Reports Of Bacteria From Space Mildly Exaggerated

By now you may have heard that we've found evidence that we're not alone in the universe. It was reported several days ago that alien microbes born in outer space had been found in meteorites on Earth. However, according to NASA, that story is not entirely accuratewhich is to say, it's not at all accurate:

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."

This response at least seems far less political than their sheepish initial response, which PZ Myers harshly criticized. But I am glad that Myers took a moment to acknowledge his desire to see the discovery of life from elsewhere other than Earth as one of the tough things I've experienced in the three plus years since I abandoned my belief that aliens have already visited Earth is always being viewed as someone who doesn't want to find evidence for life elsewhere in the universe. Nothing could be further from the truth. Statistically, the odds of other life-even other intelligent life-are almost certain and as Carl Sagan said, if it is just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.

And now that we've detected water elsewhere in our own solar system, that increases the odds significantly that we'll find evidence that at least single-celled life live or once lived not far from us. And given such discoveries, I'll even speculate that I wouldn't be surprised if such evidence emerged within the next five years. Of course that's just my baseless speculation and time will tell if it proves accurate.

Also check out Phil Plait's more detailed piece on this non-news story here.

And just for fun, here's what you get when you mix Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" with an Old Spice commercial:

Reference: project-ufo.blogspot.com