15 ms·

No, Diatoms Have Not Been Found in a Meteorite

166 points by jalanco 14y ago

8ig8 14y ago
Likewise: New Bacteria in Lake Vostok Actually a Contamination... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361405 Seems like there's a rush to get news out without full investigations.
- fabriceleal 14y ago
  I was about to say the same thing in that thread :)
- Trufa 14y ago
  I agree there is a rush but most times is from the media, not only from the actual gatherers of information (not in this case apparently). I remember when CERN published the experiment that they measured neutrinos(?) that seem to travel faster than the speed of light, the news was: Neutrinos travel faster that the speed of light, the rules of physics as we know them are collapsing. CERN did nothing wrong, they published what they findings, and later, when peer reviewed, it proved to be a measurement error, that's the way science is supposed to work. Similar was when NASA(?) found a bacteria that sustained life without carbon, that proved to be wrong too. The problem is that it doesn't pay to be conservative, and absolutist headlines sell much better than realistic ones. I think it's a shared blame. I would also like to add, to be fair, that many of this topics are pretty complicated for the layman, and some information is lost when the news is simplified/oversimplified. Not everyone is familiarized with the scientific processes, nor they are supposed to be.
jneal 14y ago
Okay, I'm no scientist but one part of the argument just kind of irks me: [i]In other words, all the diatoms shown in the paper are from known species on Earth. That makes it somewhat less likely they are native to space. And by somewhat, I mean completely. Like, zero chance they are from space.[/i] UNLESS, Panspermia is correct and all life on earth came from space, in which case it would be completely in the realm of possibility that life from space that landed on earth had already landed here before, in the distance past.
- moomin 14y ago
  Only if you assume that evolution hasn't affected earthbound diatoms in any way. That's a rather stronger assumption than "life comes from space".
- Udo 14y ago
  I don't think there is a lot of doubt that panspermia can work. There is nothing preventing it in principle, and the scenario becomes more probable the more we learn about extremophiles. But, it's another thing to simply assert that life on Earth originated elsewhere. If anything, it's probably us who are spewing bio matter all over the solar system. There is simply no compelling evidence to suggest otherwise. We see all kinds of bio-like formations in space rocks, but they're always "fossilized" in a sense that they most likely arose from abiotic processes. This is not the first time dubious crystal formations have been declared as of biological origin. We also discovered a lot of unexpectedly complex organic molecules floating around in outer space, so it's definitely possible to find familiar chemicals without a biosphere around to produce them. It can be somewhat difficult to distinguish scientists who are expressing valid thoughts about panspermia from quacks who are pushing a philosophical agenda. In this case though there was not even a little bit of doubt that the data didn't agree with their conclusions.
  - warfangle 14y ago
    Except this wasn't even a space rock..
    - EthanHeilman 14y ago
      What I find worrying about this whole affair is that first everyone jumped on them saying that the fossils aren't really fossiles but instead just simple rock formations and then afterwords that the fossils are earth life so that the fossils didn't form outside of the earth. Certainly the JoC is insane, but the jumping to conclusions it's critics engaged in seems worrying to me.
      - DanBC 14y ago
jalanco 14y ago
If you're interested in the topic of ET life, I'd recommend Paul Davies book "The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence".
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ygmelnikova 14y ago
Science -- The greatest religion of them all.
lucb1e 14y ago
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/955/ http://xkcd.com/955/
bicx 14y ago
I guess what confuses me with this stuff is that while we consider throwing out all claims of life on Mars due to a possible rover equipment exposure to non-sterile air, it's okay to assume that a meteorite laying around in the dirt is a safe source of extraterrestrial life.
- scott_s 14y ago
  That's the point - we don't think it's okay to assume that.
- ori_b 14y ago
  The difference here, as I understand it, is that the measurements done on mars were done by looking for samples of specific carbon compounds. This is indeed vulnerable to contamination, since the compounds could be deposited on at any time. In the case of diatoms, they were looking for fossilized structures embedded in the rock. These aren't subject to contamination (at least not trivially), because contamination would have to actually change the structure of the rock. The results for both are wrong -- we didn't find life -- but in principle the methods of looking are subject to different kinds of errors. In this case, the issue is that the author of the original paper has done two major things wrong: - He hasn't shown that the meteor is actually a meteor. - What he claims to be fossils embedded in the rock aren't fossils.
retrogradeorbit 14y ago
