Sunday, March 06, 2011

Ancient Travelers

Remember all those times when you were a kid, and you looked up at the stars, and swore you didn't really belong on this planet? That you were just waiting, like Peter Gabriel in Solsbury Hill, for them to "come to take me home"?

Well, maybe you knew something:
Richard Hoover's paper, along with pictures of the microscopic earthworm-like creatures, were published late Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology, which is available free online.

Hoover sliced open fragments of several types of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, which can contain relatively high levels of water and organic materials, and looked inside with a powerful microscope.

He found bacteria-like creatures that he calls "indigenous fossils," which he believes originated beyond Earth and were not introduced here after the meteorites landed.

"He concludes these fossilized bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, e.g. comets, moons, and other astral bodies," said the study.

"The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets."

Gerald Kersh wrote a story about that.