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21 september 2013 11:32 |
Citaat:
http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/961/Wetensc...aan-echt.dhtml
Scan van één van de organismen die volgens de wetenschappers aantonen dat er buitenaards leven is. © epa.
Luc Beernaert
21/09/13 - 10u54 Bron: The Independent
Een team van Britse wetenschappers is ervan overtuigd dat ze het bewijs van buitenaards leven hebben gevonden. De wetenschappers stuurden een ballon 27 kilometer de stratosfeer in en die bracht kleine biologische organismen mee die volgens de experts enkel in de ruimte kunnen zijn ontstaan.
Professor Milton Wainwright verklaart in The Independent dat hij "95 procent zeker" is dat de organismen niet op de Aarde hun oorsprong vonden.
"Met alle informatie die we hebben, kunnen we enkel besluiten dat ze uit de ruimte komen. Er is geen enkel mechanisme bekend waarmee deze levensvormen zo'n hoogte kunnen bereiken. Voor zover we weten, komen ze uit de ruimte".
Geen pollen
"Het zijn geen gebruikelijke organismen", stelt professor Wainwright van het departement Biologie en Biotechnologie van de universiteit van Sheffield. "Mochten ze van de Aarde komen, dan zouden we zaken zien die we hier kennen, zoals pollen".
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Citaat:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...e-8826690.html
The truth IS out there: British scientists claim to have found proof of alien life
Life on Mars? No, say scientists, it’s floating 27km above Chester
TOM MENDELSOHN Author Biography THURSDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2013
The organisms are 'very unusual' (University of Sheffield)
A team of British scientists is convinced it has found proof of alien life, after it harvested strange particles from the edge of space.
The scientists sent a balloon 27km into the stratosphere, which came back carrying small biological organisms which they believe can only have originated from space.
Professor Milton Wainwright told The Independent that he was "95 per cent convinced" that the organisms did not originate from earth.
"By all known information that science has, we know that they must be coming in from space," he said. "There is no known mechanism by which these life forms can achieve that height. As far as we can tell from known physics, they must be incoming."
Some of the samples were captured covered with cosmic dust, adding further credence to the idea that they have originated from space.
"The organisms are not usual," said Professor Wainwright, who works at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. "If they came from earth, we would expect to see stuff that we find on earth commonly, like pollen."
"We're very, very confident that these are biological entities originating from space," he said, acknowledging that absolutely certainty is hard to achieve in science.
The team believes that the entities are coming from comets, which are big balls of ice shooting through space. The samples were collected during a meteorite shower from a comet. As they hit the earth's atmosphere, the comets melt - ablate, to give it a technical term - releasing the organisms as they break down.
"The particles are very clean," added Prof Wainwright. "They don't have any dust attached to them, which again suggests they're not coming to earth. Similarly, cosmic dust isn't stuck to them, so we think they came from an aquatic environment, and the most obvious aquatic environment in space is a comet.
"They're very unusual beasts, not your normal kind of life from earth."
The organisms are probably not alive, but, excitingly, probably do contain DNA. Similar ones harvested during an earlier experiment have contained the chemical, which is one of the fundamental building blocks of life on earth.
The fact that they contain DNA is probably one of the most exciting aspects to this discovery, as it is a big hint that life on earth may itself have extraterrestrial origins.
"If we're right, it means that there's life in space, and it's coming to earth. It means that life on earth probably originated in space," said Professor Wainwright. "Statistically, there's no reason why life should originate on earth. There are billions and billions of comets, but most biologists are stuck on earth.
"The earth is an open system with biology raining down on it as we speak.
"It's almost too amazing to believe."
He scotched the theory that the life forms arrived in the upper atmosphere after being blasted there from a volcano.
"The last volcano was three years ago, and the matter has all been deposited by now," he said.
Professor Wainwright’s team is hoping to extend and confirm their results by carrying out the test again in October to coincide with the upcoming Halley’s Comet-associated meteorite shower when there will be large amounts of cosmic dust. It is hoped that more new, or unusual, organisms will be found.
The group’s findings have been published in the Journal of Cosmology and updated versions will appear in the same journal, a new version of which will be published in the near future. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham University Centre for Astrobiology also gave a presentation of the group’s findings at a meeting of astronomers and astrobiologists in San Diego last month.
Could life on earth have come from outer space? (University of Sheffield)
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Professor Milton Wainwright
Citaat:
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/mbb/staff/wainwright
Research on Astrobiology and the History of Biology
Dr M Wainwright
Sheffield 222 4410
[email protected]
Career History
2012 Honorary Professor and Fellow of the Centre for Astrobiology, University of Buckingham
2009 Honorary Professor Cardiff University
2010 Honorary Professor King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
1986-present: Senior Lecturer
1975-1986: Lecturer in Microbiology
1974-1975: National Research Council of Canada, Postdoctoral Fellow
Research
1) Astrobiology - mainly in relation to attempts to demonstrate the validity of the theory of neopanspermia, i.e. the view that microbes are currently arriving to Earth from space.
2) History of Science - studies on the history of the development of the germ theory, the discovery of antibiotics, notably penicillin and streptomcyin; the role of bacteria in the aetiology of cancer, and the role played by Patrick Matthew, and others in pre-Origin work on evolution (search Google for “wainwrightscience”).
A balloon used to sample the stratosphere for microbes in an attempt to demonstrate neopanspermia-the view that life (microbes) are continually arriving to Earth from space.
Selected Publications
Wainwright, M., Al Harbi, S. and Wickramasinghe, N.C. (2006). How do microorganisms reach the stratosphere? International Journal of Astrobiology 5,13-15.
Shivaji, S.,Chaturvedi, P.,Kuresh,K.,Redy,C.B.S.,Wainwright M.et al. (2006). Bacillus aerius sp. nov. isolated from cryogenic tubes used for collecting air samples from high altitudes. International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology 56,1465-1473.
Wainwright, M. (2008). Some highlights in the history of mycology-a personal journey. Fungal Biology Reviews, 7, 2297-102.
Wainwright, M., Leswd, A. and Alshammari,F. (2009). Bacteria in amber coal and clay in relation to lithopanspermia. International Journal of Astrobiology 8,141-143.
Wainwright, M. (2010).The overlooked link between non-virus microbes and cancer. Science Progress 93, 393-40.
Wainwright, M.(2002). Do fungi play a role in the aetiology of cancer? Reviews of Medical Microbiology 13, 1-6.
Wainwright,M. (2006). The potential role of non-virus microorganisms in cancer. Current Trends in Microbiology 2, 48-59.
Wainwright,M.(2011). Charles Darwin mycologist and refuter of his own myth. Fungi 4, 12-20.
Wainwright, M. (1991). Streptomycin: discovery and resultant controversy. Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 13, 97-124.
Wainwright, M. and Swan, H.T. (1986). C.G. Paine and the earliest surviving clinical record of penicillin therapy. Medical History 30, 42-56.
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