Here come the aliens!!!

[Kid Gleason]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/02...rain/index.html

[BigSqwert]

Pretty fascinating stuff.

[southsider2k5]

Interesting. Although I do take it with a grain of salt when the biggest proponent of this theory, has the most to gain from it being true. I can't wait to see how the tests turn out though.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Interesting mysteries. The news story is pretty sketchy on details, and I can't even be sure from what I read there whether the material is all preserved or whether they have viable material that they see some signs of life in. That would be hard to believe, given the complete lack of knowledge about culture requirements of these entities and and seemingly a lack of any kind of environmental controls that would put them back under something approaching their putative natural conditions (e.g., extreme temperature, anoxia, near-vacuum etc.).

 

On the estreme temperature topic. . . The assertion that these entities to be viable (even as spores) in space at a temperature of ~3 degrees Kelvin (3 degrees above absolute zero, and 270 degrees below freezing) and also viable after being heated to a temperature nearly 900 degrees Kelvin above that – that takes a lot of suspension of disbelief.

 

Personally, I'm annoyed that they have been punting this around between the astrophysicists and astronomers for several years and are only now bringing biologists into the mix.

 

DNA or not, it should be a simple matter to identify the structural components – is the "cell" membrane a lipid bilayer or is it something else? Is the replication they believe they are seeing utilizing organic molecules provided by the culture system or are these spheroids just breaking into pieces?

 

I'm not accusing this scientist of any quackery - and he has himself admitted he's skeptical of his own hypothesis. And he may well be seeing some self-organization despite a lack of DNA. It's a near certainty that such self-organizing pre-living systems were precursors to true life on earth. Maybe that is what they are seeing here.

 

I'm not a believer in panspermia in the truest sense – life forms from space seeding earth in the distant past. But I believe that various quasi-organic molecular precursors could have come to earth this way. My biggest doubts about life coming from space come from the extreme environmental ranges an organism would have to survive to make it intact. I'm open to the notion of being convinced otherwise by new evidence, however.