Pharyngula

Posted by: Lee Picton | March 6, 2011 9:59 AM

I started reading the report and once I realized it was Faux News, stopped right there. Saved myself a lot of time.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 6, 2011 10:04 AM

thank you

Posted by: theophontes (θεός γαμώτο) | March 6, 2011 10:10 AM

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

Polonius: By th' Mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.

Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.

Hamlet: Or like a whale.

Polonius: Very like a whale.

Posted by: carcosa | March 6, 2011 10:12 AM

More fringe than a flapper's gunny sack. It's almost sad that Fox is running with this. Did they ever stop to think that they had an "exclusive" scoop because it was wrong? Ah well, anything that demonstrates how Fox News basically equals televised Weekly World News is a net positive in my book.

Posted by: Balstrome | March 6, 2011 10:12 AM

Maybe you should have some faith, and why would they lie about a thing like this?

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 6, 2011 10:13 AM

something mysteriously called Brain Research Laboratory

The function of the Brain Research Laboratory is to supply brains for mad scientists. When Igor is told to fetch a brain, where else would he go?

Whose brain was it? Abby someone.

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | March 6, 2011 10:19 AM

Maybe you should have some faith, and why would they lie about a thing like this?

They're likely scared shitless of being scooped by their superior competitor Mike Hallett. Who, incidentally, also has a much nicer website.

Posted by: raven | March 6, 2011 10:28 AM

random kook:

Maybe you should have some faith,

That is stupid. Because PZ is a scientist. Science runs on data, reasoning, and proof. Not faith. That is why it works, and why we live in the Hi Tech 21st century, not the Dark Ages.

and why would they lie about a thing like this?

Who is saying they lied? Learn to read for comprehension. Probably they didn't lie at all.

Most likely they are deeply, sincerely convinced they are correct. They have made a mistake based on wishful thinking. Or they are deluded. As Richard Feynman once said (paraphrasing), "First you have to not fool yourself and you are easily fooled by yourself.

Or hey, they could even be correct. But extraordinary claims requires extraordinary proof. I'm withholding judgement pending extensive peer review and repeatability by outside experts, the normal and customary standards of science. But since they are making positive extraordinary claims, I'm extremely skeptical myself.

Posted by: Michael Dowd | March 6, 2011 10:36 AM

Thanks, PZ. I should have known to check in here first, before letting others know about this "discovery". Ugh!

~ Michael

Posted by: raven | March 6, 2011 10:39 AM

We've all seen this once before and not too long ago.

Some scientists did some SEM on a Martian meteorite and claimed they saw bacterial fossils.

IIRC, this paper was indeed published in Science.

These days, few take that work seriously. The bacteria were very small, nanobacteria, and almost too small to even contain a genome and ribosomes and the usual stuff inside a cell. Plus, a lot of their pictures looked like inorganic features with only a superficial resemblance to bacteria.

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | March 6, 2011 10:48 AM

What's that? I did not know Penrose was a crank.

Like Kaku he thinks that his expertise in maths somehow transfers to biology.

Posted by: Hell Freezes Over | March 6, 2011 11:07 AM

This is sad - when I first heard about this paper, I was initially excited by the implications - until I actually visited the Journal's web site. The first thing that I noticed, was the amateurish design, and the adverts for their own self-published books. This looked similar to every other crank site I've seen, and my heart sank. The 'paper' was also disappointing (although I lack the expertise to criticize it properly).

Apparently, the Journal is closing down, according to this site
If this is genuine, then it gives us a certain 'flavour' of the mind-set of the Journal's members :-)
Read it and have a good laugh!!

Posted by: No One | March 6, 2011 11:11 AM

oddly Dr. Richard B. Hoover has a page on the NASA website:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2009/09-059.html

I wonder what's going on in this fellows brain. He seems neither ignorant or stupid.

Posted by: ss123 | March 6, 2011 11:16 AM

Thanks PZ for your analysis.

This looks mostly like a media blitz to sell a book.

I know the claim for meteorite bacteria is nothing new, but with Nasa's arsenic bacteria recently, and now this again, one would think Nasa might want to tighten the ship a bit.

Posted by: ss123 | March 6, 2011 11:20 AM

Forgot to mention that I was hoping this paper was brand new evidence from authoritive researchers. Would have helped put a nail in the religion coffin. Maybe.

Posted by: harold | March 6, 2011 11:28 AM

Balstrome said -

Maybe you should have some faith,

Take it on "faith" that meteorites in outer space are populated by living prokaryotic cells? No, I'm highly skeptical of that claim and won't accept it without very substantial evidence.

Even the people who wrote the paper aren't asking that the claim be taken on "faith". They've attempted to provide evidence. I don't find what they have presented convincing, though. I have noted above what a more convincing type of evidence would be.

and why would they lie about a thing like this?

1) No-one said they were lying. They could well be honestly mistaken. Why did you construct such an obvious false dichotomy?

2) What would bias them to be mistaken in this way? A number of OBVIOUS factors suggest themselves. The human love of attention from other humans, for example. Stubborn pride, for another example.

Posted by: raven | March 6, 2011 11:33 AM

sciencedaily:

Rock-Eating Microbes Survive In Deep Ocean Off Peru
ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2002) — COLLEGE STATION, February 21, 2002 - Way down deep in the ocean off the coast of Peru, in the rocks that form the sea floor, live bacteria that don't need sunlight, don't need carbon dioxide, don't need oxygen. These microbes subsist by eating the very rocks they call home. Researchers from the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) have embarked aboard the world's largest scientific drillship on a voyage to understand the abundance and diversity of these microbes and the environments in which they live.

Bacteria living in rocks isn't entirely off the wall. We commonly find them on earth. Bacteria living miles deep in the crust slowly existing by metabolizing minerals in the rocks.

Where the meteorite theory would run into trouble is obvious.

1. Life as we know it requires water. No problem on earth even in rocks. Might be a problem is space rocks.

2. Terristrial life requires temperatures around or above freezing. Space is mostly very cold except in the inner system and most of the small stuff seems to be in the asteroid belt, Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. Way too cold.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 6, 2011 11:43 AM

I saw it at UD, quite the impeccable source, naturally.

They made it sound good--except that everything was basically earth-like, no unusual amino acids, no strange shapes. There was absolutely nothing to distinguish these from earth critters--how odd to read of something indistinguishable from earth life from folk who have no means of distinguishing design from evolution (most of us have no trouble at all 99%+ of the time) yet think that they have done so.

Yes, I think there has to be a way of distinguishing design from evolution, and earth life from alien life.

Maybe "bacteria" can live in comets and carbonaceous chondrites, but they should not be exactly the same as those that swim around in water on earth.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: dharmasatya | March 6, 2011 11:45 AM

Why is it surprising that Phil Plait is withholding judgment? He's not a biologist, he's an astronomer.

If I come to your hose and tell you that you need to replace your water heater, do you think your English Lit degree qualifies you to refute my statement or do you wait until someone who's taken an HVAC course examines the problem?

Posted by: alistair.coleman | March 6, 2011 11:58 AM

As a jaded news journalist, it's got to be said: Never, EVER trust a press release that comes out late on a Friday night.

Posted by: Darren Garrison | March 6, 2011 12:13 PM

PZ said: "I'm looking forward to the publication next year of the discovery of an extraterrestrial rabbit in a meteor."

Sorry, you'll have to miss that-- a Vast Science-Wing Conspiracy is driving them out of "print."

http://daviddobbs.posterous.com/journal-of-cosmology-going-out-with-big-bang

Posted by: broboxley OT | March 6, 2011 12:29 PM

thanks PZ, didnt want to get my hopes up until a serious biologist or two looked at it

Posted by: mistressofthehounds | March 6, 2011 12:31 PM

The Guardian is reporting it under headline of:

Nasa (sic) scientist claims evidence of extraterrestrial life

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/06/nasa-scientist-evidence-extraterrestrial-life

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | March 6, 2011 12:38 PM

Why is it surprising that Phil Plait is withholding judgment? He's not a biologist, he's an astronomer.

Secondly, he himself notices that there may be issues with the 'journal', yet he doesn't bother checking if it is indeed a genuine peer-reviewed source.

I'm not faulting him for not being a biologist. I'm faulting him for not exercising due diligence, when he makes a big deal of a being a big S skeptic.

If I come to your hose and tell you that you need to replace your water heater, do you think your English Lit degree qualifies you to refute my statement or do you wait until someone who's taken an HVAC course examines the problem?

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmpeGRff10-cR55DetJgFd03kFH3UwIXro | March 6, 2011 12:56 PM

@Raven -
In the earlier science paper, the big criticism wasn't that the 'fossils' were almost too small - it's that they were too small - about 10 nm, whereas the smallest earth-life-like cells are probably ~ 50 nm, which is the size of a ribosome (25 nm) wrapped by a membrane.

As someone who has spent countless hours trying to count countless microorganisms in natural samples - it is very very difficult to determine what is a cell and what isn't -- even using common soils, rocks, waters and sediments. Even when using stains that bind DNA and trying to count actively metabolizing organisms- it is quite subjective and the best one can do is to consistently apply a set of rules and accept that there are limits to our methods.

I'm not as pessimistic about culture-based approaches, though. I think spores are capable of withstanding extremely harsh conditions for astounding periods of times, and we might find culturable life forms - which would be a lot more convincing than 1-2 µm sized blobules.

Posted by: Alhec | March 6, 2011 1:05 PM

This really hurts me. Astrobiology is likely a valuable field of science with potential fascinating discoveries. But too many crancks refer to it when they say stupidities.

* I'm not a native English speaker, I'm sorry if they are some mistakes in any of my comments.

Posted by: Peter Ashby | March 6, 2011 1:17 PM

The idea of Panspermia is half scientific demarcation dispute (the astronomers want biogenesis to be their province) and half a desire to avoid the issue by kicking it into the long, space, grass. After all if real bacteria from space started life on earth then biogenesis just gets moved off into the never never, no experiments possible etc. Why life couldn't have formed de novo on the surface of the planet most hospitable to it and had to do so in places much less likely to have all the necessary conditions is beyond me.

To give you an idea of how outfield on biology Hoyle and Wickramasinge are/were they did used to argue that seasonal flu was caused by it raining down on us from micrometeorites. Sadly this was not long before sequencing showed it incubated in birds and pigs before jumping to humans, no space dust required.

Beware of people stepping outside their areas of expertise. That would include PZ positing theories about astronomy or QM. Or me for that matter.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 6, 2011 1:26 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2PPgcNjols

Posted by: Joe Bloe | March 6, 2011 1:35 PM

Anyone know what's that sringy thing in this photo?

http://journalofcosmology.com/images/1HooverFigure5a.jpg

Posted by: Jarred C. | March 6, 2011 1:45 PM

Anyone else notice that the book being sold on amazon (which is linked to in the title of the article) has two authors closely related to the article? Both the article author and the executive editor of the journal are listed as authors on the book.

Posted by: Alhec | March 6, 2011 1:46 PM

people that wrote the paper is also a cranck in chemistry :"The biological process of nitrogen fixation occurs by the reduction of gaseous nitrogen molecules (N2) into ammonia, nitrates, or nitrogen dioxide"

If nitrogen N2 become NO3-; it's not reduced... Only the formation of ammonia is a reduction.

Posted by: feralboy12, der Ken-Puppe Sie außerhalb in 1983 verlassen | March 6, 2011 2:05 PM

What I took away from the hoohaw in 1996 over signs of life in the Mars rocks was that living and non-living processes can leave very similar signatures, and I had to wonder if the "line" between life and non-life is more of a gray area than people realize.
People used to think that living creatures were made of different stuff than the rocks and dirt; turned out to be essentially the same bunch of atoms.
When life and non-life processes can look so similar, the idea of the former arising from the latter doesn't seem like such a miracle.

Posted by: WuzYoungOnceToo | March 6, 2011 2:12 PM

- "Fox News broke the story, which ought to make one immediately suspicious — it's not an organization noted for scientific acumen."

Nor is any other major media outlet. Really, you don't exactly boost your own credibility by leading with cheap political hackery.

Posted by: englemanknowledgebase | March 6, 2011 2:27 PM

You mean The Andromeda Strain (1971) wasn't a documentary? But I love that movie.

Melissa

Posted by: No One | March 6, 2011 2:37 PM

WuzYoungOnceToo

Granted ... many media outlets, much suckage.

But FOX broke the story.
The others followed like lambs.
They have to....

Posted by: early_cuyler | March 6, 2011 2:40 PM

@35 Bsc = Basic Swimming Certificate (from Red Dwarf)

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 6, 2011 3:01 PM

It's a very Latin construction: "(one that) sucks goats".

...on fire.

Posted by: cmlittlejohn | March 6, 2011 3:10 PM

I ask you, could intelligent beings with our sensory organs really be responsible for a website as ugly as the Journal of Cosmology? No. Proof of intelligent, non-human life. I refute you thus.

Posted by: DukeRustfield | March 6, 2011 3:22 PM

Is THIS a "science" blog? I can't be certain, it seems that this is TMZ or some other celebrity site.

An extremely important scientific claim was made and you spend the vast majority of your time discussing...the web site it was produced on. Then the news outlet. Then how the photos made you have to squint. Then the academic credentials of someone not associated with the article or find.

I was waiting for you to say the outfits they wear are ugly and they should break up with their wives and release a solo album. If Galileo released his findings on a bathroom wall, it would not invalidate the findings. Science has a tough enough time being taken seriously by the mainstream (think politicians) without its community being reduced to snarky comments at one another.

Or to quote you:

"We've actually got to look at the claims and not dismiss them because of their location."

Posted by: Cosmic Snark | March 6, 2011 3:30 PM

DukeRustfield obviously didn't read the post. Yawn.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 6, 2011 3:32 PM

An extremely important scientific claim was made and you spend the vast majority of your time discussing...the web site it was produced on.

If Galileo released his findings on a bathroom wall, it would not invalidate the findings.

Posted by: raven | March 6, 2011 3:48 PM

An extremely important scientific claim was made and you spend the vast majority of your time discussing...the web site it was produced on.

Actually we didn't spend all that much time on the website. And a lot on putting the claims in context.

Extremely important scientific claims are dime a dozen. Hardly a day passes without someone proving the earth is 6,000 years old, Einstein's theory of relativity is wrong and a satanic doctrine, quantum mechanics doesn't exist, and UFO aliens routinely abduct people and stick probes up their rear ends.

Oddly enough, these always appear in crackpot pseudoscientific journals. Just like Hoover's claims just did.

I can't recall any generally accepted "extremely important scientific claims" that first appeared in crackpot venues.

It doesn't prove these researchers wrong, but it is a bad sign screaming "watch out".

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/iHN7Cu90teynVhyIwO.mpdNTyxYqlRo-#5e98b | March 6, 2011 4:04 PM

While I agree that based on the journal, the typos, and the unnecessary material (especially at the end), the article should be read with skepticism, I don't get the sense that Myers has read it very much at all. Eg:

"Peering at them and mentally tweaking the size, though, one surprising result is that all of their boojums are relatively huge — these would be big critters, more similar in size to eukaryotic cells than E. coli."

