LOGO: Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines. A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
2010 Webby Award Winner for Best Political Blog
 
May 26, 2012
Log in / Register

 Choose a size
Text Size

Trending:     gay marriage     barack obama     robert scheer     chris hedges     ndaa
Most Read

TED: 'A Money-Soaked Orgy of Self-Congratulatory Futurism'

Truthdiggers of the Week: 400,000 Canadians Launching the ‘Maple Spring’

Russia and Exxon Mobil Sign Arctic Oil Deal

I Can't Hear Myself Think

A Rare Admission That Money Trumps Everything Else

Most Comments
Most Emailed

Reports
Why Bain Questions Matter
OSHA Struggles When Tower Climbers Die

Ear to the Ground

A/V Booth

Arts & Culture
Better Than We Found It
The Good-Natured Dictator

Digs
Financial Meltdown 101

Truthdig Bazaar more items

 
Ear to the Ground

Evidence of Life on a Meteorite?

Email this item Email    Print this item Print   

Posted on Mar 6, 2011
Journal of Cosmology

A photograph taken through a scanning electron microscope of a structure from a meteorite recovered in Spain (right) is strikingly similar to the giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox (left), an organism found on Earth.

A NASA scientist claims to have found tiny alien fossils encased in meteorites that landed in Spain, sparking new interest in the possibility of life outside our planet.

Now new information is coming down the pipe that shows the scientist, Richard Hoover, has been peddling the same stuff for years. —JCL

The Guardian:

Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist at the US space agency’s Marshall space flight centre in Alabama, said filaments and other structures in rare meteorites appear to be microscopic fossils of extraterrestrial beings that resemble algae known as cyanobacteria.

Some of the features look similar to a giant bacterium called Titanospirillum velox, which has been collected from the Ebro delta waterway in Spain, according to a report on the findings.

Laboratory tests on the rocky filaments found no evidence to suggest they were remnants of Earth-based organisms that contaminated the meteorites after they landed, Hoover said.

Read more

More Below the Ad

Advertisement


New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.

By samosamo, March 7, 2011 at 9:39 pm Link to this comment

****************


For all the naysayers about life forming anywhere other than
earth are, if they live long enough, in for a surprise. It is even
hard for these naysayers to come to grips that the sun(s)
determines life. And just like man never set foot on the moon,
according to many, there is no life on the ocean floors miles
beneath the surface. Gawd just didn’t put it there.

Report this

By vida, March 7, 2011 at 6:35 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

There have been other similar finds and it turns out not to be life.  Why do
people want to believe life comes from small space rocks, which makes no
sense, when the formation here on earth with conditions and materials
that existed here have been duplicated in labs?

Report this

By Jimnp72, March 7, 2011 at 5:21 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

So now we now where Sara, David, Roger, Rush, Karl, George, Glenn, Dick, etc. really came from.

Report this

By realveive, March 7, 2011 at 3:54 pm Link to this comment

Given the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy and the hundreds of billions of galaxies that exist, our being amazed and excited that life exists elsewhere is further proof of mankind’s hyper-inflated ego and blatant stupidity.

Report this
D.R. Zing's avatar

By D.R. Zing, March 6, 2011 at 9:16 pm Link to this comment

This is way cool and awesome news.  We can only hope more finds like this are to come.  It makes sense that microscopic life could have slammed into earth during its early history when it was growing by accretion and being peppered with comets, meteorites, and asteroids. 

Likewise, it makes sense to pay more attention to comets, meteors and asteroids and to attempt to locate and track the ones we have not yet found.  People who rail about NASA, astrophysics, astronomy and, yes, astrobiology as a waste of money have not thought through the implications of an impact in the modern age.

If we know one is coming and have time to prepare, it will be bad. If one tags us out of blue and knocks out our electrical grid, well, a lot of people will die in the month or two that it takes to restore power. It’s one reason we should all be working to resolve these petty and frequently insane political issues that plague us. 

We, as a species, face real and natural threats that could take us all out very quickly: an asteroid impact, a super-volcano eruption, a collapse of the ecosystem that is our food supply. Our war machine won’t save us from any of that. In fact it will hasten our demise. 

That’s not to say that some technology we’ve developed for our war machine couldn’t be put to constructive purposes; it could. It most certainly could. But first we must stop the wars and start using science to save life instead of actively seeking new and innovative ways to destroy life.

But, I digress. Kudos to scientists everywhere. This is news of the world. There’s life on meteors. Just imagine what we’ll find after we start rooting around that former huge asteroid that we refer to as the moon!

Report this

By samosamo, March 6, 2011 at 6:55 pm Link to this comment

****************

 

This just in on this discovery, it is verified that the intelligence of
this life form is of the same as of gov. walker of wisconsin.

Report this

By TDoff, March 6, 2011 at 1:47 pm Link to this comment

These tiny alien ‘bug’ fossils may be the remnants of fecal bacteria from ‘intelligent’ beings on another planet whose ‘advancing’ civilization caused the nuclear ‘blowing the crap out of’ their home planet and themselves, resulting in these tiny meteorites. There may be a lesson here, if we can read the entrails.

Report this
Newsletter

Get Truthdig in your inbox


 
 
 
Join the Liberal Blog Advertising Network
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2012 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.