Panspermia – rocking perception or probable phenomena? Recent evidence for meteorite microfossils

What if there really was a wolf..(*ahem*) panspermia?!

Just last month, 2010. 5th floor of a gray building so nondescript that half the people showed up late. Richard B. Hoover, Astrobiology Group Leader at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama has something he wants us all to see. I look across the table to see all eyes patiently waiting for his powerpoint images. I look back at Richard.  Like a scene out of a 2001 Space Odyssey, Dr. Floyd delivering the bureaucratic spin to top scientists. Only here, their isn’t any cover story, their isn’t any giant black monolith. Here we have but one passionate, smiling and very knowledgeable Hoover trying to convince an exceptionally tough crowd.   The other scientists… only the most respected leaders in the fields of meteorites, prebiotic chemistry, solar system formation and the origins of life, and none of them believe that we have ever found clear evidence of life in space, at least not life we didn’t send up there on purpose.

So let me get straight to the point. In that one moment, in that nondescript room, I went from being 99% sure that evidence of ancient life in space was explained away by contamination (or wishful thinking) to less than 50% sure it didn’t already exist and exactly 0% sure of how to explain the evidence we did have.

It really comes down to a sense of time and a respect for past conclusions about Earth based fossil life. Dr. Hoover is keenly aware of the pitfalls of his observations and yet can’t deny the apparent truth of fossil evidence that life was in space as early as we have detected it on Earth. Here are what I consider some of the strong arguments: They look like bacteria fossils to the same degree that scientists unarguably identify and categorize Earth bacteria, Amino acids in the fossil regions of these meteorites do not match modern contamination profiles (only 12 Amino acids not 20), the nuclear abundances of these meteorites indicate off Earth histories and specifically early solar system formation.

The real question for me now (and maybe should be for all of us) is “why are we so against it?”. Would your God be offended? Would your parents? Would your Priest, Rabbi, Imam, or Manbo Asogwe? I mean come on people, what’s so wrong with Panspermia? The earlier evidence of Martian fossils has been disputed to the point of scaring away reasonable observations now made on MICROFOSSILS IN CARBONACEOUS CHONDRITES. Read on and decide for yourself!

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/Orgueil.html

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/pdf/1949.pdf

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