"they seem to be proud of having analyzed flakes of mummy skin and hair from frozen mammoths, but I couldn't see the point at all"

These quotes indicate that Myers has not read the paper, just skimmed it a bit. The bulk of the middle of the paper is a comparison of these fibers to colonies of cyanobacteria, not single cells. And the comparison with old skin and hair is because, if you believe the claims about all the organic material found in the meteorite, you would naturally suspect that it was recent contamination. So another chunk of the paper is dedicated to showing that, while many amino acids are present, many others are not, in precisely the pattern we see in terrestrial fossils, but not in "recent" organic matter like the mammoth hairs, etc. Using this material is a perfectly reasonable control, and shows (if you believe them) that their material has exactly the organic profile one would suspect of fossils, but not abiological or recent biological material.

His core argument is that these fibers have a distinctive shape that resembles common cyanobacteria colonies; they have elements in them that make them distinct from the surround rock (as shown in the xrays); that the rock itself is full of organics including amino acids; and that the lack of nitrogen and certain other amino acids matches what we see in terrestrial fossils, but not in recent organic matter.

While as a Bayesian I agree that the threshold of evidence is very high here -- and much higher due to the shoddy journal, poor proof-reading, and extraneous material (particularly at the end of the paper) -- it is still the case that, looking only at the claims themselves, the counter-argument needs to do more than was done here:

It needs to show how these fibers could occur non-biologically; it needs to show how that process could result in the distinctive elements found in them only; it needs to show how the organics found in the rock can arise in non-biological ways in some asteroids or comets; and it needs to explain the presence of amino acids along with an absence of others (and nitrogen) that makes these samples so chemically similar to fossils on earth.

Though I imagine his conclusions are correct, Myers' rebuttal hasn't done proper justice to those arguments.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/_6ygASk6sNUqH_zjkSmInff8GB3A#a8785 | March 6, 2011 4:17 PM

Why is it that once something of this magnitude is within view of the public, someone dismisses it so quickly. Lets agree that the majority of the public would dismiss this natuarly bassed off of their belief systems and view of the media. On the other spectrum, the other half may actually awknolege the idea and accept it for what it is worth today. This all comes down to the media sheilding and protecting religion. Take a poll yahoo. Poll 17-25year old men and women through out the world. Many I would assume do not beleive in todays "GOD". We would much rather know the truth as we are prepared for it. I for one am going to beleive that alien life does exsist. The fact that it would cause uproar throughout the land is also known. Call me crazy...but we (the public) already assume there is alien life. Its unfortuate that the ones protecting the secret will either die with it, or pass it on to another sheltered minded generation.

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | March 6, 2011 4:23 PM

It's a very Latin construction: "(one that) sucks goats".

...on fire.

Wait until the fire has died out, before you commence sucking.

Posted by: raven | March 6, 2011 4:33 PM

Why is it that once something of this magnitude is within view of the public, someone dismisses it so quickly.

Because it is almost always wrong.

We see this on a daily basis, especially on the lunatic fringes.

Got to go now. The fairies in the garden started a fight between the unicorn and Bigfoot. And a flying saucers are buzzing the house again.

I for one am going to beleive that alien life does exsist.

Believe whatever you want, free country. IMO, life elsewhere in the universe is highly probable. It is after all, a gigantic 13.7 billion year old universe. But belief does not equal proof.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | March 6, 2011 4:34 PM

Yahoomess:

I for one am going to beleive that alien life does exsist.

Aaaaand, no one's stopping you from that particular belief. However, it's helpful to have actual evidence, rather than crackpot theories which don't even begin to meet a scientific standard of evidence.

You don't want a mind so open your brains fall out, ya know?

Posted by: raven | March 6, 2011 4:46 PM

Even if Hoover's claims turn out to be correct, there is one theory he has to rule out.

We know that chunks of planets can become orbital due to bolide impacts. We have meteorites from both the moon and Mars. Who is to say that that rare carbonaceous chondrites aren't from earth originally. Our planet has been getting smacked since it formed. The moon is thought to be the result of a very ancient impact event in the early days.

Posted by: Rasmus | March 6, 2011 4:52 PM

Its unfortuate that the ones protecting the secret will either die with it, or pass it on to another sheltered minded generation.

...because Mulder and Scully haven't figured out how to use Wikileaks?

Posted by: realinterrobang | March 6, 2011 4:56 PM

Why are these people showing up here to defend this piece of crap paper anyway? Crank solidarity? Because they want it to be true? Because they're Faux Snooze fans who can't get it through their heads that Faux lies about everything? Because they're actually Brain Research Lab staff sockpuppets trying to drum up an illusion of consensus in a significant venue? Why?

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | March 6, 2011 5:01 PM

realinterrobang:

Why are these people showing up here to defend this piece of crap paper anyway?

There's been an ongoing rain of stupidity in all the threads lately. Been a storm of socks, too.

Posted by: realinterrobang | March 6, 2011 5:05 PM

The debate, over time, will produce a sort of objective position through collective balance.

Golden Mean fallacy much? The correct position between Sane and Crazy isn't Half-Crazy, it's still Sane, no matter how many opinions you get stacked up on the Crazy side.

It's also a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. Science doesn't achieve objective positions through collective balance, it achieves a working degree of factual correctness through the scientific method and consensus born of repetition.

Also, there's the small detail that EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE. Some pareidolia bullshit on a crank website and a crank journal picked up by the Falsehood Television Network doesn't constitute anything like extraordinary evidence. It constitutes something like ordinary evidence for the sort of banal crankery that we see every day. (Don't you honestly think that if there was something to this, Science or Nature would have been fighting over the right to publish it first? I don't know much about the science, but I sure know how human behaviour works, and that's a huge red flag, right freakin' there.) Sheesh. It's like Credulous Crank day around here.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/iHN7Cu90teynVhyIwO.mpdNTyxYqlRo-#5e98b | March 6, 2011 5:08 PM

realinterrobang:

Why are these people showing up here to defend this piece of crap paper anyway?

Because I actually read the paper. No one is arguing that the journal isn't junk -- and if you want to judge the paper based on that, fine, that's a great criterion to use. But Myers fails to rebut -- and in a few cases, even properly understand -- the substantive claims of the paper. They too may be junk, but if you want to debate them, you have to at least read the paper. So far, I haven't seen a decent rebuttal of the quantitative analysis -- the presence of organics like amino acids, and the absence of other amino acids (and nitrogen) that echoes the profile of fossils. Once I do, I'll stop defending this dubious paper that I happened to read on a slow Saturday afternoon.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | March 6, 2011 5:12 PM

Do peer reviewed papers need to be written to debunk every claim of a perpetual motion machine?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 6, 2011 5:13 PM

(c) the sample was full of "organic" compounds including amino acids; and (d) the sample lacked other amino acids and nitrogen

All amino acids contain nitrogen. No nitrogen, no amino acids. Hint: look up 'amino'.

Posted by: unomi | March 6, 2011 5:19 PM

realinterrobang:

What is interesting is how you fail to note how Meyers is actively misrepresenting the content of the article, even when this has been pointed out to you, you seem to be in denial.

You also seem under the impression that scientific advances generally have had the pleasure of general acceptance in the scientific community of the day, this is simply not the way it works. For a fairly recent example see BZ reactions.

You don't seem to understand anything about science at all, just another superficial acolyte of whatever seems the prevalent belief system - you might as well be a creationist.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 6, 2011 5:25 PM

Hint: look up 'amino'.

LOL

it's amazing the amount of ignorance of even basic chemistry on display with the religionauts, ain't it?

oh, and, I'm sure I'm very late saying this, but

welcome back.

Posted by: Nightjar | March 6, 2011 5:29 PM

the presence of organics like amino acids, and the absence of [...] nitrogen

Hm?

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | March 6, 2011 5:32 PM

and also have a degree in philosophy of science.

Ah, so you don't do actual science, you prefer to sit around wanking on about it.

Philosophy of science has historically been met with mixed response from the scientific community. Though scientists often contribute to the field, many prominent scientists have felt that the practical effect on their work is limited: “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” according to physicist Richard Feynman.

I'll go with Feynman here.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 6, 2011 5:37 PM

You seem to have a poor understanding of "how science works" yourself, although you illustrate the process well.

Hoover is very careful to say only that they are below the 0.5% level,

Thanks for actually responding to the specific claims in the paper through!

Posted by: unomi | March 6, 2011 5:41 PM

The Once And Future Janine, OM:
Even this non scientist can spot the They laughed at Galileo! defense.

Not a defense of the paper, but pointing out the fallacy of thinking that if it isn't published in Science or Nature that it is then automatically false.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 6, 2011 5:45 PM

how sad it is that you seem to think yourselves the defenders of science, yet you can't even muster the intellectual curiosity to read.

Posted by: raven | March 6, 2011 5:49 PM

You also seem under the impression that scientific advances generally have had the pleasure of general acceptance in the scientific community of the day, this is simply not the way it works.

For every Galileo, there have been a hundred now nameless crackpots. And BTW, most scientific advances have met ready if not universal acceptance and sooner rather than later. That is how science really works.

To be famous, you not only have to have extraordinary claims, you have to be right.

Crackpots always forget that last part.

Looks like the UFO contingent is here. Whatever. True fact. 5% of the US population, 15 million people say they have been abducted and anal probed by UFO aliens.

This is getting boring. Maybe they can discuss their UFO sightings and abduction stories.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | March 6, 2011 5:53 PM

unomi:

is part of the accepted liturgy

Cupcake, science isn't religion.

Liturgy:

1. a form of public worship; ritual.
2. a collection of formularies for public worship.
3. a particular arrangement of services.
4. a particular form or type of the Eucharistic service.
5. the service of the Eucharist, especially this service (Divine Liturgy) in the Eastern Church.

Now stop trying to use the big words, Cupcake, you're going to do yourself an injury.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | March 6, 2011 5:58 PM

Not a defense of the paper, but pointing out the fallacy of thinking that if it isn't published in Science or Nature that it is then automatically false.

Perhaps. But it is a lot easier to leave something in the ignore pile when the journal is run by known cranks.

And the fact that the scientists are laughing at the "facts" given.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 6, 2011 6:00 PM

I don't think you would find many of us arguing that the early Earth wasn't seeded with space born amino acids and other small organic compounds, like water. The spectra of those compounds has been in interstellar clouds, with the appropriate instruments. But bacteria? That requires a whole new set of parameters, most of which are next to impossible. Better evidence than that trashy paper is needed.

Posted by: Fukuda | March 6, 2011 6:06 PM

Cell biologist here.

So I read the article...

(From the article)

This interpretation is consistent with morphotypes of undifferentiated filamentous cyanobacteria of the Order Oscilliatoriacea. There are many genera and species within this very common cyanobacterial order, including the genus Microcoleus

It makes no biological nor evolutionary sense to find cyanobacteria species from nowadays represented in a meteorite, especially when there is pretty much nothing to see besides contorted filaments...

I see no individual bacteria, no hormogonia, no thecae nothing at all that would even hint at cyanobacteria, but the author sees what he wants to see after all...

The small solitary uniseriate filaments 3 and 4 may be interpreted as representing members of the genus Trichocoleus Anagnostidis, which was separated from the genus Microcoleus on the basis of cell size and morphology.

For pete's sake...

This is very similar to helical coiled sheath of Phormidium stagninum shown in the illustration at http://www.cyanodb.cz//Phormidium/Phormidium.jpg illustration. This type of flattened, coiled hollow sheath is often seen in other species of filamentous cyanobacteria and hence does not constitute a unique diagnostic feature.

Do the alien kooks in this thread want us to play make believe with the author?

Oh, and heterocysts too! Evolution must be extremely parallel in other planets.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | March 6, 2011 6:10 PM

Fukuda:

Do the alien kooks in this thread want us to play make believe with the author?

Yes, they do. You should accept the "research" because they want to believe! They believe so hard! And the govt is hiding evidence, and UFOs are real and...

Posted by: Mark Farmer | March 6, 2011 6:12 PM

As one of the "100" experts who was invited to submit comments to be published in the Journal of Cosmology I must say that the invitation arrived hours before I was leaving out of town. A few moments on the internet showed that this author has been beating this same drum for over a decade and has failed to convince most of us.

Despite my expertise in SEM, X-ray microanalysis and algae (I admit they did a good job of finding someone who could evaluate the paper) I was none the less not inclined to drop everything to vett this thing.

I too greet this paper with more than a grain of salt.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/iHN7Cu90teynVhyIwO.mpdNTyxYqlRo-#5e98b | March 6, 2011 6:23 PM

And yes, as several people have already pointed out, claiming that they found amino acids present simultaneously with claiming that they found virtually no nitrogen is pretty damned hilarious.

There is nothing inconsistent between claiming amino acids at the ppb level (Table IV) and nitrogen at the less than 1% atomic level (Figure 6). As other have point out, the amino acids find is neither new nor particularly controversial; the only thing Hoover adds is showing that the profile of amino acids matches fossilized life, not recently deceased life (Table IV). For all I know, the sorts of amino acids you can get in nonbiological circumstances (eg, the simplest ones) may be the same as the sorts of amino acids you get in fossils (ie, all but the simplest ones have broken down). But at least his clams are internally consistent.

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | March 6, 2011 6:27 PM

unomi, I don't have to eat an egg to know that it is rotten.

In this case, I am simply not bothering to read the article because I don't think it is likely to be true, and because even if it is true and correct, I can wait a few months to get the info. I have no reason to read the paper--I am not avoiding it out of fear--I just have no desire to read it.

Even though I haven't read it, I can say that it smells like a dozen other false claims--some of which I read, some of which I let others read. (You sound like the folks who wanted me to plug my USB into an onion before I could say that it couldn't power my iPod--theory isn't just a funny word). I have good and sufficient reasons to think the article is most probably bogus.

If it were accurate, even if I were to jump up and down and say that it is definitely a load of crock, lies, bullshit and reeking tripe, and that there is no way in hell that I will ever read it and that I do not need to read it to proclaim it false, my opinion matters not a shit. My words are not magic. I have no power, and no say in the matter. We here on this blog can badmouth the whole damned thing, and affect the world not a trifling whit.

We, as scientific types, can also admit we were wrong, learn from that and accept new truth.

unomi, I don't know what you think you are accomplishing, but you sound awfully damned familiar. And religious.

When I looked at the picture over at the Bad Astronomy site, I thought it looked exactly like frost flowers, and commented so. And I went off to surf web comics.

Speaking of Phil Plait, I tire of people here giving him a hard time. His article on this was fair and accurate. He doubts very seriously that there is any merit to the claims, but he refrained from condemning it absolutely, as he feels a scientist should refrain from snap-judgement absolutes. He is an astronomer, not a biologist, and he addressed the topic as a skeptic, and he did it well.

Posted by: blunted | March 6, 2011 6:31 PM

PZ:I'd like some clarification on your last comment - do you think there are NO amino acids in the carbonaceous chondrite class of meteorites?

It's just that there's a few other comments here that suggest they don't think there are amino acids or other organic compounds in these rocks.. Which is actually a very well established fact. Poor unomi is getting it in the neck for saying something that is not disputed by anyone. If you are saying that there is not enough nitrogen BESIDES whats in the other organic compounds then fair play - but I think it needs to be clarified.

Raven - I think your being pretty rude to some people in this thread all things considered. Sceptcism is fine but you are coming across as being a bit of a tool. You didn't know these rocks are almost certainly from comets - nor that they have liquid water on comets - or that they heat up considerably (the lowest albedo of any know objects in the solar system).

