Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis. Our intention is to publish the commentaries, both pro and con, alongside Dr. Hoover's paper. In this way, the paper will have received a thorough vetting, and all points of view can be presented. No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough analysis, and no other scientific journal in the history of science has made such a profoundly important paper available to the scientific community, for comment, before it is published. We believe the best way to advance science, is to promote debate and discussion.Dr. Richard Hoover is an astrobiologist with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. His paper comes after ten years of collecting and studying meteorites in remote areas such as Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska. His study examined a very rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites, of which only nine such meteorites are known to exist on Earth, and has startling conclusions.
Hoover asserts that his findings show fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites. These would not be bacteria that latched onto the meteorites after they crashed into earth, but rather ones that existed on the meteorites as it traveled through space.
To analyze the meteorites, Hoover put them into a sterile environment, and after splitting them apart, examined the freshly broken surfaces with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope. He discovered what he believes are the fossilized remains of bacteria, some of which were not very different than ones on earth. Others, however, were strange looking and "stumped Hoover" and others he showed them to.
The Journal invited a large number of experts to analyze and comment on Hoover's findings. Those will be published online from March 7-10. Dr. Rudy Schild, a scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian's Center for Astrophysics and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cosmology wrote a note accompanying the online paper:
Obviously, if Hoover's findings were to be confirmed, they would have huge implications. No longer would earth be the only source of life.
Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, said
“Maybe life was seeded on earth -- it developed on comets for example, and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early Earth. It would suggest, well, life didn’t really begin on the Earth, it began as the solar system was forming.According to Northern Arizona University, "carbonaceous chondrites are those that obviously contain carbon-bearing matter: elemental carbon, nano diamonds, abiotic organic compounds, fullerenes, and other rare, carbon forms. "
“A lot of times it takes a long time before scientists start changing their mind as to what is valid and what is not. I’m sure there will be many many scientists that will be very skeptical and that’s OK.”
CI1 is an indicator of thethe degree of water processing or aqueous alteration that occurred. Aqueous alteration is a process in which changes to minerals occur through reactions with water.
Via: Journal of Cosmology, Fox News
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