Scientists Claim Evidence of Life in Outer Space

By Patricia Reaney
Reuters

LONDON (July 31) - Evidence of what could be life beyond our planet --
clumps of extraterrestrial bacteria in the Earth's upper atmosphere -- has
been found, a team of international researchers said Tuesday.

Although the bugs from space are similar to bacteria on Earth, the
scientists said the living cells found in samples of air from the edge of
the planet's atmosphere are too far away to have come from Earth.

"There is now unambiguous evidence for the presence of clumps of living
cells in air samples from as high as 40 kilometers, well above the local

tropopause above which no air from lower down would normally be
transported,"Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, an astronomer at Cardiff
University in Wales, said in a statement.

He presented the findings to a meeting of the International Society of
Optical Engineering in San Diego, California.

Wickramasinghe and scientists from India collected the space bugs from
samples of stratospheric air using the Indian Space Research
Organization's cryogenic sampler payload flown on balloons from a launch
pad in Hyderabad, southern India.

Using a fluorescent dye the scientists detected living cells in the sample
and estimated by the way their distribution varied with height that they
are falling from space.

As much as a third of a ton of the biological material is raining down
over the entire planet daily, by their estimation.

SPACE BACTERIA

Professor David Lloyd, a microbiologist at Cardiff University who examined
the space bugs and co-authored the report, said they look like common
terrestrial bacteria but there is no explanation of how they could have
risen so high.

"There would have to be some unusual event which would take particles from
the Earth to a height of 40 kilometers," Lloyd said in a telephone
interview.

The bacteria could have hitched a ride on a rocket or satellite into space
or they really could be from another planet.

"We have no evidence for one or the other as yet," said Lloyd. "The most
likely possibility is that the bacteria have arrived from another planet.
I'd like to think that, at any rate."

Lloyd has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to grow the bacteria in culture
but said he hasn't found the right conditions yet.

"It's the first pointer that it is possible to get evidence that there is
life on other planets," he added.

Wickramasinghe is convinced the space bugs provide strong support for the
panspermia theory -- which suggests that life may have come from outer
space in the form of germs or spores.

"We have argued for more than two decades that terrestrial life was
brought down to Earth by comets and that cometary material containing
micro-organisms must still reach us in large quantities," he said.
 

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