We know the CM and CI1's aren't rocks ejected from the earth because they contain pre solar grains - Calcium and Aluminum compounds with a different isotopic ratio from anything else in the solar system - they likely formed around dust originally from a supernova in another solar system in the accretion disk along with the sun and the proto-planets. Radio dating shows they are older than this planet.The organic compounds have the wrong racemic ratios to be from earth - and given they appear to be comets from composition its very very unlikely they were ejected from the earth. You mentioned we have found rocks from mars and the moon - I know because I own a few little pieces of these rocks. The very same science that confirms these rocks are from the moon and mars rules out an earth origin for the carbonaceous chondrites.

I don't think this finding is likely to be confirmed - I don't know enough about biology so I will leave that to the experts. And besides they have been "finding" stuff like this since the 60's (more recently 1996). But I also think you obviously don't know enough about Meteor Astronomy to be so rude - you are flat out wrong on several points - then you start talking about your "betters" - Jesus wept mate what is wrong with you?

Posted by: rostudios | March 6, 2011 6:37 PM

Thank you so much.

I tried to read the paper, but all that padding prevented me from sitting through it (probably the whole point) so I opted to wait and see if someone debunked it.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 6, 2011 6:42 PM

I have presented ample evidence

You might as well have subscribed to http://www.watchtower.org/ for 25+ years for all the good it did you.

Posted by: Nightjar | March 6, 2011 6:46 PM

I'd also had that the fact that amino acids have been found in meteorites and interstellar dust clouds is routinely brought up here every time a creationist brings up the subject of abiogenesis, so I really doubt that Ichthyic, Sven or Nerd (or any other regular) didn't know about that.

And I see nothing on this thread implying otherwise.

Posted by: Nightjar | March 6, 2011 6:52 PM

blunted @#153:

Okay, I can see how the first one suggests that there are no amino acids in the sample. But the second one is trivially true. No nitrogen, no amino acids.

Posted by: unomi | March 6, 2011 6:59 PM

No, that is you loser for credulity. I'm not credulous. Show me the smoking gun evidence, or shut the fuck up!!!

Smoking gun evidence of what?

That you are a nutter? I think your comments throughout this thread suffices.

That you haven't read the paper?
Your own comments regarding nitrogen and amino acid occurrence continues to bear out your ignorance of the contents of the paper.

You are here not out of interest in science, but out of psychological needs that could just as well have been filled by taking up astrology or a religious sect.

Face it, you lack the intellectual integrity to be given the time of day by others than your co-dependents. Consider our conversation finished.

Posted by: Nightjar | March 6, 2011 7:02 PM

blunted,

Thing is Nightjar, they did find nitrogen in small amounts which a lot of people have missed in this thread (and in the paper).

Those comments were in direct response to yahoomess' claim that that nitrogen was absent. Yahoomess corrected it later, but only after those comments had been made.

(Yes, some people here are often quite pedantic and snarky, why do you ask?)

Amino acids *are* in these rocks and we have know that for decades now. So let's at least get that point clear.

Granted.

Posted by: Roland Stone | March 6, 2011 7:09 PM

One more point - I find it sad that so many people here say they are too busy to read the paper. But they're not too busy to come here and attack it. And I include you in that group Mr. Farmer. You have the expertise to help us understand the paper's flaws, and you grudgingly admit that the Journal of Cosmology sought your expertise, but because you were headed out of town, all you can do know is attack the author without reading what he had to say.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 6, 2011 7:10 PM

If he's lying about that, please let me know.

Posted by: Tulse | March 6, 2011 7:13 PM

Can some of the paper's defenders please explain why such an allegedly important work would appear in a crank online website, rather than an established, well-known journal? Perhaps not Science or Nature, but surely if the paper is convincing there would be other legitimate journals willing to publish it.

(By the way, this isn't "well-poisoning", this is "determining the Baysian prior probabilities".)

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | March 6, 2011 7:22 PM

unomi said:

You are here not out of interest in science, but out of psychological needs that could just as well have been filled by taking up astrology or a religious sect.

Estimating someone else's psychological workings is a right fundamentalist trick, and a wrong one, too. If you are doing it, you are doing it wrong.

My dearest and I often misunderstand why each other does what we do. Analyzing a stranger from a few blog comments is impossible. If you think you have done it, you are most likely projecting. (And my analysis of your psychology comes from years of experience and is as far as I will go.)

...well-poisoning...."I don't need to read it, just look where it was published!"

Seriously, I do not need to read it. It isn't my field, nor my area of expertise, nor of any impact on my life. I have no need to read it. And as I say, where it was published reeks. And as I said, nobody needs me to read it. And nobody cares whether I read it.

Here you go, here's a reading project for you: Go read War and Peace, first edition in the original, from the perspective of a Manichean Maoist, and you will realize its impact on the Zimbabwean version of Dungeons and Dragons as played by Jewish infants who will be forced to attend Catholic schools in Macedonia.

What's the matter, you scared?

Posted by: raven | March 6, 2011 7:27 PM

One more point - I find it sad that so many people here say they are too busy to read the paper.

No or few people said that. Stop lying. And step away from that strawperson and put down that match. What did a poor defenseless strawperson ever do to you anyway?

Have we reached the xians UFOers being thrown to the lions stage yet?

Yes you being persecuted. Yes the aliens really exist. We see them every day. And no, you can't go for a ride in a flying saucer. Just because.

Posted by: Roland Stone | March 6, 2011 7:28 PM

Re Post #168-

Ok, fair enough. I will respect your opinion. You have looked at the photos in the original article and you don't see anything there that couldn't just as likely be the result of non-biological processes.

The author sees sheaths and blasts and cilia-like filaments. But if you're telling me you see that stuff in rocks every day and it turns out to be nothing but rock, then I will defer to your experienced judgement.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2011 7:33 PM

The Raëlians from last week were much more civil.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/iHN7Cu90teynVhyIwO.mpdNTyxYqlRo-#5e98b | March 6, 2011 7:34 PM

FYI, there are at least two people here being referred to as "yahoomess" . That mess of a url is something Yahoo has decided to insert in place of our actual names for some idiotic Yahoo reason; I'd switch to one of my other identities, but that seems inappropriate at this point.

In any case, I never meant nor said that there was no nitrogen whatsoever, and I'm sorry that anyone even temporarily read me as saying that. I referred casually to the "lack" of nitrogen, assuming that people would not conclude that I saying absolutely zero nitrogen, in contradiction to the amino acids present. Anyway, the basic argument remains: an amino acid profile that seems to match organic fossilized matter, but not recent organic matter. It's quite possible such a profile could also arise non-biologically; that's an interesting question, and I'm glad we've moved beyond the shoddy journal to debating that substance a bit. Not that the shoddy journal should be ignored -- it's the best reason for doubting the paper. But it's nice to see a little science here too. It's too bad the defenders of science are setting such an aggressive tone though.

Posted by: blunted | March 6, 2011 7:41 PM

@Thulse #167

I don't care where it comes from - that's a genetic fallacy. You are right however that we would be silly not to note its from a dodgy journal.

I'm not defending the conclusion - but its clear some people aren't even paying cursory attention to the contents. Way to be sceptics huh?

It's unlikely to be true - we have seen this all before - but what really bothers me is all these people pontificating where they don't know the first thing about the field. I would defer to the biologists on here about whether these "fossils" are biological - but for the rest its painfully obvious that in the race to debunk a few people are overreaching - and being arseholes about it to boot.

Posted by: Fukuda | March 6, 2011 7:44 PM

Snide asides like "For Pete's Sake" and "Alien Kooks" do nothing to advance your argument, which seems to be that the paper must be wrong because the purported alien bacteria are too much like modern terrestrial bacteria to have evolved independently, therefore they are not bacteria at all, but more likely just wishful visualizing of otherwise ambiguous structures within the meteorite. (If that's not your argument, please clarify it for me.)

Let me be clear enough. There is nothing in these pics (http://journalofcosmology.com/images/1HooverFigure2a.jpg for instance) other than contorted inorganic masses that may distantly look like cyanobacteria if you believe hard enough. Inferring any kind of cell organization from such a poor sample is outlandish enough, but describing the blobs as cyanobacteria species living today despite this being an utterly old meteorite is just on the almost crazy side of things. He doesn't just claim similarity he says: "may be interpreted as representing members of the genus Trichocoleus Anagnostidis", which is total nonsense.

How he manages to distinguish different genera and species even though all the blobs look similar is something that amazes me too.

We don't know enough about how early life began on Earth or about the evolutionary forces that acted upon ancient bacteria to say that they couldn't have happened the same way on the comets that gave rise to Hoover's specimens.

Yes, the same selection, mutation and random drift that was exerted on our cyanobacteria lineages happened in another planet aaand we appropriately found a meteorite from that other planet. Occam's razor anyone?

Ad hominem attacks against Hoover and his defenders

You must be new here...

But most of the skepticism I've read here seems to doubt that the specimens are of biological origin at all, regardless of their purported age. Citing lack of nitrogen doesn't advance that line of attack.

A claim of biological origin is an extremely exceptional claim and will be confronted to lots of skepticism. We welcome any result that would demonstrate extraterrestrial life, but it would need way more basis than "look, these things look like cyanobacteria!" and "aminoacids!"

If nothing else, Hoover's paper has educated me as to the existence of these rare almost "organic" meteorites made of tar, clay and water. If he's lying about that, please let me know. But if he's not, then the possibility they harbor life doesn't seem that far fetched at all.

The organic meteorite claim is correct, but there's a long stretch between organic matter and living beings, aminoacids ain't exactly unusual or extremely difficult to synthesize abiogenetically.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2011 7:47 PM

yahoomess @ #177: Please feel free to identify yourself with a name/pseudonym somewhere in your comments to avoid confusion.

It's too bad the defenders of science are setting such an aggressive tone though.

Polite tone doesn't fix a broken argument, nor does complaining about tone. In other words, to state what should be obvious but apparently isn't a lot of people, tone is completely irrelevant.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | March 6, 2011 7:50 PM

Roland:

That's a new one on me.

http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Troll#Concern_Troll

We don't concern ourselves with tone here. What's important is substance. You've been able to read a lot of what actual scientists have to say about this. You should be reading, listening and trying to comprehend, rather than clutching your pearls over tone.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 6, 2011 8:01 PM

Nerd of Redhead, OM is a loudmouth complainer about bad science, yet he also believes that water is an "organic molecule".

it seems the critiques are extremely venomous.

Posted by: Peacenik46 | March 6, 2011 8:06 PM

March 12, 2011 - Fox News
WRONG AGAIN: Claims by Scientists of Alien Life Debunked

"Last week scientists claimed to have discovered alien life in meteorites. Now those same scientists are backpedaling on their claim. It looks like they just can't seem to get it together, does it Gretchen?"

"That's right, Brad. What a bunch of fools."

"Don't they have some government funding we can pull?"

"Maybe! Write in, and tell us what you think."

"Next up, Is your cat trying to kill you in your sleep? One animal rights activist seems to think so."

Posted by: Nightjar | March 6, 2011 8:07 PM

The article finds 8 of the 20 amino acids for life exist within the freshly fractured rock. Hoover also shows older terrestrial fossils of organic life also only contain 8 of the 20 amino acids to show the absence of the the other 12 amino acids is not unexpected, but indeed identically consistent with known fossilized organics of a certain age.

One possible explanation may be that the amino acids present are both the easier to be formed in nonbiological circumstances and the ones that don't break down so easily (during fossilization), that is, the more stable ones. That is actually a plausible explanation and, in the absence of stronger evidence, the more parsimonious one. So... skepticism.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/iHN7Cu90teynVhyIwO.mpdNTyxYqlRo-#5e98b | March 6, 2011 8:13 PM

Sorry to have mentioned tone -- arguing about tone is about as interesting as arguing about the html of the journal. I personally don't care about the pent-up testosterone of third-rate academics who have nothing better to do than attack second-rate articles in third-tier journals and pour invective on any passersby who are interested in the science. If that's they way they want to spend a Sunday afternoon, bully for them. I'm only here because I have a set of conference slides I'm avoiding working on! But I'm glad I managed to derail you all even temporarily into a discussion of the scientific claims that Myers so blithely glossed over.

Posted by: Garnetstar | March 6, 2011 8:26 PM

To clarify what the author states about the amount of nitrogen present:

"EDS elemental data of the filament sheath at spot 1 shows typical biogenic elements Nitrogen and Phosphorus (0.5%)..."

Misleading! I believe it's wishful thinking. For nearly every sample he says that the amount of nitrogen is "less than 0.5%". (One is said to show 1%, one 0.7%). But, 0.5% is the detection limit of the instrument.

So, he's saying that in most samples no nitrogen signal was ever observed, and jumps to claiming that it was "present", but just in lower quantities than could be detected. There is no basis for the claim that nitrogen was detected at all in those samples. Usually when there is no indication that something is present, one says that it is absent.

(I suppose it possible that the amino acids he claims were present were too low in concentration to show nitrogen in the EDS.)

Then he leaps to this conclusion:

"Consequently the absence of nitrogen in the cyanobacterial filaments detected in the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites indicates that the filaments represent the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth�s atmosphere."

The absence of nitrogen data indicates that these are life forms? I think he's trying to say that it shows that the "life" forms are not modern contaminants (or else they would show detectable nitrogen).

But that last sentence, as written, is fabulously grandiose and not in the slightest justified by the data presented.

Posted by: jafafahots | March 6, 2011 8:30 PM

More on this story (NASA politics & admin angle, etc.) here:
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/03/nasa-msfc-astro.html

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 6, 2011 8:39 PM

whywhatwhen,

You clearly do not have much experience with scientists--they are a passionate lot, and they sometimes passionately disagree.

This is a pretty marginal piece of research. Morphology is a piss poor technique for identifying bacterial fossils. As I mentioned above, NASA has fallin for this type of crap before with the Martian meteorites back in the 90s.

Now as to your siezing on Nerd's little faux pax, I am sure he meant "volatiles" rather than organics. This is the chemical equivalent of being a grammar Nazi. So, please, do grow up.

Posted by: blunted | March 6, 2011 8:40 PM

Alright I confused Raven with nerd of redhead over the "betters" comment . Mea Culpa.

Posted by: new_england | March 6, 2011 8:56 PM

Coincidentally, I received the following (apparently genuine) email a few weeks ago.

From: Editor@JournalofCosmology.com

Subject: Investors Seek to Buy the Journal of Cosmology

Date: February 22, 2011 5:47:15 PM GMT+13:00

--The Journal of Cosmology (JOC) has received a buy-out offer.
--A group of scientists/investors have offered to buy JOC.

JOC received over 800,000 Hits in December, and over 900,000 Hits in January.

Nearly 100,000 scientists read JOC every month.

Dozens of news articles appear every month about the contents of JOC.

JOC has published 5 books and has 2 more planned.

JOC will consider all competing buy-out offers. Serious inquiries only and must include specifics, plans, and address and phone contact information.

Truly,
Lana Tao

I am guessing I am not the only recipient of this email.

I would not want to be cynical, but it would seem we are dealing with a "journal" which has a) published a paper that claims to have discovered the existence of extra-terrestrial life b) displays a somewhat atypical preoccupation with its web-traffic statistics and c) is trying to "monetize" itself.

