Alien Life On Comet 67P? Scientists At Loggerheads.

Two British astronomers – Chandra Wickramasinghe from University of Buckingham and Max Wallis from University of Cardiff – have claimed that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is currently hosting Philae Lander, could be home to some form of alien life: microbes similar to “extremophiles”, which live in the most inhospitable parts of earth.

Before the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers argued that the data from Rosetta, the European Space Agency probe orbiting the comet, showed the capacity for micro-organisms to eke out life beneath the comet’s black crust.

“Rosetta has already shown that the comet is not to be seen as a deep-frozen inactive body, but supports geological processes and could be more hospitable to micro-life than our Arctic and Antarctic regions,” said Wallis.

Wickramasinghe commented, “Data coming from the comet seems to point to micro-organisms being involved in the formation of the icy structures, the preponderance of aromatic hydrocarbons, and the very dark surface. These are not easily explained in terms of prebiotic chemistry. The dark material is being constantly replenished as it is boiled off by heat from the sun. Something must be doing that at a fairly prolific rate.”

Their findings, however, are rejected by leading comet experts who believe that comet’s surface features are much more easily explained by non-biological mechanisms.

“No scientist active in any of the Rosetta instrument science teams assumes the presence of living micro-organisms beneath the cometary surface crust. These explanations seem to be valid, also with regard to new data of the cometary Rosetta mission. Even though Philae is not equipped with life detectors, the probe’s COSAC and PTOLEMY instruments could measure key organic molecules that life forms known to us consist of. We can thereby distinguish between the biological and astrochemical formation of organics,” Uwe Meierhenrich from Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, who helped develop the COSAC chemical analyzer installed on the Philae probe Lander, told The Guardian.

“Certainly the presence of ice and organic solids on comets in general, and on Churyumov-Gerasimenko in particular, is well established. However, jumping from that to microorganisms and even to lakes of liquid water is going well beyond the data. Of course many speculations that go beyond the data prove to be correct when adequate data is collected. But many more speculations that go beyond the data turn out to be incorrect,” Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, told NBC News.

Wickramasinghe had earlier suggested that carbon-based life on Earth emerged through the molecular “building blocks” brought to Earth by comets.
 
Get Your Anonymous T-Shirt / Sweatshirt / Hoodie / Tanktop, Smartphone or Tablet Cover or Mug In Our Spreadshirt Shop! Click Here<

This Article (Alien Life On Comet 67P? Scientists At Loggerheads.) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.