NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life

[ES 96]

actual_bacterium.jpg

March 05, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrend...nceofalienlife

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/...ife-meteorite/

I'll wait for his peers to publish their findings before putting much stock in this. I recall finds in meteorites that were found to be false positives (of terrestrial origin) before.

On the other hand, if true, then good on ya Dr. Hoover!

[Wiseman]

Ok, most publications are reviewed BEFORE they are published. It sounds like they just wanted to push this out as soon as possible. I find it odd that they don't show the images of the negative controls ( moon rocks and silicon wafers ). This is sloppy science and even though they show a positive control which is the image of a bacteria found on earth, they need to show what the image of a structure devoid of life looks like to be consistent.

[silentreader]

Originally Posted by Wiseman

Ok, most publications are reviewed BEFORE they are published. It sounds like they just wanted to push this out as soon as possible. I find it odd that they don't show the images of the negative controls ( moon rocks and silicon wafers ). This is sloppy science and even though they show a positive control which is the image of a bacteria found on earth, they need to show what the image of a structure devoid of life looks like to be consistent.

Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

In order to satisfy the inevitable hoard of buzz-killing skeptics, Hoover’s study and evidence were made available to his peers in the scientific community in advance of the study’s publications, giving them a chance to thoroughly dissect his findings. Comments from those who decided to sift through the evidence will be published online, alongside the study.

“Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis,” writes Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Dr. Rudy Schild, who serves as the Journal of Cosmology’s editor-in-chief. “No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published.”

Looks to me like this has gotten a thorough peer-review already, yes? The comments will be interesting though.

[Richard]

Meh...anybody who's ever been to Washington, DC, knows alien life forms exist - however, we normally use the PC acceptable term for them...politicians.

Richard

[Dusty]

I thought they already found a fossil from Mars in Arizona or somewhere a while back.

Everybody knows there's life from outside this planet because there's no way that guy who plays the main character in "House" is human.

[ES 96]

Originally Posted by Dusty

I thought they already found a fossil from Mars in Arizona or somewhere a while back.

That would be "Antarctica"; meteorite name ALH 84001 found in Dec '84. The "There might be life in this here rock" announcement was initially made in 1996. Now its thought that the different chemistry on Mars when the rock was there before being ejected, could be the reason for the formations some have thought to be exobiologic.

h_alh84001_02.jpg

http://www.space.com/9623-martian-me...cientists.html

[GratefulCitizen]

It's entirely possible that the rock was originally expelled from the Earth.

The amount of water on Earth is interesting when compared with the other planets.
Maybe all those water-containing comets came from Earth, rather that the water on Earth coming from comets.

The percentage of near-parabolic orbits among long period comets is much higher than it "should" be, falling in from all directions, and have perhelions concentrated near the sun (1-3 AU).
There has never been an observed case of comet having an incoming hyperbolic orbit.

This evidence would point to comets having recent origin from within the solar system.
Earth has most of the water and would be the likely source.

If some catastrophe in Earth's past could launch the comets, it could probably launch some other random rocks.

<shrug>
My guess is that scientific interpretation on any issue will be highly correlated with the motivations of the funding source.

[Wiseman]

Originally Posted by silentreader

Looks to me like this has gotten a thorough peer-review already, yes? The comments will be interesting though.

When you are not showing all of the data, it becomes suspect. They also mentioned that they published it so it would get criticism. The only criticism they are going to get is a big "WTF" from their peers. If they wanted to do this properly, they would not make an announcement on Yahoo news or Fox News and the additional review should have been done in private before the paper is published.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Wiseman

When you are not showing all of the data, it becomes suspect. They also mentioned that they published it so it would get criticism. The only criticism they are going to get is a big "WTF" from their peers. If they wanted to do this properly, they would not make an announcement on Yahoo news or Fox News and the additional review should have been done in private before the paper is published.

IMO, your analysis overlooks the political dimensions of the announcement.

[kgoerz]

oops, Bible missed this one by a mile.

[Wiseman]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

IMO, your analysis overlooks the political dimensions of the announcement.

Sigaba,

From a scientifical point of view, I do not care about the political announcement. I am looking at this from a technical point of view. When you are making qualitative assertions, you need a qualitative negative control image of the lunar dust samples and silicon wafers that they claimed to have used. I can look at the paper again but I don't see that image in there.