NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

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NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

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Aliens exist, and we have proof.

That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover, who has spent more than 10 years studying meteorites around the world, told FoxNews.com in an interview. “This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist [sic] would say that this is impossible.”

Hoover discovered the fossils by breaking apart the CI1 meteorite, and analyzing the exposed rock with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to detect any fossil remains. What he found were fossils of micro-organisms (pictured below), many of which he says are strikingly similar to those found on our own planet (pictured above).

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,” said Hoover. Some of the fossils, however, are quite odd. “There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stump.”

In order to satisfy the inevitable hoard of buzz-killing skeptics, Hoover’s study and evidence were made available to his peers in the scientific community in advance of the study’s publications, giving them a chance to thoroughly dissect his findings. Comments from those who decided to sift through the evidence will be published online, alongside the study.

“Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis,” writes Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Dr. Rudy Schild, who serves as the Journal of Cosmology’s editor-in-chief. “No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published.”

Needless to say, if Hoover's conclusions are found to be accurate, the implications for human life will be staggering. Here's hoping that he's right.
Update: While the Journal of Cosmology says that “no other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting,” some highly respected names in the scientific community are challenging the validity of Cosmology, and the findings of Dr. Hoover.

“[The Journal of Cosmology] isn’t a real science journal at all,” says PZ Meyers in Science Blogs, “but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth.”

So there you have it — this is either reality-altering news, or the work of kooks. Our hearts believe, but our brains are kind of bummed.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

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THIS JUST IN: NASA throws scientist under the bus

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Top NASA scientists said Monday there was no scientific evidence to support a colleague's claim that fossils of alien microbes born in outer space had been found in meteorites on Earth.

The US space agency formally distanced itself from the paper by NASA scientist Richard Hoover, whose findings were published Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology, which is available free online.

"That is a claim that Mr Hoover has been making for some years," said Carl Pilcher, director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute.

"I am not aware of any support from other meteorite researchers for this rather extraordinary claim that this evidence of microbes was present in the meteorite before the meteorite arrived on Earth and and was not the result of contamination after the meteorite arrived on Earth," he told AFP.

"The simplest explanation is that there are microbes in the meteorites; they are Earth microbes. In other words, they are contamination."

Pilcher said the meteorites that Hoover studied fell to Earth 100 to 200 years ago and have been heavily handled by humans, "so you would expect to find microbes in these meteorites."

Paul Hertz, chief scientist of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, also issued a statement saying NASA did not support Hoover's findings.

"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," Hertz said.

"NASA also was unaware of the recent submission of the paper to the Journal of Cosmology or of the paper's subsequent publication."

He noted that the paper did not complete the peer-review process after being submitted in 2007 to the International Journal of Astrobiology.

According to the study, Hoover sliced open fragments of several types of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, which can contain relatively high levels of water and organic materials, and looked inside with a powerful microscope, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM).
He found bacteria-like creatures, calling them "indigenous fossils" that originated beyond Earth and were not introduced here after the meteorites landed.
Hoover "concludes these fossilized bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, e.g. comets, moons and other astral bodies," said the study.

"The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets."
The journal's editor-in-chief, Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, hailed Hoover as a "highly respected scientist and astrobiologist with a prestigious record of accomplishment at NASA."

The publication invited experts to weigh in on Hoover's claim, and both sceptics and supporters began publishing their commentaries on the journal's website Monday.
"While the evidence clearly indicates that the meteorites was eons ago populated with bacterial life, whether the meteorites are of actual extra-terrestrial origin might debatable," wrote Patrick Godon of Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

Michael Engel of the University of Oklahoma wrote: "Given the importance of this finding, it is essential to continue to seek new criteria more robust than visual similarity to clarify the origin(s) of these remarkable structures."
The journal did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Pilcher described Hoover as a "NASA employee" who works in a solar physics branch of a NASA lab in the southeastern state of Alabama.

"He clearly does some very interesting microscopy. The actual measurements on these meteorites are very nice measurements, but I am not aware of any other qualification that Mr Hoover has in analysis of meteorites or in astrobiology," Pilcher said.

