Astrobiologists discover fossils in meteorite a proof for PANSPERIMA

Scientists from United Kingdom have found algae-like fossils in meteorite fragments that landed in Sri Lanka last year. This is the strongest evidence yet of commentary theory pansperima. For those of you who don’t know what the panspermia is the panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and planetoids.  The first known mention of the term was in the writings of the 5^th century BC Greek philosopher Anaxagoras. Then in nineteenth centuryit was again revived in modern form by several scientists, including Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Kelvin, Hermann von Helmholts and Svante Arrhenius. These are some of the top scientists that have believed that extraterrestrial life exists. Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) and Chandra Wickramasinghe (born 1939) were influential proponents of panspermia. In 1974 they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic (containing carbon), which Wickramasinghe later proved to be correct.[8] Hoyle and Wickramasinghe further contended that life forms continue to enter the Earth's atmosphere, and may be responsible for epidemic outbreaks, new diseases, and the genetic novelty necessary for macroevolution. In a virtual presentation on April 7, 2009, physicist Stephen Hawking endorsed the hypothesis.

Panspermia does not necessarily suggest that life originated only once and subsequently spread through the entire Universe, but instead that once started, it may be able to spread to other environments suitable for replication. There is as yet no evidence to support or contradict panspermia, although the majority view holds that panspermia – especially in its interstellar form – is unlikely given the challenges of survival and transport in space.

In December of 2012, a fireball was seen over the skies of Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka. A couple of days later after the meteorite crashed, fragments of the fireball were collected and sent to Sri Lanka’s Medical Research Institute, where the initial microscopic analysis revealed siliceous microalgae known as diatom. As you can imagine, with this being the first ever evidence that life might’ve arrived on Earth via a meteorite; the scientific community was sceptical of the results. The researchers at Cardiff are now reporting that they’re sure that these fragments come from extraterrestrial meteorite, and that there are definitely fossilized biological structures. Pansperima, it seems, is a go.

Today that are few competing theories for how life began on Earth. Pansperima is just one of the theories and this theory says that life arrived on the back of a comet or asteroid. Abiogenesis is the theory that suggest that lifespontaneously erupted from inorganic molecules in Eart’s primordial soup, is another.  Directed panspermia, where an alien race intentionally sent an asteroid or spacecraft loaded with living organisms to Earth, is another slightly more exotic theory. As for which theory is correct, we’ll probably never know — but the Polonnaruwa meteorite definitely puts the odds in panspermia’s favor.

Cardiff University’s tests took a two-pronged approach: First to confirm that there were actually algae fossils within, but more importantly to rule out terrestrial contamination. To this end, the researchers found very low levels of nitrogen (which is nearly always present in modern-Earth organisms), and their oxygen isotope analysis “shows [that the samples] are unequivocally meteorites.” The meteorite’s atomic makeup, coupled with the fossils being fused with the rock matrix, is a strong indicator that the organisms aren’t terrestrial in origin.

These findings aren’t a slam dunk, though. According to our in-house biologist John Hewitt, there’s a strong possibility that the fossils aren’t actually biological in nature — they simply look biological. “This is kind of like finding a Q from Scrabble floating in space; it may be worth 10 points, but finding a few Es first would be a bit more convincing,” Hewitt says. There’s also the fact that the research was published in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed journal that has come under critical scrutiny numerous times since it was established in 2009. The journal faced a lot of controversy when it published a paper by NASA engineer Richard Hoover claiming to have found fossils “similar to cyanobacteria” in meteorites.With that said, the work presented in the Cardiff University research paper does seem to be rather professional. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy are not really the kind of tools that you play around with. It would be rather hard to fake the imagery and results that were generated by Cardiff University — not impossible, but unlikely.One thing’s for certain, though: For this to actually become science — for Chandra Wickramasinghe’s dream of panspermia to become a reality — this work will need to be replicated by many other groups around the world. It would be very, very exciting indeed if biological fossils have been found on an extraterrestrial meteorite. It would be proof that there’s life on other planets — and essentially a guarantee that the universe is full of life. But, as always, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.