Posted by: Fukuda | March 6, 2011 8:58 PM

@206
Water is a volatile.... Check Wikipedia if you really need to, you might learn something today.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 6, 2011 9:07 PM

whatwhywhen,
Evidently, you have even less understanding of chemistry than you thought. Water is indeed a volatile. As with being a grammar nazi, if you correct a minor mistake in chemistry, it appears you are destined to make a greater one.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 6, 2011 9:10 PM

whatwhywhen,
I'm sorry, I don't see the word modifier in my post. Nope. It ain't there. I said, Nerd meant volatiles RATHER than organics.

Is it too much to ask you to actually read the words I write? So, no. You were simply flat wrong.

Posted by: jafafahots | March 6, 2011 9:12 PM

"A desire to protect official NASA's channels initially"

Except that the scientist is funded by NASA and is using his NASA credentials to push this story apparently without prior approval from NASA and the proper paperwork filing, which is against his employer's (NASA's) policies.

Posted by: harold | March 6, 2011 9:18 PM

whywhatwhen -

It is true that water is not classed as an "organic" compound. Organic chemistry is confusingly named - it actually refers to the chemistry of carbon-containing compounds, whether or not they have anything to do with life (some of them do and some of them don't). Today the specific field of biochemistry studies the chemistry of living things. "Volatile" is actually a subjective term (evaporation rate can be measured with ease but whether or not a certain rate makes a compound volatile is a subjective call). In fact, liquid water at "room temperature" and normal atmospheric pressure is the implied standard; liquids which vaporize more rapidly at room temperature/normal atmospheric pressure are typically referred to as "volatile".

Nevertheless, there are unlikely to be living earth-like bacteria in the near-zero-gravity, extreme temperature, no atmosphere (and thus no shielding from radiation) environment of a meteorite. It does not matter whether someone made a mildly wrong statement about chemistry.

Now, I have a question for you.

I suspect that at least some of the defense of this "bacteria live on meteorites" thing has nothing to do with bacteria or meteorites.

Rather, I suspect that at least some defenders of this research are actually riding breathlessly to the defense of Fox News.

Now here's a funny thing. I like to read The New Yorker (NOT "New York Magazine", "The New Yorker"). I find that it is well-written and covers subjects of interest to me. Often, although by no means always, I agree with the editorial tone.

However, sometimes the New Yorker is criticized. Sometimes I agree with the criticisms. Sometimes they are unfair. Sometimes, not infrequently, they arise from confusion of The New Yorker with New York Magazine or The New York Times Magazine, and are thus by definition unfair.

At any rate, although I read, and in fact subscribe to, the New Yorker, I can deal with the idea that the New Yorker might not be perfect without flipping out. In fact I know well that it is not. Likewise, I would never, ever respond to a criticism of the New Yorker with the illogical construction "The Atlantic does it too but you criticized the New Yorker, Waaaahhhh!"

Yet I notice it is not so with Fox viewers. I notice that valid critique of Fox News seems to set off an aggression/panic reaction. I notice that, although it is absurd to suggest that Fox News could possibly be right about everything 24 hours a day, any challenge to this idea seems to make some people intensely uncomfortable.

If anyone here has been defending this meteorite idea primarily because Fox News reported it, I would like an answer to this question -

Why does any challenge to anything on Fox create such anxiety?

Posted by: Utakata | March 6, 2011 9:21 PM

Nerd of Redhead, OM @ 188:

Evidence suggests that unomi is just a troll. And like all trolls he/she can be a scientist, or the President of The United States or whatever they want you or I to believe they are. And use all the mumbo jumbo to back up their faux credentials in the name of getting a rise out of you and everyone else reading and posting here.

But so you know Nerd (and I suspect you are aware of this) you won, by him/her refusing to back up their claims with evidence and then bailing on you.

Those ain't alien bacteria, unomi...but I suspect you know that already.

Posted by: harold | March 6, 2011 9:23 PM

whywhatwhen -

Sorry, I must have been confused - I thought you had said that you weren't a chemist. Apologies for the very basic stuff about organic chemistry, although others may find it useful.

At any rate, my other points about bacteria on meteorites still stands, and my question about Fox News is still open.

Posted by: BatteryIncluded | March 6, 2011 9:37 PM

This seems to be the third time Hoover cries wolf. So why this time (also relying in morphology) be an Earth-shatering paper?

As Kieth noted: "Is there a proposal he submitted to NASA to obtain funding? - and why is NASA silent? If not, then why is this research being done with a NASA affiliation using NASA facilities - and (again) why is NASA silent?"

Posted by: Fukuda | March 6, 2011 9:55 PM

ok, I lost it way before reaching the end of the article.

Now I've seen what lies at the end of it: Pigmented psychrophile bacteria + red colored surface on Europa = Bacteria on Europa!

Pretty much all parts of the entire article would have never gotten past peer review...

Posted by: blunted | March 6, 2011 10:10 PM

@BatteryIncluded

No-one thinks Murchison was from Mars. Again from composition its likely to have come from a comet - at least we know there was water on its parent body. Mars meteorites are generally basaltic shergottites or olivine/peridotite.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | March 6, 2011 10:17 PM

whywhatnow

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2011 10:20 PM

whywhatwhen:

You're a fucking idiot and a troll.

I have little understanding of [chemistry] myself, but I know that the terms "organic" and "volatiles" both exclude water.

Do you really know, or are you a fucking idiot and a troll?

If you have anything meaningful to say on the topic of this thread, like "Wow! This study is total crap!" then you could do it at any time. Otherwise, wasting another minute stomping a troll like you is not on my list of priorities this evening. Others may feel differently, but you've really given no reason for anyone to respond to you, other than disgust for your treating this thread like it was your litter box.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2011 10:25 PM

PZ, mine is only really shiny on one side. The other isn't quite as shiny. Isn't that data significant? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO HIDE??@!!1??

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 6, 2011 10:25 PM

Hmm...is WWW Hoover himself perhaps???

Posted by: irvin700 | March 6, 2011 10:27 PM

I admit, I was fooled by power from authority. I ASSUMED that this guy would have thought it was something else rather than claiming it's extraterritorial. Since I assumed that he did not, no other way to know that it just MIGHT be extraterrestrial. I guess he lost his Occam's Razor that day.

Man, when I heard it the first time though, exogenesis was the first thing that came to my mind.

Posted by: SC OM | March 6, 2011 10:43 PM

the fuck.

It's not cyanobacteria. ffs.

Profanity is not helping your case. I expect better from commenters on an alleged science blog.

*giggles, runs*

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | March 6, 2011 10:48 PM

The Kuiper belt is 50 degrees Kelvin.

> pedant trivia mode = OFF

Posted by: blunted | March 6, 2011 10:56 PM

There is not much "maybe" about the origin of the CC meteorites being comets either. It's the leading hypothesis - and for good reason.

Posted by: Whoamomma | March 6, 2011 11:35 PM

Why should a person mistrust FOX news about this? In fact, if it wasn't for FOX, one might never know that palm trees grow in Wisconsin! ;)

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | March 6, 2011 11:55 PM

This whole mess reminds me of Frobisher's "piece of a black stone". He was exploring in the area between Greenland and Hudson's Bay back in 1576, and picked up a rock. Back in London, three experts examined it and declared it worthless. The fourth guy, admittedly a flatterer, declared it to be gold ore. Further expeditions and some unjeezely cold mining brought back tonnes of useless rock, which was processed extensively before reality set in and the stuff was used as road gravel.

This current fuss is about a probably-flawed re-examination of a meteorite that has been examined many times, and is of a well-known, rare type. People who want it to be a big find are convinced that it is what they want it to be, based on little or no evidence. Everyone else is waiting for evidence, and talking about the fact there is no good case for the extraordinary claim, which confuses and infuriates the believers.

Posted by: chikeukaegbu | March 7, 2011 12:27 AM

Our Ignorance is not proof of Their absence!

Check this blog post out. 'I have Proof That Aliens and UFO's exist'

http://chikeukaegbu.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/ihaveproofthataliensandufosexist/

Aliens exist. Their proof is called ‘Other Planets’. Planets don’t just have nothing in them. The fact that we have not found the right technology to find out who or what is in them, does not mean that they are uninhabited.

I believe in Aliens and UFO’s. Yes I said it! UFO’s exist. Ask me how I know? Because The Universe is not just too large for us to be the only living creatures in it, but we are also, almost insignificant compared to its mysterious size and composition.

I have always believed that we weren’t the only beings on the Universe. In fact, if you ask me, I think I have a very valid proof for this.

Look at the human body. It is made up of cells, tissues, organs, systems that make up the organism (in this case, MAN). Everything has its function in its world (or its planet) inside of the human body (universe); the liver, kidneys, brain, lungs, bones, etc. They work together, but also independently for the proper functioning of our bodies. Cells interact just like we do, send messages, procreate, protect and respond to threats and dangers, just like we do. To the cell, the tissue becomes its universe for which it might not comprehend its entire functionality because it functions within itself to effectively work. Same applies to the tissue with respect to the organs, and the organs with respect to the entire body.

Each of these organs might know of each other because messages are constantly being transmitted across the entire body, but there is no proof (atleast I do not know of any), which says that the eyes understand the workabilities of the ureters and vice versa. So to the eye, there might not even be a ureter as far as it is concerned. Does that mean that the ureter does not exist? NO!

more on my blog: www.chikeukaegbu.wordpress.com

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | March 7, 2011 12:51 AM

Thanks, chikeukaegbu. We needed a bit more surreality here. That our ignorance is not proof of their absence is pretty damned obvious, and doesn't need an exclamation mark.

Likewise, the ignorance of an examiner is not proof of their presence, whoever "they" are, in this case, astrobacteria.

Speaking of ignorance, you could have made an active link out of your blog address.

And, chikeukaegbu, honeychile ... you are a ding-dong.

Posted by: ic348 | March 7, 2011 2:10 AM

The key turn in the argument is over the supposed morphological similarity between terrestrial bacteria and the things Hoover sees using FESEM to analyze some carbonaceous meteorites. So? Background stars and residual speckles can at first glance "look" like an imaged extrasolar planet; starspot activity can definitely "look" like a radial-velocity detected planet. To paraphrase an astronomer in my field, there are only two kinds of data: bad data (which you toss) and ugly data (which is usable but requires a lot of care to characterize and remove noise/contamination. There's no such thing as a perfect dataset or a sample free from possible contamination.

I don't do meteoritics, and it's been a long time since I've had microbio. However, the sources of contamination here are just too obvious. It's entirely unclear where these samples were for few decades after they fell to the ground and under what conditions they were preserved (if they weren't just sitting out in the sunshine). If these samples have fractures/micro-fissures then contamination need not be confined to surface layers. The author doesn't demonstrate that contamination does not impact his results but merely declares it to be so. Everything else seems like a lot of hand-waving mixed with jargon.

All of these things should have been brought up during the review process, but it's not clear that there even was one (Instead we get invitations to submit a critique ... *after* the paper has been published!). This is not the way real scientific journals work. For an example of how it should have worked, see Rosie Redfield's critique and especially look at the attention to methodological flaws/ambiguities that she cites. If this garbage were submitted to Icarus or Astrophysical Journal the referee would have eviscerated it.

Instead, the editor of the "peer reviewed Journal of Cosmology" is this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoZZKUOls9o&playnext=1&list=PL41943E4415AC7A3D

Posted by: John Morales | March 7, 2011 3:21 AM

[meta]

Only a missing winkie fails to mark Balstrome's comment as sarcastic.

Posted by: Lyn M: Just Lyn M. | March 7, 2011 3:29 AM

I call cupcake bingo on Unomi at 141!

Continuing to read, going for double bingo!

Posted by: theophontes (θεός γαμώτο) | March 7, 2011 3:44 AM

@ John Morales

a circle is complete, since your link links here.

True.
^{***checks bait and casts out again ***}
Nuthin' biting though....
^{*** Sighs...***}
... just the usual suspects.
^{*** offers John M. cigarette. Stares expectantly off into cyberspace. ***}

Posted by: Protoplasmoid | March 7, 2011 4:10 AM

To be fair, Phil Plait has commented on this. here she blows . Still doesn't change my assessment of him being about as useful and interesting as David Brooks, but, hey, he wrote about it.

Posted by: Nightjar | March 7, 2011 4:55 AM

But I'm glad I managed to derail you all even temporarily into a discussion of the scientific claims that Myers so blithely glossed over.

Hm. The morphological similarities are the most important argument in that paper. It's the only thing that could support the extraordinary and outrageous claim that those are fossilized cyanobacteria. Without that, there's nothing left. Seriously, what else is there to it? Going from "aminoacids! virtually no nitrogen! like in fossils!" to "fossilized cyanobacteria!" makes about as much sense as going from "flagella! It's so complex and irreducible!" to "Jesus! He died on the cross for our sins!"

It just doesn't compute. Not in the way you seemed to think it does.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/2UFUJRN4nZaLYLgin.6xTNeg8MMGbXvafA--#6da0e | March 7, 2011 6:27 AM

In computer science, we had a similar issue over the summer, where someone had claimed that they had resolved the infamous P vs NP problem.

This paper associated with this claim turned out to be smoke and mirrors, and you had the same sense that there was a lot of wishful thinking from people who wanted it to be true.

One of the differences between what happened there and what I see on this blog is that there was a greater degree of professionalism in dealing with the claim. I am going to assume that most of the people commenting on this blog are not professional academics but rather amateurs. At least I hope so, because this level of political/emotional prejudice does not belong in civil discourse among scientists.

In our case, the lack of strong condemnation led outsiders to take the claim more seriously than they should have. But that is the cost of being professional. Similar to this case, there was the issue that the guy's background made some people take the claim more seriously. But even if the claim is complete garbage, then it still deserves a sanitized review, given the author's credentials. The review should include questions about methodology and serious flaws, but give the author a chance to explain or clear up any of these concerns. Once the finding has been shown to be completely bogus, the author has lost their credibility forever, and hopefully at that point both them and their employer are severely embarrassed. Until then, condemnation should be reserved and only the facts should be reviewed.

Posted by: David N | March 7, 2011 7:14 AM

Common mistake, but there's no longer such a thing as "degree Kelvin". It's just kelvin (lower k in kelvin, for the unit, upper K is the symbol - eg 50 kelvin or 50K). This is to indicate that it is not relative to anything, but is an absolute measure.

As an aside, I think someone said that 50 K wasn't far from absolute zero. That's kind of true numerically but let us not forget that such temperature scales are kind of misleading at that end -- there is a much larger difference between, say, 50 K and 1 K than between 350 K and 301 K.

/irrelevant observations

Posted by: KG | March 7, 2011 8:09 AM

I don't care where it comes from - that's a genetic fallacy. You are right however that we would be silly not to note its from a dodgy journal. - blunted

Hey, well done! You managed to contradict yourself in successive sentences. Now, for the thread's star prize, how about doing it within a single sentence?

Posted by: TheTruthPlease | March 7, 2011 8:48 AM

Of course! If a story appears on Fox News or has an "audience of conservative Christians", it must not be true. I am so glad that some of you were able to remind the rest of us about those obscure, but extremely valid and import, scientific research principles. If, on the other hand, it appears on NBC or in the New York Times, it is most likely true. Pure genius. "Fox News = bad science". "NBC, et al = Good Science". "Christians = Bad Scientists" "Atheists = Good Scientists". I get it! Thanks guys!

Lest you think that I might be a supporter of Hoover's finding or the Journal of Cosmology, I am not. I just enjoy the "rational thinking" in PZ's response and the comments praising his wisdom. For the rest of us, isn't it fun to watch one crackpot scientist going after another one?