A NASA-funded study in December suggested that a previously unknown form of bacterium, found deep in a California lake, could thrive on arsenic, adding a new element to what scientists have long considered the six building blocks of life.

That study drew hefty criticism, particularly after NASA touted the announcement as evidence of extraterrestrial life. Scientists are currently attempting to replicate those findings.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by vynsane »

this is what i don't get in this entire thing... is there no difference between fossilized evidence of microbes, and microbes that died recently? when i hear 'fossil' i don't think of something that died in the 100-200 years since a meteorite fell to earth, i think of something that died thousands or millions of years BEFORE the meteorite fell to earth. something doesn't compute here.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by anarky »

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I tend to think NASA has more evidence of alien life--albeit primitive alien life--than they want to let on to the general public, many of whom still believe in lizard men conspiracies and think that an alien ship crashed in Roswell. (It's a bit of a harmless conspiracy theory. Less trying to control people than preventing the inevitable "OH SHIT WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!" responses.)

I dunno exactly how long it takes to fossilize something, but I think it's at least in the thousands of years. Stuff from tens of thousands of years back are often fossils, IIRC, while newer things (like human remains in ruins of ancient cities) are not.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by vynsane »

yeah, that's kinda what i'm getting at. they seemed to have too quick a knee-jerk discrediting statement prepared. meanwhile, not 3 months ago, NASA published a paper about microbes that thrive on arsenic in the absence of phosphorus (which is touted as one of the 6 fundamental building blocks of life along-side carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur) and equated it to a star trek episode where they discover silicon-based life. they then broaden the scope of the discovery and say it greatly increases the conditions researchers can search for in the hunt for extra-terrestrial life.

so, on the one hand, we have a study that posits extra-terrestrial fossilized microbes which is immediately down-played by NASA because it's published on a fringe site - not debunked, but just discredited due to the fact that the publisher isn't necessarily an expert in the field, and on the other hand, we have a report of a microbe that was thought to be impossible, living and thriving at the bottom of a volcanic lake.

i guess the main thrust of NASA's point of view is that the meteor fragments could, in fact, be from earth in the first place. but instead of saying "we'll have to study this further" they seem to just say "he's wrong and we're not going to look into it".

or is it just that NASA is gun-shy due to the criticism the december article drew, and is using this guy as a way to put the information out there without drawing flak, and in fact, acting as the 'voice of reason and skepticism'?
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by anarky »

By the way, if anyone believes an alien flying saucer crashed in Roswell, I'm willing to sell you a WWII-era Nazi saucer-shaped plane prototype that was built in the late 1940s by German expatriates (the sort that didn't gas large numbers of people), likely with help from Japanese expatriates (the sort who didn't cut babies out of pregnant women), in a secret Air Force installation somewhere in the southwest USA, and kept quiet for decades because there's some technological advancement involved that the military doesn't want civilians (and enemies) to know about, and maybe because they know it will look bad if they admit to using German airplane engineers immediately after WWII.

I'm not totally denying the possibility that intelligent life has visited Earth and been seen by people, but the evidence about the supposed UFO crash leads me to a far simpler terrestrial explanation.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

DUH there are aliens. I've been seeing a movie called Paul advertised on the telly all week. That guy ain't human.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

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I can guarantee you that guy ain't in a good movie, neither.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

The thing about this "is there or isnt there" argument that scientists vehemently debate is that, at the end of the day, who gives a fuck? What fundamentally changes in our day to day lives if theres a fucking alien species 10 billion light years away on another planet? We'll never meet them. We'll never study them. We can't even mount an exploratory trip to the closest planet in our own solar system, because people are hung up on the "value" and "financial" benefits of it. How will we PAY for a Mars trip? Seriously? Fucking mega-billionaires sitting of untold trillions of dollars, waiting for what exactly? The proverbial rainy day? And how much to the NASA scientists get paid to sit around debating aliens a year? Hundreds of thousands of dollars? Why dont you fucks figure out something useful like how to irrigate Africa or something. Or figure out how to convert saltwater into free clean energy. Instead of arguing about fucking miscoscopic 10 billion year old alien carcasses. Go fuck yourselves. I know how we can balance the budget. Pay these assholes what they're worth. $3.50

Here's my reasearch paper:


There are aliens.
Nothing you can do about it.
Go back to your fucking boring day to day lives, fuckwheats.