This is full of ad hominem, rough guesses, non scientific hyperbole, ones persons opinion (the authors, or a person contacted) and colloquialisms and weasel words. Please don't assume I believe in panspermia. But this article is likely to be just as rubbish as the original paper. The emotional language the author uses makes me think that this gripe is personal. As in biased. The opposite bias he accuses the original author of. And he keeps, well, saying, why, well... Some examples of the hyperbole: "It’s wrong. Really, really wrong. Way, way, way ridiculously oh-holy-wow-how-could-anyone-publish-this wrong." "[deep breath]" Cynically calling the journal "august" "alarm bells exploded in my head" "not without some merits." (not 'has some merits' but is just short of no merit at all. as in just 'some') "fervent proponent" "Like, really fervent" (did he actually, like, well, write 'like'?) And so on it goes. And on, and on, and on. Like verbal diarrhoea. It really does come across like he has an axe to grind. This kind of writing really doesn't help his point. Do you think this article would pass peer review and be published in a journal? I don't know why scientists just can't keep an open mind. Maybe life comes from outer space. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe diatoms are in meteorites. Maybe they aren't. No one really knows, do they?
- mistercow 14y ago
  It's a blog post, not a scientific paper, so you best get over the informality. Debunking bad science is a thing that Phil Plait does, so if it sounds like he has an axe to grind, that's why. >I don't know why scientists just can't keep an open mind. Maybe life comes from outer space. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe diatoms are in meteorites. Maybe they aren't. No one really knows, do they? That's called argument from ignorance. It's a fallacy.
  - retrogradeorbit 14y ago
    Well then he really needs to clean up his writing style. I think his writing is terrible. If he wants to persuade people to be sceptical of the original paper he'll have a lot more success if he tones down the colloquial attacks. It's just way over the top. Unless it's just preaching to the converted.
tomrod 14y ago
How would fossilization occur in space? I was under the impression that water carried down calcium compounds which replaced bone structure/other molecular structures. Would not the fossil have to be there as the rock becomes ejecta from some source?
- robmcm 14y ago
  That's what I assumed. Not that the fossilization actually occoured in space it's self.
- eksith 14y ago
  One possibility would be that if the calcium already existed in the asteroid along with ice. The ejecta could somehow retain some water along with the original organisms the sudden relocation to space would preserve the structure (if it hadn't been vaporized first). The water would turn to ice. If this asteroid then came near the Sun, the ice would presumably melt by the ambient heat (and if deep inside, wouldn't immediately sublimate). The moisture will then aid in the fossilization. That's purely speculation, of course.
  - tomrod 14y ago
    I guess its possible... http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Universe_contains_more_calcium_than_expected http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Universe_con... Says there is 1.5 times more calcium than we thought before.
- Thrymr 14y ago
  Fossilization of diatoms doesn't require calcium. Their cell walls are made of silica, which is preserved quite well by itself. Though this is known from Earth diatoms, not space diatoms...
  - possibilistic 14y ago
    Assuming such organisms would exist, would we even be able to call them "space diatoms" when there is no established phylogeny? A Panspermia event would likely have seeded our planet with _bacterial_ life; if "space diatoms" exist, they evolved independently of our own. I know there are countless cases of using names and nomenclatures when there is no relation (eg. water bear, sea horse, flying fox, etc.). But we shouldn't call such hypothetical organisms diatoms when they're unrelated. It's in poor form.
alex_doom 14y ago
Pretty sure this is N. C. Wickramasinghe: http://i.imgur.com/FpqQTu6.jpg http://i.imgur.com/FpqQTu6.jpg
- acqq 14y ago
  You're joking, but it's distracting. The real guy is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Wickramasinghe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Wickramasinghe "On May 24, 2003 The Lancet published a letter from Wickramasinghe,[16] jointly signed by Milton Wainwright and Jayant Narlikar, in which they hypothesized that the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) could be extraterrestrial in origin and not originated from chickens. The Lancet subsequently published three responses to this letter, showing that the hypothesis was not evidence-based, and casting doubts on the quality of the experiments referenced by Wickramasinghe in his letter.[17][18][19]"
EGreg 14y ago
If fossilization occurred in the asteroid, wouldn't entering earth's atmosphere alter it sufficiently to be unrecognizable? Also, who is to say that bacteria didn't "seep into" the asteroid? Scientists often use fossils to come to the conclusion that Antarctica wasn't that cold in the past: http://www.livescience.com/5023-fossil-suggests-antarctica-warmer.html http://www.livescience.com/5023-fossil-suggests-antarctica-w...
- mikeash 14y ago
  Rocks insulate fairly well, so the interior would probably be unscathed after reentry. Fresh meteorites tend to be extremely cold, because only the outer layers heated up in reentry, and the inside is still cold from being in space for a couple billion years.

