
'Alien Bugs' Discovered In Earth's Atmosphere - corford
http://news.sky.com/story/1143906/alien-bugs-discovered-in-earths-atmosphere
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justin_vanw
Oh come on, what a lot of crap.

So our understanding of how tiny particles move in the upper atmosphere is so
perfect that it's more likely we would find alien bugs than be wrong about how
particles move up there?

I mean, we have a pretty good understanding of the millions of miles of vacuum
separating us from any other world. It might be just a little harder for bug
parts to escape the gravity well of another planet, travel through space, and
then float around in our upper atmosphere than it would be for us to be
slightly less than perfect in our understanding of how high the wind can blow
little flakes of dust. In fact, assuming these aren't bugs that live in the
vacuum of space, wouldn't they have had to pass through the upper atmosphere
of wherever they came from before they could have then jumped to be floating
around in space, so they could get here?

I will now mock this in the form of a Holmes mystery:

"So how did the Murder happen, Sherlock?"

"Clearly the butler could not have used the car, as we know it did not have
enough gas to make it to where the body was found. We also know that no other
person was near enough to the crime to have committed the foul act."

"But what could have happened my dear Holmes?"

"Aliens from Neptune murdered this man."

"You can imply the existence of aliens from a murder, fantastic... But Holmes,
how could the aliens have moved the body?"

"Elementary my dear Watson, they stole the key from the butler and used the
car."

"Astounding Holmes!"

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

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eloff
Bullshit. Contamination (human error) seems far more likely than extra-
terrestrial origins. The best comment from that page:

WHAT ARE THE MACROMOLECULAR COMPOSITION & THEIR GENETIC MATERIALS OF THE
SUPPOSEDLY EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL MICRO-ORGANISMS?

Are the 'ET organism' genetic materials also based a polymer of nucleotides
(like those on earth), whereby each nucleotide composed of one of the 4
nucleobase (with base adenine, thymine, guanine or cytosine), a 5-carbon sugar
(either ribose or 2-deoxyribose) & one or more phosphate groups. DNA profiles
are made up of various combinations of the 4 forms (polymers) of nucleotides.

For earth organisms (i.e. viruses, microorganisms, plants, animals), each
codon (comprises of 3 nucleobase) code one of the specific 20 amino-acids (AA)
of living organisms. A chain of codon in DNA would therefore specify UNIQUE AA
chain – i.e. PROTEIN (like protein like enzymes, hormone, co-factors, etc),
hence its unique form & function.

Although if Earth life originated from the same extra-terrestrial source, this
wouldn't be able to rule out that scenario.

~~~
vixen99
Is the opposite of a 'far more' likely possibility, 'bullshit'? A bit harsh
unless you can offer a critique of their methods.

~~~
eloff
No, but I can still call bullshit like a poker player against someone claiming
to have a royal flush. He might really have it, but I know the odds are
heavily in my favor. This claim is made too strongly and too soon (maybe
that's the fault of the media and not the scientists involved.) It is very
hard to prevent contamination, something which has confounded the best and
brightest at NASA time and again. I also know that when people say it's
impossible for particles of that size to get up to that altitude, they are
making a lot of assumptions about a very complex system. It's very likely that
the correct explanation is human error, either in decontamination or in flawed
assumptions.

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moron4hire
Hell of a lot of absolute declarations ya got thar, Professor Wainwright.

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r721
>The findings are to be published in the Journal of Cosmology.

[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology)

~~~
pharrington
I think [http://journalofcosmology.com/](http://journalofcosmology.com/)
itself is better at telling you how ridiculous the Journal of Cosmology is.

~~~
dan-g
The amazing thing is that Wikipedia says it was founded in 2009. Yet their
website looks like it's straight out of ... 1996?

~~~
molecule
The website was formed in 1996, the light from the website only reached Earth
in 2009.

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swamp40
Well they certainly look cool, but a DNA analysis might be nice...

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JonSkeptic
>"Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from
space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not
originate here."

>"If life does continue to arrive from space then we have to completely change
our view of biology and evolution," Prof Wainwright added. "New textbooks will
have to be written."

I think that really sums it up nicely.

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Daniel_Newby
What about the isotope ratios? Different locations tend to have different
isotope ratios, which is the standard way of finding the originating body of a
space object.

~~~
eloff
Apparently they plan to repeat the experiment in six months during another
meteor shower and test for isotope ratios, so that will lay the issue to rest.