Feel free to vet the shit out of my paper.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by anarky »

Since this is going off-topic anyway, here's how to balance the budget:

1) Cut (or at least freeze) the pay of everyone in government who makes more than, say, $60,000 per year.

2) Seek out redundancy in the government bureaucracy and eliminate it. Don't just promise it. Do it.

3) Ban lobbying. Period. Or, at least, ban any kind of real favors from passing hands to elected officials.

4) Cut the subsidies for oil and start taxing the motherfuckers. There's no reason a company should get government subsidies, be able to pay a tiny amount of taxes, pay their executives a shit-ton, and STILL make record profits every year.

4A) Start really working on alternative energy, and keep fuckers like T. Boone Pickens from making a shit-ton on something that's free, like wind.

5) Contact all defense contractors and put them on notice: if you're overcharging us, you lose all your contracts. If you charge us a fair amount, you'll reap the rewards. But if sell shit to our enemies, we'll shut you down and try you as traitors. And then check to make sure they're not overcharging and hold to that threat.

6) Require Congressmen (and reps at the state level) to actually be knowledgeable about what constituents want instead of voting the party line or whatever the fuck they want. Make the fuckers work for their money. This might not seem important, but it ties into....

7) Somehow require Congressmen to seek out information on constituents' wishes on budgetary matters. And require them to communicate back to them. Basically, at the district level, each Congressman should be detailing what costs what, getting an informal consensus on what people in that district want, and voting that way. And making clear that everything has to be paid for.

8) Raise corporate taxes. A company should not get an advantage in the tax system because of the way they're set up. (Trust me, taxes on a self-proprietor fuck you over pretty good.)

9) Institute real healthcare reform. This will save costs in the long run.

10) If something is not paid for, raise taxes. Let people know this is the tradeoff. You want government, you gotta pay for it.

It'd never happen. Never.

Besides, China wouldn't be able to survive if the US were to go under, so it's not as critical as it seems. The folks bitching about the deficit are mostly (though not entirely) just complaining along party lines, because they're the ones responsible for it in the first place.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

Back in the day (and I mean 100 years ago and more), the millionaires back then were constantly turning around and reinvesting their profits into new ventures: Railroads, manifest destiny, new energy, all that shit. They didn't sit on their money like dragoins in caves. So tax the fuck out of these douches. Like 98% tax rate on anything over 500 million.
And seriously rewrite the fuck out of the tax code. No loopholes. Anywhere.


Here's a radical idea that most conservatives would brand as socialism or something. If huge corporations radically lowered their profit expectations, spread that wealth out to the employees throughout the company, and brought back factory jobs to the US, everybody would get exponentially richer. Yes, the stuff we manufactured would cost more, but guess what? The employees would be making more money because they were actually seeing a chunk of the profits instead of it going to one guy with a $500 million a year salary. So people making more money would be able to buy more expensive stuff made in the USA. The companies would make more product giving factory workers more work to do. The cycle begins. Everybody is rich and spending more money than ever and the corporations are making more money than ever. If someone went from making $20K a year to a $120K a year for the same job, you really thing he's gonna give a fuck if his DVD player costs an extra $50 because it wasn't made in China? And yes, those CEOs could hand out $100,000 to every man woman and child in the US every year and still live lavish debauched lifestyles that would put the most depraved Roman Emeperors to shame.
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Re: NASA scientist claims to find proof of alien life

Post by anarky »

And, on a related note, you know something that really bugs me? This whole bullshit about "quarterly growth expectations." Say that Company A tells its stockholders it expects to grow by 10%, but only actually grows by 9%. This is seen as a massive failure, and the news jumps all over it, and the stocks plunge, yadda yadda. Because no one sees that as the positive that it is: "We just grew by 9% in a quarter! Fuck yeah!!"

Truth is, any positive number is GOOD. Even zero is good, since you're breaking even.

Companies are too goddamn greedy sometimes.

And 200% agreed about the rich fuckers who sit on their money. For fuck's sake, even Scrooge McDuck swam in it.
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