Indians Find Signs Of Extraterrestrial Life

IOL ^ | 10-28-2002

[blam]

Indians find signs of extraterrestrial life

October 28 2002 at 03:32PM

New Delhi - Indian researchers believe they have discovered traces of extraterrestrial life in the shape of microbes in samples they collected outside the Earth's sphere, the Press Trust of India reported on Monday.

Jayant Narlikar from the Indian Space Research Organisation announced during a lecture on The Search For Extraterrestrial Life in Nagpur, Maharashtra, that they had made the discovery a few weeks ago, but were double-checking their findings.

"Micro-organisms resembling coccus, fungal and rod-like bacillus were discovered in samples collected 41km above the earth's surface," said Narlikar.

"Biologists are now trying to verify the origin of the micro-organisms. Whatever may be the source of life, if biologists confirm the results, it will prove that extraterrestrial life does exist," he added.

Narlikar said the Indian scientists had used a sophisticated gadget called a cryosampler to conduct the experiment for life in space.

"This is only the second experiment of its kind in the world. The United States had conducted a similar study where some evidences of life were found. It will open a new line of challenge for the global scientific community," said Narlikar.

Narlikar observed that their sample could contain "microbial life coming from debris of comets and other celestial objects". - Sapa-AFP

[madrastex]

This where liberals come from.

[Roadstar]

Either there or from those leftover little cesspools which remain months after a rain.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

"Biologists are now trying to verify the origin of the micro-organisms. Whatever may be the source of life, if biologists confirm the results, it will prove that extraterrestrial life does exist," he added.

Oh, give me a large, industrial size break!

What if the source of these life forms is....Earth? Then they are not extra-terrestrial. And this is the most likely explanation. They originated within Earth's bioshpere. Let's apply Occam's Razor, hmmm?

There's a far better chance of these microbes being carried up through the atmosphere than there is of them surviving the absolute-zero cold of space.

Sheesh!

[RightWhale]

30 miles up, which is nearly a vacuum. Likewise, it is theorized that the upper atmosphere of Venus also contains microbial life.

This will not be a surprise for those whose model of life in the universe assumes microbial life inside every rocky planet everywhere. Upper atmosphere microbes is not a stretch.

[Neanderthal]

"Micro-organisms resembling coccus, fungal and rod-like bacillus were discovered in samples collected 41km above the earth's surface," said Narlikar.

Sounds like liberals to me.

[ffrancone]

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[Alex Murphy]

...and then the rock broke open, and this oozing thing came out that climbed UP the stick and engulfed the old man's hand.

[e_engineer]

Remember the giant turdsicle from one of the early shuttle missions?

Found the story here:

http://www.spacenet.on.ca/stories/robotics/icepick/

And here is a description of the human waste handling equipment on the shuttle:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/orbiter/eclss/wcs.html

From a cursory reading, it looks like the system allows lots of outgassing to dry the human waste, without much filtering to prevent microbes from venting overboard. There are microbe filters for the air that is returned to the crew cabin though.

Looks like these Indians may have found some microbes that survived re-entry after being "flushed" out of the shuttle.

[blam]

"Looks like these Indians may have found some microbes that survived re-entry after being "flushed" out of the shuttle."

Interesting, I've never considered that.

[aruanan]

Jayant Narlikar from the Indian Space Research Organisation announced during a lecture on The Search For Extraterrestrial Life in Nagpur, Maharashtra, that they had made the discovery a few weeks ago, but were double-checking their findings.

Narlikar has done some interesting work.

[aruanan]

Looks like these Indians may have found some microbes that survived re-entry after being "flushed" out of the shuttle.

E. coli and other intestinal flora live in wet, warm conditions with plenty of nutrients. These conditions don't exist at 30 miles in altitude.

[RightWhale]

That is a possibility. Supposedly Venus also has these bacteria, which wouldn't have come from the Shuttle or Mir or whatever.

[e_engineer]

I was not suggesting that these microbes were native to the upper atmosphere. Venting of human waste from the space shuttle would be very similar to freeze drying, because the water boils off in the vacuum of space. Freeze drying of microbe cultures is called Lyophilization.

"Many microorganisms and proteins survive lyophilization well, and it is a favored method of drying vaccines, pharmaceuticals, blood fractions, and diagnostics."

You can read the rest here:
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem-eng/Biotech-Environ/LYO/

Also found this:
"Each area of the digestive tract will contain distinctive varieties of microbial species. In general, the population densities are equally high at the end of the digestive tract, reaching values up to 10 to 100 times a thousand million bacteria/g content constituted by a taxonomic and metabolic diversity of over 300 different kinds of microbes [2]."

Here:
http://www.isgnas.org/docs/normal_microflora.html

10 times a thousand million = 10 billion bacteria/g of fecal matter. How many grams of waste matter does a space shuttle vent into low earth orbit during a 7 day mission?

[aruanan]

Freeze drying of microbe cultures is called Lyophilization.

I'd had my share of lyophilized stuff to mix up.