Posted by: KG | March 7, 2011 9:00 AM

If a story appears on Fox News or has an "audience of conservative Christians", it must not be true. - ONoNotTheTruthPlease

Since Faux News is, AFAIK, the only "news organisation" to go to court to establish its right to lie, it's at least a fair assumption that they make no attempt to establish the truth of what they say.

You appear to have missed the specific criticisms PZ makes of the paper. But then, as a defender of Faux News, your acquaintance with the truth is clearly a remote one.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 7, 2011 9:38 AM

If, on the other hand, it appears on NBC or in the New York Times, it is most likely true.

Maybe you didn't notice that the story did also appear on msnbc.com's cosmic log and on the NYTimes' dotearth blog. You may also not have noticed that no one made such a claim.

Posted by: JeffreyD | March 7, 2011 9:41 AM

TheTruthPlease? Seriously? Go for it, I love a bit of cabaret with morning coffee.

Posted by: Steve2112 | March 7, 2011 9:46 AM

You guys are too funny. So, you are saying that if Fox News said "on a clear day the sky is blue"...you wouldn't even look. You'd say "Well, it's Faux News, it's obviously a hoax". Quite pathetic. Instead of scientifically attacking the research, you attack the vehicle of distribution. If a blind leprachan appearded and told me the sky is blue...I'd at least check before dismissing the hallucination. And just because the idea sounds preposterous, let's not dismiss the avenue of research so quickly. In fact, let's persue it with even more diligence.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 9:50 AM

You guys are too funny. So, you are saying that if Fox News said "on a clear day the sky is blue"...you wouldn't even look

No you idiot.

We're saying that if Fox news reports something we'll look at it skeptically, even more so that any other publication because of their long history of sucking at science reporting.

Posted by: SC OM | March 7, 2011 9:53 AM

If a blind leprachan appearded and told me the sky is blue...I'd at least check before dismissing the hallucination.

Dumbest comment on a thread with much competition.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 7, 2011 9:56 AM

What difference does it make where a science story breaks?

Posted by: JeffreyD | March 7, 2011 10:08 AM

TheTruthPlease - beautiful, total miss on all points that matter. Excellent. No more for a bit please, I need to get my breath back.

Posted by: KG | March 7, 2011 10:13 AM

What difference does it make where a science story breaks? - ONoNotTheTruthPlease

I assume you're currently getting your information on the Libyan uprising from Libyan State Television.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/ZAgm3Bs9xuWOqEl3YOMjsGvwApeO#18ba0 | March 7, 2011 10:21 AM

A very small point: I've seen a couple of references here to the unlikeliness of parallel evolution producing the same kinds of microcritters here and Elsewhere. From my utterly amateur reading of the paper, he's not claiming parallel evolution. He's claiming it happened out there and then landed here. Which is not a *less* extraordinary claim, but a different one.

Posted by: harold | March 7, 2011 10:23 AM

@blunted -

I'm not arguing these are bacteria by the way - just that a lot of people are talking "no water" or "too cold" ands thats just not the case.

1) I said "extreme temperature" - although most of the time atmosphereless objects in space are going to be extremely cold, under some circumstances they can also be extremely hot. This does not argue that such things make a suitable environment for terrestrial life. Water is common in the universe. There's plenty of (solid) water in Uranus and Neptune. Water is necessary for earth-like life, not sufficient for earth-like life. My points about gravity and an atmosphere still stand.

When people talk about "life on Mars", often invoking water, they are talking about the idea that self-replicating life could have arisen, independently, perhaps in a similar way as on earth, on the planet Mars, at some time in the past. That suggestion, although also very controversial and not yet supported by data, is far less extreme. Mars is a planet with an atmosphere, earth-like mass (and therefore gravity), and earth-like distance from the sun. And no-one is suggesting that fully formed prokaryotes from Mars colonized earth.

BUT HERE'S THE THING -

The point is that a present day meteorite is a grossly unsuitable environment for terrestrial-like life. And that's obvious.

You're nitpicking on and on about that environment, even to the extent of somewhat misrepresenting the points that others have made.

Why? It's an outrageous claim to state that earth-like prokaryotes live on meteors, and it's a double outrage to make the claim and then, instead of explaining how it could be properly tested, attempt to support it with a bunch of irrelevant, subjective electron microscopy work.

Oh, and by the way, it also occurred to me that this guy is implying that earth was colonized by these meteorite bacteria. That would mean that not only did they survive for some time on a meteorite in outer space, but that they survived the passage of the meteorite through earth's atmosphere. And why does he think it is more likely that life originated on a meteorite or comet than on earth?

Again, I support the guy's right to make any claim he wants, but claims this extraordinary need very strong evidence to be supported.

I can't help noticing that, and this may not apply to you, while most of the people with a biomedical background here have some clue about basic physics and chemistry (because that is REQUIRED for biomedical degrees; I took a little extra chemistry and statistics myself), some people seem to have a clue about astronomy but no clue about the basic biology of cellular organisms. That seems to be the case for the guy whose work we are discussing. And in my view, if you want to talk about life in outer space, you should know something about BOTH.

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 10:26 AM

Like so many people I have in fact seen alien ships and spoken with them. They are as real as you and me. In the future a lot of these so called scientists like the one who wrote this article are going to feel pretty stupid after dismissing evidence that does not coincide with their religious belief. I have found so many self proclaimed "scientists" to be completely lacking in the scientific method when approaching heretical ideas that don't fit with their dogmatic universal model. This guy is a hack as are most of the responders. It was for people like Myers and these other mindless FOX haters that Einstein dropped out of school, no need for the blind to lead the visionary.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 7, 2011 10:31 AM

TheTruthPlease (henceforth TTP),
Where one gets one's news matters--just as how one gets one's news matters. No source is 100% reliable, and not all sources are equally reliable.

In the case of this particular case, we have a "News" organization that has sued to claim that its right to lie is protected by the first Amendment--not encouraging. We look further to see if other organizations are reporting the story and find that they are--but that the original source material in all cases is the "Journal" article in question. OK, so we go ant look at that.

Big credibility problem. The IJC ranks well below The Onion as a reliable source of scientific news. Why? Because their process sucks. They don't have reliable peer reiew. Their articles often contradict known science...

Then there is history. Other researchers have been taken in by the very same sorts of investigations on other meteorites (e.g. the Martian meteorites in ~1996).

Finally there is the fact that exceptional claims require exceptional evidence, and Hoover utterly fails here.

Method matters. The scientific method is the only reliable method we've found for understanding the world. Hoover didn't follow it here.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 7, 2011 10:41 AM

In the future a lot of these so called scientists like the one who wrote this article are going to feel pretty stupid after dismissing evidence that does not coincide with their religious belief.

Oh, and I run SETI@Home on my home computer.

Posted by: harold | March 7, 2011 10:51 AM

@Steve2112

You guys are too funny. So, you are saying that if Fox News said "on a clear day the sky is blue"...you wouldn't even look. You'd say "Well, it's Faux News, it's obviously a hoax". Quite pathetic. Instead of scientifically attacking the research, you attack the vehicle of distribution.

If you have the reading and writing skills to have written this, then you must know that you are lying. It is the content of the original paper, which is linked to and discussed extensively, which is being critiqued.

Fox News is also being accurately critiqued for inappropriately reporting, and the accurate point that Fox News is especially poor at science reporting, even relative to other mainstream media, is being made.

Indeed, one would have to be quite a stupid fool not to differentiate between various vehicles of distribution. While none are perfect, some are far better than others, and some are so unreliable that bothering with them is a waste of time. I don't give credence to claims about aliens from the National Enquirer.

But no-one said that it is wrong ONLY BECAUSE it was reported on Fox.

If a blind leprachan appearded and told me the sky is blue...I'd at least check before dismissing the hallucination.

Your analogy merely represents your distortion of the situation. The claim that "sky is blue" is non-controversial and easily checked. The source of the bacteria on meteorites claim is an ordinary human being. It is the claim that is extreme.

And just because the idea sounds preposterous, let's not dismiss the avenue of research so quickly. In fact, let's persue it with even more diligence.

I strongly support anyone's right to research this claim to their hearts content, using private resources, of course.

Having said that, this is one of the stupidest things I've ever read. Of course it is a waste of time and resources to pursue unsupported claims that are preposterous on their face.

Your BFF said -

True critical science should not devolve into discussions about politics and religion. "My political or religious point of view is more scientific than yours."

However, sometimes this is the case. There are some religious and scientific positions which incorporate science denial. A lot of people who hold these positions are the target audience for Fox, and that's reflected in Fox's even-worse-than-average science reporting.

BUT LET'S CUT TO THE CHASE. FOR YOU GUYS, THIS ISN'T ABOUT CYANOBACTERIA FROM ANOTHER WORLD. IT'S ABOUT FOX NEWS.

I mentioned above that it doesn't bother me if a media outlet I consume is wrong about something. but it bothers you. At one level, your fragile self-image is built on propaganda from Fox. At another, deeper, level, you have doubts. And when Fox is in any criticized, it touches a nerve, and you have an aggression/panic reaction. Not much I can do about that. Maybe some day you'll work it out for yourselves.

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 10:59 AM

FOX is no more dishonest than CNN and MSNBC, they just happen to espouse the conservative side of the false left/right paradigm. You want evidence of aliens but the fact is, aliens are only willing to give evidence to a few select people in the form of experiences, no one gets to go home with a "ray-gun". They told me they are waking society up slowly because of the shock it will cause but they have to wake us up before we wake ourselves up. Our technology will reach the point in the near future where you will be able to scan the sky and identify objects many miles away with just your cell phone. There are a lot of midless FOX haters though, I could remove the blue from the sky in their minds by simply putting it on FOX. The thing is though, religion comes from the aliens for the purpose of social order and yes, we are arriving at the point in history where religion will become obsolete. And you can have your laughs as the FOX lover's weeping and gnashing of teeth when they learn there is no God spirit or afterlife, the beliefs that glued our society together for so many years and provided salvation for repentant criminals.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | March 7, 2011 11:07 AM

So, you are saying that if Fox News said "on a clear day the sky is blue"...you wouldn't even look

No, the exact opposite. If Fox News said this, we'd always look first, before believing the report.

That's the point.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | March 7, 2011 11:10 AM

FOX is no more dishonest than CNN and MSNBC

FOX reports outright falsehoods and claims them to be truth. When called out on it, not infrequently they refuse to retract the false claim.

Neither MSNBC or CNN does this as routinely as FOX.

There is no comparison between them.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 11:13 AM

You want evidence of aliens but the fact is, aliens are only willing to give evidence to a few select people in the form of experiences, no one gets to go home with a "ray-gun". They told me they are waking society up slowly because of the shock it will cause but they have to wake us up before we wake ourselves up.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh wait you're serious.

Posted by: Cannabinaceae | March 7, 2011 11:16 AM

<disclaimer>
IIRC, Ogvorbis is tall and bearded.
</disclaimer>

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | March 7, 2011 11:25 AM

This claim is more than simply extraordinary, in the way the 1996 claim of nanobacteria in a Mars meteorite was, but if you think about it, its even more extraordinary than that.

One, the authors are actually claiming that these critters are cyanobacteria. Not only are cyanobacteria highly evolved and specialized, but they are specialized for oxygenic photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria NEED to be close to sunlight, which means they CAN'T be shielded from radiation and vacuum deep inside a rock where sunlight can't penetrate. Of all the possible prokaryotes that one can speculate to have a chance of existing in a meteorite or comet, cyanobacteria are perhaps the least likely ones.

Two, the authors are claiming these are fossils. Fossils form in sedimentary rocks. It is one thing to find a meteorite that we know was once part of a sedimentary rock layer on the surface of another planet. It is something else to claim fossils in meteorites which supposedly formed in space, in the absence of sedimentary processes, as these are. To make such a claim plausible you need to propose a mechanism of fossilization that can occur out in space.

It is hard enough distinguishing microfossils and proving biologic origin from ancient rocks right here on earth, where we KNOW that living things were probably present.

This sort of extraordinary claim really does require extraordinary evidence. The level of evidence presented in this paper, of images of shapes and arguments towards chemical signature, is of the same kind, but even less rigorous, than the evidence proposed for the mars meteorite in 1996. And if this level of evidence was not sufficient for a mars origin rock, which came from a planet at a time when we knew there was water and a thick atmosphere, then it is even less sufficient for a claim from a meteorite of actual extra-planetary origin.

The kind of evidence that for me would be more convincing than SEM of vague shapes would be a SEM of a cross section through one of these putative fossil filaments showing evidence of at least a bilayer membrane and some internal structure. THAT would be pretty compelling.

And if the argument is actual extant organisms, then the definitive evidence would be a culture, with back-up data ruling out earthly contamination.

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | March 7, 2011 11:32 AM

@ISawIt

If your evidence is impossible to distinguish from delusion, what kind of evidence is that, exactly? I mean, clearly you must acknowledge that there are insane people in the world who have incredibly convincing delusions, right? You don't think every muttering schizophrenic is actually being followed by the CIA, do you?

So if the human mind is capable of creating incredibly vivid, realistic delusions why is this not the most likely culprit in your scenario? Oh yeah, you're not crazy.

Seek help.

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | March 7, 2011 11:35 AM

Wow, look! A bunch of semi-literate loons frothing at the mouth. (Somebody get some towels. This much foam on the floor is probably a slip hazard.) Look, kiddies, no one is saying there can't be life on other planets. In fact, hell, this is a site full of geeks - I'm sure lots of us want there to be life on other planets. It's just that, well, dearies, saying "this little squiggle looks like that little squiggle" and "look, amino acids!" really isn't evidence that there is life on other planets. If you want to complain about how PZ is just dismissing the paper because of its source, well, first of all you can't read. Second, answer this: WHY wasn't it published somewhere reputable instead of in a den of frothing cranks? I mean that as a sincere question, not a rhetorical one. Why do you think the paper was published where it was?

Oh, and I Saw It: you're delusional. You should get that checked out.

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | March 7, 2011 11:45 AM

I Saw It, if you actually care about the truth of your claims, you should subject them to rigorous testing. Get thee to a competent psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist is able to make the aliens go away, well, you've learned something. If she's not, you've narrowed your options: your symptoms are currently intractable, OR the aliens are real. In that case, you come back and tell us. Sound good?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 11:51 AM

Phil's followup on the subject.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 7, 2011 11:55 AM

My friends, the universe has always been.

John McCain? Is that you?

The alien told me it is a known fact that the human race will be a respected force in this quadrant of the galaxy for millions of years.

Events millions of years in the future don't qualify as "a known fact." Your alien is omniscient, a time-traveler, lying, or nonexistent because you aren't telling the truth. Since you are clearly deluded or a troll, I'm sticking with the last possibility.

Posted by: twitter.com/GiseleNoel | March 7, 2011 11:56 AM

I'm tired of scientists using big words like pareidolia to intimidate people out of the truth. Just because there's no evidence the stuff in the space rock was ever alive and it's compared to pictures of living things on a different scale from this planet, doesn't mean it's not proof of aliens.

