wait for anything new to happen. Duh !!

By: Sili

Sili — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:53:51 +0000

Nifty, but I'm not altogether happy with the same team selecting and analysing the sample. After all they knew what they were looking for.

A double-blind follow-up would nice. Send up living and sterile samples and have the analysed by groups that don't know where they originated.

By: some dumb kid

some dumb kid — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:40:02 +0000

this has been a concept in sci fi for decades

By: von Dawson's Express

von Dawson's Express — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:33:41 +0000

Good to see an old Vostock derived vehicle still in use after all these decades…

By: AndJames

AndJames — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:53:34 +0000

Yeah. The difficulty is to sort out which is alien and which is contaminated by terrestrial. However your argument has some holes. Would it not be best to plan to search for alien life among the lunar rocks which have not been possibly contaminated by terrestrial organisms? Antarctica would actually be the best place on earth because it would lessen the chance of contamination. Also
searches would extreme quarantine procedures.
The article also shows the limitations of using organic chemistry. Most of organic molecules are easily destroyed by temperatures. Importantly, the amino acids used to create DNA life forms are destroyed around 300°C – let alone 1,650°C. Survival of such molecules would be soon be gone on re-entry. The only chance would be if it were encased inside the rock.
I also think that identifying organic molecules is fine (even if it is carbonised soot) but what is more difficult is proving that these organic molecules were once organised into some living and breathing minute life-form.
If they want to do an experiment on organic molecules facing re-entry, perhaps they should just attempt this with various bottles of shampoo. Shampoos have more organic molecules in their solutions than any other known material on earth! Just coat the re-entry on some spacecraft and see what remains!
Furthermore, this premise is also the storyline of the 70s movie, Andromeda Strain.

By: dipankar

dipankar — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:04:12 +0000

May be they have connected with earth but we can't aware about their presence!