166 points by jalanco 14y ago

8ig8 14y ago

Likewise: New Bacteria in Lake Vostok Actually a Contamination... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361405 Seems like there's a rush to get news out without full investigations.

fabriceleal 14y ago
I was about to say the same thing in that thread :)
Trufa 14y ago
I agree there is a rush but most times is from the media, not only from the actual gatherers of information (not in this case apparently). I remember when CERN published the experiment that they measured neutrinos(?) that seem to travel faster than the speed of light, the news was: Neutrinos travel faster that the speed of light, the rules of physics as we know them are collapsing. CERN did nothing wrong, they published what they findings, and later, when peer reviewed, it proved to be a measurement error, that's the way science is supposed to work. Similar was when NASA(?) found a bacteria that sustained life without carbon, that proved to be wrong too. The problem is that it doesn't pay to be conservative, and absolutist headlines sell much better than realistic ones. I think it's a shared blame. I would also like to add, to be fair, that many of this topics are pretty complicated for the layman, and some information is lost when the news is simplified/oversimplified. Not everyone is familiarized with the scientific processes, nor they are supposed to be.

jneal 14y ago

Okay, I'm no scientist but one part of the argument just kind of irks me: [i]In other words, all the diatoms shown in the paper are from known species on Earth. That makes it somewhat less likely they are native to space. And by somewhat, I mean completely. Like, zero chance they are from space.[/i] UNLESS, Panspermia is correct and all life on earth came from space, in which case it would be completely in the realm of possibility that life from space that landed on earth had already landed here before, in the distance past.

moomin 14y ago
Only if you assume that evolution hasn't affected earthbound diatoms in any way. That's a rather stronger assumption than "life comes from space".
Udo 14y ago
I don't think there is a lot of doubt that panspermia can work. There is nothing preventing it in principle, and the scenario becomes more probable the more we learn about extremophiles. But, it's another thing to simply assert that life on Earth originated elsewhere. If anything, it's probably us who are spewing bio matter all over the solar system. There is simply no compelling evidence to suggest otherwise. We see all kinds of bio-like formations in space rocks, but they're always "fossilized" in a sense that they most likely arose from abiotic processes. This is not the first time dubious crystal formations have been declared as of biological origin. We also discovered a lot of unexpectedly complex organic molecules floating around in outer space, so it's definitely possible to find familiar chemicals without a biosphere around to produce them. It can be somewhat difficult to distinguish scientists who are expressing valid thoughts about panspermia from quacks who are pushing a philosophical agenda. In this case though there was not even a little bit of doubt that the data didn't agree with their conclusions.
- warfangle 14y ago
  Except this wasn't even a space rock..
  - EthanHeilman 14y ago
    What I find worrying about this whole affair is that first everyone jumped on them saying that the fossils aren't really fossiles but instead just simple rock formations and then afterwords that the fossils are earth life so that the fossils didn't form outside of the earth. Certainly the JoC is insane, but the jumping to conclusions it's critics engaged in seems worrying to me.
    - DanBC 14y ago

jalanco 14y ago

If you're interested in the topic of ET life, I'd recommend Paul Davies book "The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence".

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ygmelnikova 14y ago

Science -- The greatest religion of them all.

lucb1e 14y ago

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/955/ http://xkcd.com/955/

bicx 14y ago

I guess what confuses me with this stuff is that while we consider throwing out all claims of life on Mars due to a possible rover equipment exposure to non-sterile air, it's okay to assume that a meteorite laying around in the dirt is a safe source of extraterrestrial life.

scott_s 14y ago
That's the point - we don't think it's okay to assume that.
ori_b 14y ago
The difference here, as I understand it, is that the measurements done on mars were done by looking for samples of specific carbon compounds. This is indeed vulnerable to contamination, since the compounds could be deposited on at any time. In the case of diatoms, they were looking for fossilized structures embedded in the rock. These aren't subject to contamination (at least not trivially), because contamination would have to actually change the structure of the rock. The results for both are wrong -- we didn't find life -- but in principle the methods of looking are subject to different kinds of errors. In this case, the issue is that the author of the original paper has done two major things wrong: - He hasn't shown that the meteor is actually a meteor. - What he claims to be fossils embedded in the rock aren't fossils.

