
Collecting Unrecognizable Beings from the Stratosphere - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/this-astrobiologist-is-collecting-unrecognizable-beings-from-the-stratosphere
======
cjensen
Noted crank [1] [2] [3] who is associated with noted crank Chandra
Wickramasinghe [4] continues to act like a crank.

Dust and tiny micro-organisms are found in the Strat. This is not news.

[1] [http://www.skeptical-science.com/tag/milton-
wainwright/](http://www.skeptical-science.com/tag/milton-wainwright/)

[2]
[http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2013/09/20/debunked...](http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2013/09/20/debunked_aliens_in_earths_atmosphere_106681.html)

[3] [http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-
exoplanets/invasi...](http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-
exoplanets/invasion-of-the-high-altitude-alien-130920.htm)

[4]
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/20/et_claim...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/20/et_claims_of_alien_life_in_earth_s_atmosphere_are_unfounded.html)

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jdnier
Pictures begin here in the video:
[https://youtu.be/cpXVVuFgYqA?t=1820](https://youtu.be/cpXVVuFgYqA?t=1820)

Here's "the famous one," showing a titanium ball with carbon and oxygen
contents spilling out from impact:
[https://youtu.be/cpXVVuFgYqA?t=2297](https://youtu.be/cpXVVuFgYqA?t=2297)

And the "snail particle," which is stuck to a crystal of sodium chloride:
[https://youtu.be/cpXVVuFgYqA?t=2359](https://youtu.be/cpXVVuFgYqA?t=2359)
"This is comin' in from somewhere, and it ain't comin' up from Salt Lake
City."

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gus_massa
He shows the images he got in the video at 30:40.

The most sensible explanation is that in each launch they got hundreds of
carbon dust dots, and he cherrypicked the most symmetrical and biological
like, and then proclaim that they are "biological entity"s.

Some back of the envelope calculations: Let's guess that they have a team of 5
members, and each one looks at the microscope one day each week for 8 hours,
and to select and focus a dot they need 1 minute. If they do this for a year
they'd get 60x8x5x52 = 1 million samples.

The problem is how to design a control group. Perhaps someone can look at 1
million sand grains and find the more interesting. (This looks like an
interesting blog post.) The chemical composition is very different, and the
size is very different, but I guess it can test the human filter part.

(Bonus points: Repeat this 1 million of grains of other materials. Salt grains
a too cubic to look organic. Soot particles seams more interesting and can be
a possible contamination. How does flour looks under a microscope?)

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88e282102ae2e5b
Neat, but I wish he had explicitly stated that he controlled for kit
contamination. It doesn't sound like he did. Perhaps the collectors had
bacteria on then when they went up, then the combination of low pressure and
UV light made them look weird, and voilà: "alien" microbes. Claiming that you
work in a clean room and are careful isn't enough, you have to have negative
controls.

~~~
88e282102ae2e5b
Correction: according to the actual paper they did do a control flight, though
it was separate from the experimental flights. This makes it somewhat more
interesting though it would have been better if it was done simultaneously in
the same device.

~~~
larsiusprime
I would like to know the reasoning behind the hypothesis that earth based life
can't reach into the stratosphere?

~~~
mabbo
Watch the video. He explains that exact question in great detail.

~~~
antiquark
Although he forgot about satellite and launch vehicle contamination bringing
particles into orbit.

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okket
It's Wainwright time again? Well, here is a debunk, in German

[http://scienceblogs.de/astrodicticum-
simplex/2013/09/21/lebe...](http://scienceblogs.de/astrodicticum-
simplex/2013/09/21/leben-im-all-entdeckt-nein/?all=1)

Key points:

* link to known cranks Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle

* publishes in shady magazines

* specimen is too similar to other life forms on earth

* just because we don't know how they got up there means they come from outer space

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505
In Crichton's _The Andromeda Strain_ [1], we collect something from
(sub?)orbit and it does not end well.

[1] www.michaelcrichton.com/the-andromeda-strain/

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berntb
If this life is DNA based they just need a PCR (+) and sequencing, to see if
it is from Earth. Does anyone have a link that discuss if they tried that?
(Edit: Listening to the interview, sigh.)

(+)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction)

~~~
sndean
Yeah, in one of his papers [1] they did a DAPI stain and said it was positive
for DNA. They really need to do sequencing. It's cheap enough to do sequencing
of microbes now that some lab could simply offer to do it without funding.

Ignoring the idea of "alien life", whatever they find out would be
interesting. Craig Venter sequenced the ocean, Wainwright should do the
stratosphere.

[1]
[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21672857.2015.10...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21672857.2015.1087751)

~~~
astrodust
"We've done tests and it's human, and apparently...our lab technician."

Wasn't there a case of a lady being implicated in thousands of crimes based on
DNA evidence because of contaminating the samples she was working with?

~~~
sndean
There's a lot of stories like that caused by sloppiness. If you blast
([https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?PAGE_TYPE=BlastSear...](https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?PAGE_TYPE=BlastSearch))
the sequence of essentially every organism with a sequenced genome, you'll
find long stretches of the human genome.

Even worse are the genomes coming out of one specific lab... there are always
stretches of the Chlamydia genome. I wonder if that tech knows?

