Evidence Dismisses Alien Discovery

A Huntsville, Alabama researcher claims to have found fossils of bacteria in a meteorite. Some of the bacteria appears very close to some found here on earth while others he claims are very different.

The research appears online in the journal Cosmology. NASA has already distanced itself from the research the researcher, saying that Richard Hoover is an independent scientist who works at Marshall Space Flight Center. He published the work but is an expert on solar physics not astrobiology.

NASA also called the journal into question, saying that Cosmology published the research in part to help the struggling publication find a buyer before June when it would likely close. The editor agrees with NASA’s assertion but also agrees with Hoover’s findings.

The most compelling reason for dismissing Dr. Hoover’s claim is that NASA fully studied several meteorites 15 years ago and decided that any evidence of alien life could easily be attributed to contamination from bacteria after the space rocks arrived on Earth.

At a gathering of meteorite experts in Houston this week, Hoover’s claim was the conversation du jour but not for its contribution to science. Most scientists rolled their eyes and pointed out that the journal Cosmology holds that life on Earth was seeded by simple life that hitchhiked on comets and meteors from deep in space.

Renown scientist Seth Shostack who searches for alien life for a living was very excited when Fox News broke the story on Friday. But he says after reading the research paper he was very disappointed.

Hoover claims that the bacteria he found were contained in three meteorites discovered in France in 1806 and 1864 and in Tanzania in 1938. In that time even the best preserved space rocks are subject to Earthly microbial contamination.

And in the case of the 1864 rock, which Hoover places much of his alien hope, meteorite researcher Hap McSween told the Associated Press the rock was in “atrocious” condition in a Paris museum. He says There was a vein in the rock that hadn’t been there in old photographs, a sign of creeping moisture.

No one in the scientific community is giving much credence to this latest claim of discovering life in outer space but the story, which many scientists believed would be ignored, went viral. After all, it’s aliens.

A giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox is seen in a microscopic image released on March 7, 2011 which was compared to meteorite filaments