Alien Life Found in Meteorites? Scientist's Claim Stirs Debate

Ladies and gentlemen, start your ET debate engines. A NASA biologist has claimed he discovered microfossil organisms -- ancient bacteria -- inside slices of rare meteorites that fell to Earth and were found in France, Tanzania, India, Canada and the icy Yamato Mountains of Antarctica.

After the Journal of Cosmology published a paper by Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, a viral scientific and public debate began over the weekend.

Using scanning electron microscopes, Hoover found filaments that look like microbes inside meteorites, known as carbonaceous chondrites, believed to be more than 4 billion years old, dating all the way back to the birth of our solar system.

"The filaments represent the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth's atmosphere," Hoover concluded in his analysis. "This finding has direct implications to the distribution of life in the cosmos."

While the idea of the possible discovery of life outside of our home planet is tantalizing at best, scientific doctrine dictates caution in going forward with critical analysis.

Writing in the Journal of Cosmology, Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who is the journal's editor-in-chief, acknowledges Hoover's "respected record of accomplishment at NASA." He also says the journal issued "a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper."

A big part of the debate over the meteorite filament structures surrounds the possibility that, instead of having an out-of-this-world origin, they may have simply formed from some sort of earth-bound contaminants.

So far, a number of scientists and researchers have chimed in with their comments on the Journal of Cosmology website:

Michael H. Engel of the School of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Oklahoma wrote, "About once every decade, a scientific discovery is reported that elicits passionate debate concerning the possible existence of extraterrestrial life, past or present. The report by Richard Hoover ... will be met with excitement by some and reservation by others. I encourage people to keep an open mind when forming an opinion as to the significance of this work."

Cody Youngbull of the Arizona State University Biodesign Institute confirmed that Hoover's claim "has gone viral with major media news sources and Internet blogs all carrying reports of this story. ... What will likely follow is that healthily skeptical experts will dream up reasonable mechanisms for these formations."

B.G. Sidharth of the International Institute for Applicable Mathematics and Information Sciences in India, said, "The importance of all of this is that life would be more widespread in the universe than if it had originated entirely on the Earth. What can we conclude from all this? We are not alone. Life may be everywhere."

But, as the late astronomer Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence."

Writing in the science blog Pharyngula, PZ Myers, a University of Minnesota-Morris biologist, not only disagrees with Hoover's findings; he even takes critical shots at the Journal of Cosmology.

"It isn't a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed ... that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth," Myers wrote.

"Finding credible evidence of extraterrestrial microbes is the kind of thing you'd expect to see published in Science or Nature," he added. "But the fact that it found a home on a fringe website that pretends to be a legitimate science journal ought to set off alarms right there. ... This work is garbage. I'm surprised anyone is granting it any credibility at all."

Interestingly, while Hoover is listed as a NASA scientist, according to a statement issued by the space agency on this story, it doesn't appear that NASA has signed off on his claims.

"While we value the free exchange of ideas, data and information as part of scientific and technical inquiry, NASA cannot stand behind or support a scientific claim unless it has been peer-reviewed or thoroughly examined by other qualified experts," Paul Hertz, chief scientist of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, wrote.

"This [Hoover's] paper was submitted in 2007 to the International Journal of Astrobiology," the statement continued. "However, the peer review process was not completed for that submission. NASA was also unaware of the recent submission of the paper to the Journal of Cosmology or of the paper's subsequent publication."

Plus, Hoover made a very similar claim in 2004.

This is not the only time that a meteorite containing possible evidence of life off Earth has hit the mainstream media. In 1996, headlines were made, along with a statement by President Bill Clinton, when a meteorite from Mars was thought to have fossilized microbial life embedded in it. But after years of study, those claims just didn't pan out.

The bottom line here: Rather than jumping to conclusions on either side of the issue, scientific debate and discussion are the appropriate course of action to take before any "we are not alone" claims are taken seriously by the world.

Are you following AOL Weird News on Facebook and Twitter?