Seeing is believing, just look at this Elvis rock as proof: http://www.elvisinfonet.com/image-files/elvis_rock.jpg

Posted by: Steve2112 | March 7, 2011 12:00 PM

Posted by: harold | March 7, 2011 10:51 AM
At one level, your fragile self-image is built on propaganda from Fox.
_____________________

Talk about "fragile self image". You have the ego to judge me a Fox robot based on one post? LOL...
The ego is strong in you. I'm sure it won't even register if I siad you couldn't be more wrong. You'll continue to make incorrect assumptions disguised as facts to keep your giant, but fragile, ego alive and well.

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | March 7, 2011 12:03 PM

No no no no. 'I Saw It' is wrong!

But it's not said poster's fault. The aliens are punking her*. She is receiving messages, with all of the information she's related, but they're just a wind-up.

I know because the same aliens are in contact with me, and they told me as much. We have regular meetings, in fact, on said poster's progress into the fevered dream of deluded madness their telepathic transmissions have induced.

As to why they do such things, well (cue spoooooky synthesizer cue) their motives are inscrutable. But my guess is it's mostly because they're bored, and they don't have cable.

Oh... What's that, Xeni***? Speak no more of this, lest it ruin the joke?

As you wish, oh almond-eyed one.

(*/Yes, 'her'. The poster is a she. If she does not think so: surprise! Another revelation from the aliens for ya right there, dear! Feel free to adjust your social life accordingly. Or not. As an enlightened portal through which the Higher Ones™** communicate their celestial mysteries, I am far, far beyond judging.)

(**/This is what they call themselves. But they were smoking up at the time, and giggling a lot, so I suspect they may also go by other names.)

(***/No relation to Xenu, Xena, or Xenon, oddly enough. But, mostly coincidentally, Xeni did once run a 'zine. She was young, and the alien employment market was pretty lean.)

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 12:09 PM

You morons don't know whether I am delusional or not. You are delusional for assuming that you do. You are no different than an ignorant Spanish Inquisitor who tells someone they are delusional for believing they are not eternally damned for not believing in Catholicism.

Uh no. We'd be more like the people telling people who believe in wholly unsupported nonsense that they are believing in wholly unsupported nonsense.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 7, 2011 12:12 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uprjmoSMJ-o

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 12:17 PM

Did the aliens tell you the secret formula to Coca-cola?

Posted by: Nightjar | March 7, 2011 12:22 PM

Wow, this thread is getting more and more surreal.

Seriously, where are all the crackpots coming from?

Anyway, let it not be said that it's the skeptics who are shying away from discussing the substance of the paper. Substantive criticisms have been made, but somehow the crackpots prefer to ignore them. Not our fault.

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | March 7, 2011 12:29 PM

"You can not imagine the extent of my contact."

No, but you can!

Zing!

Come back with some evidence that isn't self-confirming delusion, please. Something like physical evidence or verifiable predictions of future events would be fantastic.

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 12:43 PM

How do I know the aliens know the future? Because they have shown me the future and then I was there to see the future fulfilled. I also know a number of people who I have told about these predictions and they were only slightly more amazed than me to see them come to fruition. The alien showed me the machine they use to predict the future. It looks kind of like a transmission from a car, conical and metallic. He asked me "do you think it is possible to send information backward in time one hundredth of a second? I had to think about that one for a minute but I said "sure, I suppose it is possible." And he said that their scientists had figured this out long ago. Once they can send a particle back even a fraction of a second the process can be repeated over and over, using a type of turbine, and the information can be sent backward indefinetly. So no, time travel is not possible because your atomic structure would be completely destroyed if you tried for even a second but sending information backward in time is a fact that I have witnessed. For thousands of years people all over the world have reported dreaming the future and when I discovered they were not lying I was truly amazed. These dreams are in fact downloads from an alien race.

Maybe psychologists will explain some day how the human brain is so lacking in visualization, in imagination, that only the most talented artists can see complex pictures in their minds eye while Moe and Joe lunchbucket that represent 95% of the population can only see vague images. But then they go to sleep and the imagery is better than hi-def, better than CGI, and it is precise in its three dimensional interactions while the experiencer rarely questions the surrealness of his surroundings and the odd behavior of his loved ones. The symbolism viewed in dreams often seems so coincidental to the mundane minded and intricate to the spiritualist and apropo to the psychiatrist believer in the subconcious who so many of you refer to. News Flash: there is no such thing as the subconcious mind. There is no evidence of a brain hiding within our brains that is smarter and more imaginatively inclined than the host mind outside of assumptions based upon behavioral observation. And yet, we are to believe Einstein discovered special relativety through dreams where his presumed second brain did quite a bit of thinking for him. It would be an active imagination indeed to come up with such paradigm changing ideas, at first the laughing stock of half the scientific community, but vindicated when the atomic bombs went off over Japan which likely would not have happened if not for the foundational knowledge contained in relativety. But even Einstein was the recipient of a download and did you know he never believed in the theory of universal expanion? How could he? It disproves much of his theory because if there is no such thing as fixed space, no up, no down, and distance itself is an illusion then there is no such thing as speed. Speed relative to the velocity of an object sure, but we only know that object's velocity relative to another object and when we see that the entire viewed universe is in motion we know that all speed is relative, including the speed of light. And if there is truly no such thing as speed or fixed space then the 186k m/s limit becomes just a measure of something that goes incomprehensibly fast and not a limit any more than the "sound barrier" is a limit. And our extreme velocity relative to the velocity and vector of theoretic matter on the polar opposite point on the universal should already be pushing us toward inifinite mass

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 12:47 PM

Here is a prediction the alien told me back in 1990: He said Obama will win the 2012 election. He also said 9/11 would lead to democracy in Egypt, but I suppose you already knew that.

Posted by: Berny G | March 7, 2011 12:48 PM

I Saw It,
Do your caretakers know you've slipped your straight-jacket and are accessing the Internet while off your meds?

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 7, 2011 12:52 PM

I Saw It,
Fuck all that political stuff. Did the Aliens tell you who would win the NCAA Basket ball Championship? The Kentucky Derby? Something we can make some cash on?

Oh, and to attribute democracy in Egypt to 9/11 is a serious stretch. 1)They don't have democracy yet. 2)The influence of 9/11 is nonexistent.

Posted by: Lifer | March 7, 2011 12:53 PM

Oh also, I love how Einstein's theory was vindicated by atomic weapons.

I don't really travel much in the all-knowing-time-traveling-space-aliens-are-sending-me-special-dreams circle of influence. Is this rant cut and pasted from somewhere?

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 12:55 PM

Here is a prediction the alien told me back in 1990: He said Obama will win the 2012 election. He also said 9/11 would lead to democracy in Egypt, but I suppose you already knew that.

Also, aliens never contact idiots, that is an assumption you have made based solely on your arrogant view of reality on not based upon any observable data at all. I have a genius IQ but like Reverend Phelps you can't recognize that because I see beyond your ignorant books. Aliens only contact people of above average intelligence and that is what perplexes serious skeptics. You are not a serious skeptic Glen Davidson, you are a presumptous old fool who believes things based upon a lack of evidence rather than evidence and makes bad quotations of unfunny comedians who in turn cite Hollywood stereotypes of alien contactees which are not based upon actual experiencers but writer's conceptions. If you can piece together anything I am talking about, I would be impressed but I fear your ignorance coupled with your failed attempts at humor are the more dominant elements of your consciousness.

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 12:58 PM

Here is a prediction the alien told me back in 1990: He said Obama will win the 2012 election. He also said 9/11 would lead to democracy in Egypt, but I suppose you already knew that.

Also, aliens never contact idiots, that is an assumption you have made based solely on your arrogant view of reality on not based upon any observable data at all. I have a genius IQ but like Reverend Phelps you can't recognize that because I see beyond your ignorant books. Aliens only contact people of above average intelligence and that is what perplexes serious skeptics. You are not a serious skeptic Glen Davidson, you are a presumptous old fool who believes things based upon a lack of evidence rather than evidence and makes bad quotations of unfunny comedians who in turn cite Hollywood stereotypes of alien contactees which are not based upon actual experiencers but writer's conceptions. If you can piece together anything I am talking about, I would be impressed but I fear your ignorance coupled with your failed attempts at humor are the more dominant elements of your consciousness.

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | March 7, 2011 12:59 PM

@338

Wow, definitive evidence! Heck, even if you had published Barack Obama's name as a future major world leader in the nineties I would be impressed. Oh wait, you didn't publish it? Nevermind.

Posted by: Nightjar | March 7, 2011 1:02 PM

Also, I've never heard anyone claiming to have been abducted by cyanobacteria capable of predicting the future. And that settles it for me.

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 1:02 PM

Here is a prediction the alien told me back in 1990: He said Obama will win the 2012 election. He also said 9/11 would lead to democracy in Egypt, but I suppose you already knew that.

Also, aliens never contact idiots, that is an assumption you have made based solely on your arrogant view of reality on not based upon any observable data at all. I have a genius IQ but like Reverend Phelps you can't recognize that because I see beyond your ignorant books. Aliens only contact people of above average intelligence and that is what perplexes serious skeptics. You are not a serious skeptic Glen Davidson, you are a presumptous old fool who believes things based upon a lack of evidence rather than evidence and makes bad quotations of unfunny comedians who in turn cite Hollywood stereotypes of alien contactees which are not based upon actual experiencers but writer's conceptions. If you can piece together anything I am talking about, I would be impressed but I fear your ignorance coupled with your failed attempts at humor are the more dominant elements of your consciousness.

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | March 7, 2011 1:03 PM

there's Phelps name again. Is this a troll calling card?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 1:05 PM

Is this our buddy Gabriel again?

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 1:07 PM

I don't have a copy of what so many people have been murdered to keep quiet. If I did I might be dead right now.

No, I didn't outsmart the aliens anymore than a dog can outsmart one of us. If they gave you a million tries you could never outsmart the aliens.

Posted by: KG | March 7, 2011 1:08 PM

I don't have a copy of what so many people have been murdered to keep quiet. If I did I might be dead right now. - I Lied About It

You fool! Don't you know PZ is an agent of the infamous "Men In Black", and will already have passed them your IP? You're doomed.

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 1:11 PM

Aliens don't probe people you moron. You really are a BigDumbChimp. What they do is install microchips in people. Dimwits like you quote pre-inforamation age subjects and unsophiticated comedians but to people who actually have intelligence you are just another illiterate inner city kid.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 1:17 PM

Aliens don't probe people you moron. You really are a BigDumbChimp. What they do is install microchips in people.

Yes but WHERE do they implant them? Hummm?

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 1:21 PM

No he isn't a member of MIB. He is another puffed up academic. Such and such group of academics agreed to give him a piece of paper which certifies that he passed X number of exams with at least a "C" average where he regurgitated over 70% of current, although amorphous when looked at on a timeline, theories by handpicked panels by the servants of the trillionaire technocracy. Congradulations.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 1:27 PM

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-
On this home by Horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore-
Is there- is there balm in Gilead?- tell me- tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | March 7, 2011 1:29 PM

I Saw It is a liar. Aliens don't implant microchips, the band Tool does.

Happened to a friend of mine.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 7, 2011 1:42 PM

Such and such group of academics agreed to give him a piece of paper which certifies that he passed X number of exams with at least a "C" average where he regurgitated over 70% of current, although amorphous when looked at on a timeline, theories by handpicked panels by the servants of the trillionaire technocracy.

Yes, this is precisely how one earns a doctoral degree in biology.
Multiple-choice tests.

Say, my alien-implanted microchip has been messing with my cellphone reception. Any tips?

Posted by: Cannabinaceae | March 7, 2011 1:47 PM

Hiss geniuos levil speling abillities ar startyng two covince mie.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 7, 2011 1:55 PM

amphiox, #308

This sort of thing is why Imma keep plugging you for mollification.

picochips? I thought that those were simply tortilla snacks that come with the salsa pre-applied.

Posted by: Nightjar | March 7, 2011 2:08 PM

amphiox, #308

This sort of thing is why Imma keep plugging you for mollification.

Yep. Me too.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 7, 2011 2:14 PM

Bad spelling is indeed a red hairing.
We need to concentrate on the veracity of the claims, no matter how badly spelt.

- Dreams of the future downloaded to implanted microchips
- Conversation with alien being in 1990
- Foreknowledge of 9/11 and Obama's imminent re-election.
- no probing

Frankly it's the last one that's bothering me.
Are you sure you weren't probed? Because that's just an extraordinary claim.

Posted by: kiki | March 7, 2011 2:16 PM

Apparently having a supra-genius IQ, and receiving help from technologically hyper-advanced aliens, isn't enough to stop Space Captain Crazypants from triple-posting. I guess sending information back in time is a cinch compared to hitting 'Submit' and waiting two minutes.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 7, 2011 2:25 PM

What are the logistics of someone who follows Phelps, is a young earth creationist yet believes in Aliens?

It seems to be like believing your life is being manipulated by the separate and competing actions of Vorlons and Smurfs.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 7, 2011 2:31 PM

Also quadrant?

Why would any intelligent race do something so stupid as to think that dividing AN ENTIRE GALAXY into fourths would be of any meaningful use to anyone?

"Oh yeah I left lunch or you...somewhere in China"

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 2:51 PM

That is because the other side of the galaxy is too far to travel to. It is unlikely we will ever reach the other side of the galaxy, 100,000 light years is quite a long way. If someone did they would not be able to signal us here because of signal dispersement.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 2:56 PM

It's odd to me that SO many self-proclaimed smart people are spending so much time arguing with a "nutcase"

You're confusing arguing with what's actually happening.

And there's plenty of criticism here and in other places on the net ripping the paper including NASA distancing themselves from it. At this point it's just a case of entertainment.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 7, 2011 2:56 PM

That is because the other side of the galaxy is too far to travel to. It is unlikely we will ever reach the other side of the galaxy, 100,000 light years is quite a long way. If someone did they would not be able to signal us here because of signal dispersement.

Do you realize what you just said was basically along the lines of "We can't walk to the moon because our legs would get tired" right?

Posted by: chikeukaegbu | March 7, 2011 3:03 PM

I have always believed that we weren’t the only beings on the Universe. In fact, if you ask me, I think I have a very valid proof for this.

Look at the human body. It is made up of cells, tissues, organs, systems that make up the organism (in this case, MAN). Everything has its function in its world (or its planet) inside of the human body (universe); the liver, kidneys, brain, lungs, bones, etc. They work together, but also independently for the proper functioning of our bodies. Cells interact just like we do, send messages, procreate, protect and respond to threats and dangers, just like we do. To the cell, the tissue becomes its universe for which it might not comprehend its entire functionality because it functions within itself to effectively work. Same applies to the tissue with respect to the organs, and the organs with respect to the entire body. Each of these organs might know of each other because messages are constantly being transmitted across the entire body, but there is no proof (at least I do not know of any), which says that the eyes understand the work-abilities of the ureters and vice versa. So to the eye, there might not even be a ureter as far as it is concerned. Does that mean that the ureter does not exist? NO!

Cells are created (born), carry out their duties, and die when they are old. In the same way, We are born, we live and we die. LIFE GOES ON! In my opinion, our contribution to the entire universe is a mystery we are yet to resolve, and might never will.

Now relating this to the universe: I believe we are, or part of a cell, tissue, organ or system that make up the Universe, or maybe a superior being (GOD). All of his actions, reactions, movements etc, affect us in one way or the other, and are called several things. Everything (planets and all that make up the universe, known and unknown) has its place, function, and composition, just like our cells, tissues and organs do. We do what we do, either to maintain a balance that enables the earth function properly for the upkeep of the Universe, or an imbalance for which the entire Universe will react to correct our malfunction; just like our bodies do.