retrogradeorbit 14y ago

This is full of ad hominem, rough guesses, non scientific hyperbole, ones persons opinion (the authors, or a person contacted) and colloquialisms and weasel words. Please don't assume I believe in panspermia. But this article is likely to be just as rubbish as the original paper. The emotional language the author uses makes me think that this gripe is personal. As in biased. The opposite bias he accuses the original author of. And he keeps, well, saying, why, well... Some examples of the hyperbole: "It’s wrong. Really, really wrong. Way, way, way ridiculously oh-holy-wow-how-could-anyone-publish-this wrong." "[deep breath]" Cynically calling the journal "august" "alarm bells exploded in my head" "not without some merits." (not 'has some merits' but is just short of no merit at all. as in just 'some') "fervent proponent" "Like, really fervent" (did he actually, like, well, write 'like'?) And so on it goes. And on, and on, and on. Like verbal diarrhoea. It really does come across like he has an axe to grind. This kind of writing really doesn't help his point. Do you think this article would pass peer review and be published in a journal? I don't know why scientists just can't keep an open mind. Maybe life comes from outer space. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe diatoms are in meteorites. Maybe they aren't. No one really knows, do they?

mistercow 14y ago
It's a blog post, not a scientific paper, so you best get over the informality. Debunking bad science is a thing that Phil Plait does, so if it sounds like he has an axe to grind, that's why. >I don't know why scientists just can't keep an open mind. Maybe life comes from outer space. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe diatoms are in meteorites. Maybe they aren't. No one really knows, do they? That's called argument from ignorance. It's a fallacy.
- retrogradeorbit 14y ago
  Well then he really needs to clean up his writing style. I think his writing is terrible. If he wants to persuade people to be sceptical of the original paper he'll have a lot more success if he tones down the colloquial attacks. It's just way over the top. Unless it's just preaching to the converted.

tomrod 14y ago

How would fossilization occur in space? I was under the impression that water carried down calcium compounds which replaced bone structure/other molecular structures. Would not the fossil have to be there as the rock becomes ejecta from some source?

robmcm 14y ago
That's what I assumed. Not that the fossilization actually occoured in space it's self.
eksith 14y ago
One possibility would be that if the calcium already existed in the asteroid along with ice. The ejecta could somehow retain some water along with the original organisms the sudden relocation to space would preserve the structure (if it hadn't been vaporized first). The water would turn to ice. If this asteroid then came near the Sun, the ice would presumably melt by the ambient heat (and if deep inside, wouldn't immediately sublimate). The moisture will then aid in the fossilization. That's purely speculation, of course.
- tomrod 14y ago
  I guess its possible... http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Universe_contains_more_calcium_than_expected http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Universe_con... Says there is 1.5 times more calcium than we thought before.
Thrymr 14y ago
Fossilization of diatoms doesn't require calcium. Their cell walls are made of silica, which is preserved quite well by itself. Though this is known from Earth diatoms, not space diatoms...
- possibilistic 14y ago
  Assuming such organisms would exist, would we even be able to call them "space diatoms" when there is no established phylogeny? A Panspermia event would likely have seeded our planet with _bacterial_ life; if "space diatoms" exist, they evolved independently of our own. I know there are countless cases of using names and nomenclatures when there is no relation (eg. water bear, sea horse, flying fox, etc.). But we shouldn't call such hypothetical organisms diatoms when they're unrelated. It's in poor form.

alex_doom 14y ago

Pretty sure this is N. C. Wickramasinghe: http://i.imgur.com/FpqQTu6.jpg http://i.imgur.com/FpqQTu6.jpg

acqq 14y ago
You're joking, but it's distracting. The real guy is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Wickramasinghe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Wickramasinghe "On May 24, 2003 The Lancet published a letter from Wickramasinghe,[16] jointly signed by Milton Wainwright and Jayant Narlikar, in which they hypothesized that the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) could be extraterrestrial in origin and not originated from chickens. The Lancet subsequently published three responses to this letter, showing that the hypothesis was not evidence-based, and casting doubts on the quality of the experiments referenced by Wickramasinghe in his letter.[17][18][19]"

EGreg 14y ago

If fossilization occurred in the asteroid, wouldn't entering earth's atmosphere alter it sufficiently to be unrecognizable? Also, who is to say that bacteria didn't "seep into" the asteroid? Scientists often use fossils to come to the conclusion that Antarctica wasn't that cold in the past: http://www.livescience.com/5023-fossil-suggests-antarctica-warmer.html http://www.livescience.com/5023-fossil-suggests-antarctica-w...

mikeash 14y ago
Rocks insulate fairly well, so the interior would probably be unscathed after reentry. Fresh meteorites tend to be extremely cold, because only the outer layers heated up in reentry, and the inside is still cold from being in space for a couple billion years.