In perspective, it is assumed that there are between 50 to 100 trillion (50 – 100,000,000,000,000) cells in the body. There might be more, or less. In like manner, it is speculated that there are about 200 billion galaxies in the universe, averaging about 150 billion stars each.

Lets assume that there are about 3 planets orbiting each star, if my math is still correct, (and I hope it is) that would roughly amount to 3 x 150 billion x 200 billion = 90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (90 sextillion) planets. We’d only just be 1 in all that.

That is equivalent to 1.1 x 10–²³. This is about 1/10 the diameter of an electron, which is smaller than the proton, way smaller than the nucleus, and definitely nothing close to the size of a cell. Go figure!

So according to my math, if there are actually between 50 and 100 trillion cells in the body, which is the basic unit of life, and there really are 90 sextillion planets; that’s between 900 million to 1.8 billion times more planets on the universe than there are cells in the human body.

And people doubt that there is the presence of ‘Other Life’ on the Universe?

I don’t think God stopped creating after He created MAN. The Bible just said HE rested on the 7th day. What did HE do after the 7th day, 8th day, 9th day, etc? Also didn’t HE also create the angels anyway? So if Christians believe in angels, and principalities and powers, why not ‘Other Life’? They in themselves are Aliens, don’t you think? #justsaying

more on this on my blog: chikeukaegbu.wordpress.com

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 3:05 PM

Probing is something that would be done by an ignorant cave dweller who believes himself to be a scientist. Or it is something that an ignorant cave dweller might believe an actual scientist is doing were he to observe medical procedures. A majority of morons who refer to this are actually getting their information from Southpark Episode #1, Cartman Gets and Anal Probe. There has never been a single person who has referred to that idiotic episode whether with specific knowledge or having hacked it from a third party who is not a complete drooling imbecile.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 7, 2011 3:09 PM

I don’t think God stopped creating after He created MAN. The Bible just said HE rested on the 7th day. What did HE do after the 7th day, 8th day, 9th day, etc? Also didn’t HE also create the angels anyway? So if Christians believe in angels, and principalities and powers, why not ‘Other Life’? They in themselves are Aliens, don’t you think? #justsaying

Think I found your problem.

Posted by: hankroberts | March 7, 2011 3:12 PM

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/03/nasa-statement.html

NASA Statement on Astrobiology Paper by Richard Hoover

"NASA is a scientific and technical agency committed to a culture of openness with the media and public. While we value the free exchange of ideas, data, and information as part of scientific and technical inquiry, NASA cannot stand behind or support a scientific claim unless it has been peer-reviewed or thoroughly examined by other qualified experts. This paper was submitted in 2007 to the International Journal of Astrobiology. However, the peer review process was not completed for that submission. NASA also was unaware of the recent submission of the paper to the Journal of Cosmology or of the paper's subsequent publication. Additional questions should be directed to the author of the paper." - Dr. Paul Hertz, chief scientist of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington

Keith's note: Here is how you contact "Mr." (not "Dr.") Richard Hoover at NASA...."

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 7, 2011 3:13 PM

Well one of them at any rate.

Also goddamn it you saucer heads, Scifi has to make some hand waves and ignore things to tell a story but if you're arguing for this stuff in reality PLEASE do everyone a favor and take a look at what scale we're talking about?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 7, 2011 3:15 PM

I had thought that space debris was a popular theory for life on Earth.

It's a popular speculation, with zero evidence supporting it.
Zero.
Nor is there any need for that hypothesis.
Life on Earth is pretty well matched to the conditions here on, you know, Earth. It started somewhere, and here seems by far the most parsimonious guess.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | March 7, 2011 3:23 PM

I have always believed that we weren’t the only beings on the Universe. In fact, if you ask me, I think I have a very valid proof for this....

On the 8th day, God created CAPS LOCK. And he saw that it wasn't good, but what the hell; he'd already done enough for those two witless morons in the garden, and Vishnu was hurrying him to make their 7 AM tee time.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | March 7, 2011 3:25 PM

It was for people like Myers and these other mindless FOX haters that Einstein dropped out of school, no need for the blind to lead the visionary.

I had no idea that FOX News was to be found in the German Empire and Switzerland in the 1890s. I also had no idea that it was those who hate FOX News who has been holding humanity back all of this this. I guess this hatred of an organization that has existed for less then two decades must be able to move through time. This is truly one of the most stupid things I have ever read.

(I wonder if the weird little troll realize that many US conservatives did not like Einstein because he was Jewish, atheist, promoted a science that threatened their concept of god and was a human rights advocate. They wanted him deported back to Germany.)

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 3:32 PM

We're approaching Time Cube

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 7, 2011 3:33 PM

There is no light speed barrier, not for energy, not for "matter" which are actually the same thing expressed with different physical properties due to their configurations.

So you have the math to prove Einstein wrong?

Would you like to share with the class?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 7, 2011 3:37 PM

Congratulations, this post is cited on Time's website

Great, the idiots should be arriving in force.

I SAW IT, looks like your cohorts are likely to be here soon.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 7, 2011 3:40 PM

@Rev

That saves him the time of actually building the microwave array to call home.

Posted by: Blondin | March 7, 2011 3:45 PM

I Saw It, can we see your interociter?

Posted by: Blattafrax | March 7, 2011 4:02 PM

If I walk in a winding pattern and reach a point that is measured to be exactly one mile from my starting point in a space of one hour, what is the speed I was walking? ,,,,,, Give up?

The answer is......drumroll.....unknown speed>one mile per hour. Since I was not walking in a straight line the distance I walked was greater than one mile.

I'll take this one. (From 10-year old memories of Feynman lectures.)

The problem is that anti-you has just taken a cunningly designed path (very similar to the one you have made) that will arrive at exactly the same time and poof you don't exist. In fact for any example other than the straight line, this will happen. So in effect, light either travels in straight lines or isn't there.

Next time you see your alien, I can recommend a book or two on basic quantum mechanics.

Posted by: I Saw It | March 7, 2011 4:14 PM

Dare I challenge Einstein Ing: Wielder of Snark Torpedoes? There is no such thing as speed nor fabric of space. What he was referring to as space time in models was not an actual fabric but a mathmatical model experssing fourth dimensional concepts in a covoluded semi-three dimensional but primarily two dimensional model. We now know that there really is no up or down is space and because that is so there is no such thing as a fixed object nor is there an actual thing as distance, only relative to the trajectory of bodies. Space really is space and there is no such thing as speed because of this. There is no light speed barrier because of this.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 7, 2011 4:17 PM

Who cares about what the aliens predicted or what they shoved up I Saw It's ass. I want to know what they looked like! And did they offer any snacks?

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | March 7, 2011 4:26 PM

Sorry...Imma noob... It's odd to me that SO many self-proclaimed smart people are spending so much time arguing with a "nutcase". I'd say he probably has the upper hand

Posted by: Blattafrax | March 7, 2011 4:43 PM

Dare I challenge Delia Smith Michel Roux? There is no such thing as bechamel nor pan-of-sauce. What she was referring to as pan-of-sauce in recipes was not an actual pan but a epicurian recipe expositing butter, egg, milk and flour concepts in a co-deluded semi-butter, milk and flour but primarily just flour and milk recipe. We now know that there really is no banana or orange is recipe and because that is so there is no such thing as lunch nor is there an actual thing as hunger, only relative to the time after breakfast. Food really is food and there are no such things as mealtimes because of this. There will be no buffet because of this.

Which I think explains everything.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 7, 2011 4:48 PM

If there was probing going on, then I suppose popcorn and 0.75l Diet Coke would be reasonable to expect.

Going to the movies must make for rather moving experiences for I Saw It in that case.

Posted by: Lancer | March 7, 2011 5:06 PM

Thank you for tearing this paper apart so that I don't have to waste my time doing it myself. I was a little worried around the start of this article that you were just going to use ad hominem to discredit this, but I'm glad that you got down to the facts before too long.

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 7, 2011 6:41 PM

I'm not as pessimistic about culture-based approaches, though. I think spores are capable of withstanding extremely harsh conditions for astounding periods of times, and we might find culturable life forms - which would be a lot more convincing than 1-2 µm sized blobules.

But cyanobacteria do not form spores.

Only gram-positive bacteria form spores, and they're a fairly small clade.

We don't know enough about how early life began on Earth or about the evolutionary forces that acted upon ancient bacteria to say that they couldn't have happened the same way on the comets that gave rise to Hoover's specimens. If we ever find living extraterrestrial life, we may well find whales, snakes, fish, apes and Cyanobacteria on a sister planet. Or not. We don't know enough to say that parallel evolution is impossible.

You don't know enough about these things. That doesn't make you able to claim that nobody else does either!

In reality, there's not the slightest evidence for the existence of any "evolutionary forces" other than mutation, selection, and drift. Mutation and drift depend on random chance, and that makes such painfully closely parallel evolution as Hoover claims to have detected extremely unlikely.

Natural selection is not random; it is determined by the environment. So, if you put identical organisms into identical environments that change in identical ways after identical amounts of time, you'll get similar results – but never identical ones, because mutation and drift are random, and because selection doesn't distinguish between different ways to solve the same problem.

So, to claim that the species Trichocoleus anagnostidis* exists twice is laughably improbable. No, "laughably" is not an exaggeration.

* I note that Hoover doesn't know how to distinguish genus and species names or how to spell them.

All the name calling and vilification is an unfair response.

No, it's precisely deserved. We scientists are picky about such things.

:-)

I look forward to more reasoned peer review, which the Journal has promised to publish on Monday.

<headshake>

Dude... you don't know what peer review means. It means that, when the editors of a journal receive a manuscript for publication, they send it to at least two competent colleagues of the author for review. These colleagues write detailed reviews of the manuscript (for free); they recommend to the editors whether to accept the manuscript for publication as is (this almost never happens), to require modifications (and of course which ones) before accepting it, or to reject it outright (because it's either inappropriate for that particular journal or simply utter garbage). The reviews are by default anonymous (the reviewers are allowed to sign them, but don't need to.) After the editors receive the reviews, they make their decisions, and only then, when the authors have made all modifications that the reviewers requested, is the manuscript published.

But the PZ Myers article and most of the criticism here seems less scientific and more BS than the paper it excoriates.

"Seems".

almost "organic" meteorites

You also don't know what "organic chemistry" means. Or rather you didn't till someone mentioned it later in the thread.

What about the evidence of the indigenous amino acids and strong bio-markers present? The article finds 8 of the 20 amino acids for life exist within the freshly fractured rock.

That's normal. Simple amino acids are fairly widespread in the universe, much more so than life could possibly be.

He also shows that the absence of nitrogen (used to prove it is not recent terrestrial material) is also not present in very old trilobyte fossils on earth, showing that after a certain age, nitrogen is no longer detectable in organic material -

Trilobite fossils consist of the calcium carbonate in their exoskeletons. They're limestone.

Cyanobacteria aren't supposed to contain minerals. When their organic molecules buzz off, nothing is left, unless they're replaced by minerals or something.

it does when it shows the level of nitrogen in organic material at the mammoth age still exists, and that it does not at the trilobyte fossil's age, just as we have with the meteroite "fossil." Put more simply, if the "fossil" is organic, we know that it must be older than the 32,000 year old mammoth hair because the hair (and mummy skin) still contains detectable nitrogen, and being able to decide the "fossils" age is pretty significant.

Hair is almost pure protein, and skin is mostly protein. Hair and skin of any age therefore contain nitrogen.

In fossils of any age, hair and skin are – if at all – often preserved only as impressions (no nitrogen), or as a coaly film (little if any nitrogen) that preserves the 2D shape but not any 3D shape or microstructure. Occasionally, replacement by minerals occurs (again no nitrogen).

The state of preservation of any fossil doesn't depend on its age alone. It depends very, very strongly on the chemistry and physics of the rock around it.

Hoover has data and is drawing conclusions based on it alone

Nope. He's drawing conclusions from his lack of knowledge.

And it shows. Bigtime.

One of the differences between what happened there and what I see on this blog is that there was a greater degree of professionalism in dealing with the claim. I am going to assume that most of the people commenting on this blog are not professional academics but rather amateurs. At least I hope so, because this level of political/emotional prejudice does not belong in civil discourse among scientists.

This here isn't civil discourse. It's scientific discourse.

And yes, while many here are science enthusiasts with a day job, I'm a professional scientist. Go find my publications in Google Scholar if you doubt that.

Given that you confuse professionalism with politeness, I must suspect that you neither are a professional scientist nor have been to a scientific conference. Such a confusion isn't merely a logical fallacy in theory, it's also empirically wrong. I have seen colleagues argue till they got red in the face and I wondered if I'd have to physically separate them – and then the situation immediately defused when one of them brought up evidence the other hadn't known yet.

But even if the claim is complete garbage, then it still deserves a sanitized review, given the author's credentials.

Credentials?

What have credentials got to do with anything?

The review should include questions about methodology and serious flaws, but give the author a chance to explain or clear up any of these concerns.

That's exactly what PZ has done.

In case it hasn't occurred to you, Hoover can comment here just like everybody else.

Once the finding has been shown to be completely bogus, the author has lost their credibility forever

Funnily, this would be an ad hominem argument. Being wrong once doesn't cause being always wrong.

Since Faux News is, AFAIK, the only "news organisation" to go to court to establish its right to lie,

And to lie in a matter of public health!

Indeed, in the EU, it is forbidden to treat cattle with growth hormone.

PZ Myers wears a ManPurse, Polka Nickers, and usually goes into a fetal position when subjected experiences loud noises. This being said: He's afraid of the thought of Alien life because it would scare him. He's currently trying to develop a stronger monster-spray for use under his bed.

*burp*

Einstein dropped out of school

Einstein never dropped out of school.

Seriously. Look it up before telling us your random imaginations as facts.

You've probably confused it with the fact that he once got a 4 in math. That was in Switzerland, where that's the 2nd-to-best mark. In Germany, where the mark system runs in the other direction, it's mediocre to bad (but not failing), so the myth developed in Germany that "Einstein was bad at math".

No he isn't a member of MIB.

How do you know?

He is another puffed up academic. Such and such group of academics agreed to give him a piece of paper which certifies that he passed X number of exams with at least a "C" average where he regurgitated over 70% of current, although amorphous when looked at on a timeline, theories by handpicked panels by the servants of the trillionaire technocracy. Congradulations.

ROTFL. I recently defended my doctoral thesis, so I can tell you how to become a doctor. If you try to do that by just regurgitating what others have already found, and people find out, your doctorate gets revoked, as has just happened with Germany's minister of defense Karl-Theodor zu Googleberg Guttenberg (who also had to resign in disgrace).

What you really have to do is to do research that nobody has done before. This takes a few years (and you can usually get several publications out of it). Once you're done, you submit the whole thing to something very similar to peer review. When the reviewers decide that you haven't flunked, you're allowed to defend your thesis in front of a committee, and "defend" is the right word. You give a talk (these days a PowerPoint presentation) about your thesis in public, and then the committee, which includes your supervisor who advised and helped you through all those years and who has probably coauthored your papers, will attack your thesis and try to poke holes in it. If you can answer all questions (like "how did you get to that conclusion from these data?" and "have you overlooked this paper which came to different conclusions?"), you pass. Probably you can answer all questions, because you're almost by definition the world's foremost expert on your thesis topic; nobody has researched it at such depth before.

BTW, it's "congratulations" with a T.

I was with you right up to that statement. I find it highly implausible that humans will be respected in this or any other quadrant of the galaxy. It is is far more likely that we will be a source of comedic entertainment and Schadenfreude or tasty snacks.

That last point would require having the same biochemistry as Life As We Know It, the same 20 proteinogenic amino acids for instance, and the same 5 bases in the same nucleic acids...

That's extremely improbable.

As an example of what that means, R-amino acids are severely toxic to us. And by "us", I mean Life As We Know It.

Thus, as I have explained on a previously thread, in an eternal and infinite universe wherein the probability of star formation is greater than zero, the night sky of EVERY planet (including earth, of course), MUST be filled, horizon to horizon, with starlight, bright as the surface of the sun (actually a little bit brighter).

Brilliant (sorry for the pun).

I'm actually interested in the calculations. Have you got them somewhere?

I can't really say that I post frequently enough to deserve consideration above certain others.

You're getting there. And March only just began.

It seemed to me that "this quadrant" of the galaxy would fuzz out of shape in less than millions of years, due to differing orbital velocities around the glactic core. Like a good science person, I went to check up on glalxy rotation before I posted. There's some fascinating stuff about dark matter messing up my expectations, so I am going to go read more.

Galaxies don't rotate like whirls. They really do rotate like wheels, difficult though it is to imagine, except very close to the center.

You say light has no mass? How do you explain the effects of gravity on it?

Gravity bends space itself. Light moves in straight lines – lines that are straight relative to space; when space is bent, all straight lines in it are bent with it.

If photons had a mass, they would attract each other. Electromagnetic fields would... eh, just go look up what the strong nuclear force is like; gluons do attract each other, and that's why the strong nuclear force is so utterly different from electromagnetism and gravity.

the macrochip on your shoulder

Win.

Posted by: subh83 | March 7, 2011 6:45 PM

Is this a tutorial on web-site aesthetics, or is it a rant of a politician? The very offensive tone of the article is against the spirit of scientific reasoning and debate. It's possible that Hoover is wrong. But science is always about learning from mistakes and refining ideas. It would have been more appropriate if Dr. Myers had used the proper scientific forum and the proper language for appropriate arguments, disapprovals and/or suggestions (unless he thinks scienceblogs.com is a better forum just because it has a prettier website). An outright offensive attack on a scientist is detrimental to the whole institution of science.

Posted by: Cannabinaceae | March 7, 2011 6:55 PM

@Sven:

Bad spelling is indeed a red hairing.

Yeah*, but I was trying to pick the most substantive part of the person's message to mock.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the thread past that, so who knows what mockery-targets have now been erected? I will peruse…

*yes, I see what you did there, or can people now start saying ISWYDT?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 7, 2011 6:59 PM

Hey, Mr. Spaceman

Posted by: Nightjar | March 7, 2011 7:10 PM

Is this a tutorial on web-site aesthetics, or is it a rant of a politician?

It's a blog post, FFS.

It would have been more appropriate if Dr. Myers had used the proper scientific forum and the proper language for appropriate arguments, disapprovals and/or suggestions (unless he thinks scienceblogs.com is a better forum just because it has a prettier website)

What? Why? Why is it not appropriate for someone like PZ to write a blog post on his own blog about whatever the hell he wants and using whatever language he wishes? What's the matter with you? Why did you come to this blog to tell the author where and how he should write his opinions on a dubious paper?

Posted by: exitflagger.myopenid.com | March 7, 2011 7:12 PM

Posted by: Brownian, OM

Boy, nobody's ever pulled the old 'third-tier' ad hominem before.

You might want to think that over. When the issue is the 'scientific acumen' of who or what disseminates the message (and it gets brought into play by the OP) then certainly an analogy of the OP's own 'acumen' is fair game as well. Sorry you seemed to miss that.

You must have gone to a real good school to be able to come up with a doozy like that.

It wasn't meant to disseminate a 'doozy' message to anyone (see above answer). I hadn't counted on someone unable to grasp the argument.

Posted by: Brando | March 7, 2011 7:20 PM

I've had a lot of fun perusing* this post and following comments.

I can safely say that the biggest lesson I have taken from the whole affair is that people's delicate sensibilities have something concrete to do with the validity of a position.

*Peruse means pretty much the opposite of what most people think it means. Idiots**.

**Added to test the sensibilities/validity construct.

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 7, 2011 7:28 PM

An outright offensive attack on a scientist is detrimental to the whole institution of science.

How often do we need to repeat it? It's not. If it were, "the whole institution of science" would have crumbled long ago.

And, well, considering how many things Hoover has written that wouldn't have passed peer review, it is allowed to ask if it makes sense to call him a scientist when he did so little science in that paper.

Pi internets for you, my boy, and don't drink them all at once.....

<trying to swallow internet whole>

Posted by: Sastra | March 7, 2011 7:30 PM

subh83 #438 wrote:

The very offensive tone of the article is against the spirit of scientific reasoning and debate.

No it's not: what matters is that the content is addressed, not the tone. Since this paper has hit the popular media it needs to be discussed outside of academia, and the language and expressions don't have to be formal. In fact, given the context and intent, it helps if they're not.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 7, 2011 7:34 PM

subh83 says: "The very offensive tone of the article is against the spirit of scientific reasoning and debate."

Oh, sweetie, you haven't known too many scientists, have you. One time during a colloquium, Wolfgang Pauli said of a question by Einstein, "Actually, Professor Einstein's question is not as stupid as it sounds."

subh83: "But science is always about learning from mistakes and refining ideas."

No, science is about evidence. End of story. And the problem is that Hoover doesn't have any--and he's published a paper without permission from his employer (the gummint), without proper peer review and in a crappy pseudo-scientific journal. Worse, it is on a subject of huge importance and interest.

Repeat after me: "Hoover fucked up. Big Time." And meanwhile we're stuck doing wet cleanup because all the UFO nuts are splooging all over this story. So forgive me if I don't seem adequately formal. Now get out of the way of my fucking mop.

Posted by: Chaos Cryptic | March 7, 2011 7:40 PM

David Marjanović, brilliant as usual. The bit on fossils was my favorite :) I'd like to point out that I was scrolling up from the bottom of the page and, having flicked my mouse wheel three times and remained within the same post, I said aloud "That's Marjanović." (I probably mispronounced your name.) And it was!

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | March 7, 2011 7:49 PM

Sorry you seemed to miss that.

Don't be sorry; learn to think and write better. Yes, it's certainly appropriate to question whether or not someone has the level of training and knowledge to critic a paper. Bringing up their publication record and field(s) of study might have some utility as well.

However, the criticism against 'third-tier state schools' is gratuitous pissing, unless you really believe that school prestige counts. Is GW Bush more qualified than PZ Myers to comment because he went to Yale?

I hadn't counted on someone unable to grasp the argument.

Again: learn to think and write more lucidly and to-the-point, and you'll avoid future confusion.

Don't feel bad; perhaps your school simply wasn't prestigious enough to teach you such things. Try reading this; I don't know much about it, other than it's written by an ivy-league alumnus, rather than some third-rater.

Gosh, I hope none of the words and concepts are over your head.

Posted by: TheBlackCat | March 7, 2011 8:23 PM

It would have been more appropriate if Dr. Myers had used the proper scientific forum and the proper language for appropriate arguments, disapprovals and/or suggestions (unless he thinks scienceblogs.com is a better forum just because it has a prettier website).

Hoover couldn't manage to get his article published in "the proper scientific forum" -- which would be a legitimate peer-reviewed scientific journal -- so why should criticisms have to?

Where exactly was he supposed to send the criticisms, anyway? Usually such criticisms are published as letters to the journal the article was originally published in, but the website that the article was "published" in is closing down.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | March 7, 2011 8:36 PM

Tell it to Time and MSNBC!

Maybe their research failed to uncover his second tier PhD in flaming zebra fish.

Goddamn hack journalists. Probably went to state schools...

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | March 7, 2011 8:48 PM

Note the NASA press release referred to in the later thread.

This article was submitted, in 2007, to another journal, a legitimate journal, but it did not complete the peer review process. That was 3 years ago. If it was any good it would have been accepted through peer review and published in that other (legitimate) journal then.

This sounds very much like the article was running into trouble in legitimate peer review, and the author withdrew it before it could be formally rejected.

And now it comes out in a venue with no credible peer review whatsoever.

That, to put it into non-scientific terms, is fishy.

Posted by: David N | March 7, 2011 9:25 PM

@Sven de Milo

there is a much larger difference between, say, 50 K and 1 K than between 350 K and 301 K [DN]

no there isn't. [SdM]

Yes there is. Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but you're some sort of biologist, aren't you? Explains a lot.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | March 7, 2011 9:50 PM

David N,
If you are going to play the pedant card, be prepared for some friction when your own phrases are vague. If you had said there is a far larger difference between the effects experienced at 50 K and 1K than there is between the effects at 350 K and 301 K you likely would have avoided any objection.
As an aside, I doubt that Sven is unaware of the oddities that occur in the low kelvin scale. Lack of training in low temperature physics hasn't stopped this non-scientist from being aware of some of the interesting things that occur when particles get sluggish.

Posted by: chikeukaegbu | March 8, 2011 12:18 AM

More on: http://www.chikeukaegbu.wordpress.com

I have always believed that we weren’t the only beings on the Universe. In fact, if you ask me, I think I have a very valid proof for this.

Look at the human body. It is made up of cells, tissues, organs, systems that make up the organism (in this case, MAN). Everything has its function in its world (or its planet) inside of the human body (universe); the liver, kidneys, brain, lungs, bones, etc. They work together, but also independently for the proper functioning of our bodies. Cells interact just like we do, send messages, procreate, protect and respond to threats and dangers, just like we do. To the cell, the tissue becomes its universe for which it might not comprehend its entire functionality because it functions within itself to effectively work. Same applies to the tissue with respect to the organs, and the organs with respect to the entire body. Each of these organs might know of each other because messages are constantly being transmitted across the entire body, but there is no proof (at least I do not know of any), which says that the eyes understand the work-abilities of the ureters and vice versa. So to the eye, there might not even be a ureter as far as it is concerned. Does that mean that the ureter does not exist? NO!

Cells are created (born), carry out their duties, and die when they are old. In the same way, We are born, we live and we die. LIFE GOES ON! In my opinion, our contribution to the entire universe is a mystery we are yet to resolve, and might never will.

Now relating this to the universe: I believe we are, or part of a cell, tissue, organ or system that make up the Universe, or maybe a superior being (GOD). Everything (planets and all that make up the universe, known and unknown) has its place, function, and composition, just like our cells, tissues and organs do. We do what we do, either to maintain a balance that enables the earth function properly for the upkeep of the Universe, or an imbalance for which the entire Universe will react to correct our malfunction; just like our bodies do.

In perspective, it is assumed that there are between 50 to 100 trillion (50 – 100,000,000,000,000) cells in the body. There might be more, or less. In like manner, it is speculated that there are about 200 billion galaxies in the universe, averaging about 150 billion stars each.

Lets assume that there are about 3 planets orbiting each star, if my math is still correct, (and I hope it is) that would roughly amount to 3 x 150 billion x 200 billion = 90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (90 sextillion) planets. We’d only just be 1 in all that.

That is equivalent to 1.1 x 10–²³. This is about 1/10 the diameter of an electron, which is smaller than the proton, way smaller than the nucleus, and definitely nothing close to the size of a cell. Go figure!

So according to my math, if there are actually between 50 and 100 trillion cells in the body, which is the basic unit of life, and there really are 90 sextillion planets; that’s between 900 million to 1.8 billion times more planets on the universe than there are cells in the human body.

And people doubt that there is the presence of ‘Other Life’ on the Universe?

More on my blog: http://www.chikeukaegbu.wordpress.com

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | March 8, 2011 1:01 AM

chickpea, nobody is saying that there cannot be life off this Earth. They are just saying that Hoover hasn't shown that there is.

Posted by: Unaspammer | March 8, 2011 1:48 AM

I have always believed that we weren’t the only beings on the Universe. In fact, if you ask me, I think I have a very valid proof for this.

I think you have confused "proof" with "wild speculation".

Now relating this to the universe: I believe we are, or part of a cell, tissue, organ or system that make up the Universe, or maybe a superior being (GOD). Everything (planets and all that make up the universe, known and unknown) has its place, function, and composition, just like our cells, tissues and organs do. We do what we do, either to maintain a balance that enables the earth function properly for the upkeep of the Universe, or an imbalance for which the entire Universe will react to correct our malfunction; just like our bodies do.

I maintained a similar belief when I was in high school, primarily because I needed an answer when people asked me about my religious beliefs, and I was uncomfortable with the idea of coming out as an atheist.

In perspective, it is assumed that there are between 50 to 100 trillion (50 – 100,000,000,000,000) cells in the body. There might be more, or less. In like manner, it is speculated that there are about 200 billion galaxies in the universe, averaging about 150 billion stars each.

Lets assume that there are about 3 planets orbiting each star, if my math is still correct, (and I hope it is) that would roughly amount to 3 x 150 billion x 200 billion = 90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (90 sextillion) planets. We’d only just be 1 in all that.

So basically you're giving us the Drake Equation, but you're applying it to the whole universe rather than just our own galaxy, and you're omitting several of the parameters. The problem is that those parameters are very hard to nail down, and depending on what you put into the equation you can get an answer anywhere from that the galaxy is teeming with alien civilizations to that we're almost certainly alone in the galaxy. Not terribly helpful.

So according to my math, if there are actually between 50 and 100 trillion cells in the body, which is the basic unit of life, and there really are 90 sextillion planets; that’s between 900 million to 1.8 billion times more planets on the universe than there are cells in the human body.

Yeah, it's a big number. Without an estimate of the probability of an individual planet hosting life, it's meaningless.

And people doubt that there is the presence of ‘Other Life’ on the Universe?

Based on the numerical arguments, I think it's highly likely that there is extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe. It's when you try to narrow it down extraterrestrial life existing in this galaxy that things get murky. And since it's highly likely that we will never leave our own galaxy (perhaps even our own solar system), isn't that what really matters?

Posted by: David N | March 8, 2011 2:59 AM

@Dhorvath, KMGL #468

If you are going to play the pedant card, be prepared for some friction when your own phrases are vague.

If you had said there is a far larger difference between the effects experienced at 50 K and 1K than there is between the effects at 350 K and 301 K you likely would have avoided any objection.

As an aside, I doubt that Sven is unaware of the oddities that occur in the low kelvin scale.

Lack of training in low temperature physics hasn't stopped this non-scientist

@Sven dM #469

Explains why I really don't care much about temperatures below 270 K.

Need to sleep, working again soon, have fun all.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/ItGX4MkAn.tzTWzKn7jxIqKqyKwH1g--#8e851 | July 21, 2011 7:42 PM

I cannot believe I read this entire thread. This is the most compelling comment I found:

I for one am going to beleive that alien life does exsist. The fact that it would cause uproar throughout the land is also known. Call me crazy...but we (the public) already assume there is alien life.

Science is NOT about beliefs but knowledge.

Its unfortuate that the ones protecting the secret will either die with it, or pass it on to another sheltered minded generation.

Call me when the conspiracy is over and then we'll review your Truth(TM).

Panic Away

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