Alien Fossils Discovered...Or Maybe Not

By James Mulroy, PCWorld    Mar 8, 2011 10:22 AM

Aliens Exist! At least that's what a scientist from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center thinks. You may recall when NASA discovered that there are bacteria that can live off of arsenic, but this discovery might blow that one out of the water. A study by Dr. Richard Hoover recently published in the Journal of Cosmology examines evidence of microfossils of once-living organisms inside of carbonaceous meteorites. This would seem to be evidence of extraterrestrial life, but it's being met with quite a bit ofskepticism.

Using a Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope, Dr. Hoover viewed slices that he cut from Alais, Ivuna, and Orgueil CI1 type carbonaceous meteorites. These microfossils are similar to trichomic (hair-like features coming from the surface) cyanobacteria and trichomic prokaryotes. Because the fossilized bacteria are inside the meteorites, Dr. Hoover concluded that the fossilized remains are not contaminats from Earth, but from Space where the microorganisms could have lived on comets, moons, or other bodies in space.

The discovery is so out-of-this-world--literally--that the Journal of Cosmology has invited over 100 experts in the field and has also issued an invitation to over 5000 scientists to review the paper to promote debate, discussion, and to give the discovery a thorough review to verify the validity of the experiment. Prior to this, Dr. Hoover, Astrobiology Group Leader at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama, has conducted research on meteorites from Antarctica, and studied bacteria from around the world.

Dr. Hoover ran various tests and analysis to study the fossils inside of the meteorites to prove that they are indeed biological in nature. The researcher states that a number of the bacteria were similar to those on Earth, but weren't exact matches. Below are two pictures: The first is from the Ivuna CI1 meteorite, and the second is a the giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox from Earth. You can see the similarities:

Fossil from space

Titanospirillum velox from Earth

They certainly look like bacteria don't they? Maybe they are, but according to Carl Pilcher, director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, the meteorites fell to Earth some 100 to 200 years ago. Pilcher told the AFP that "the simplest explanation is that there are microbes in the meteorites; they are Earth microbes. In other words, they are contamination." That is, the meteorites have been on Earth long enough that Earth-bound microbes could have found their way into it. Also, according to the AFP, Paul Hertz, the chief scientist of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, issued a statement saying that NASA dies not support Hoover's findings.

So did we really find evidence of life? Or is there a simpler explanation? If these micro-fossils are really space-fareing bacteria, this discovery is potentially incredibly significant and could prove once and for all that life did (and perhaps does) exist beyond our own planet. It may not be ET, but it would be something and would show that maybe we should put in a little more effort to reach the stars. Stay tuned for updates!

[Journal of cosmology via Digital Trends / Images: Journal of Cosmology via Dr. Hoover and courtesy of Dr. Riccardo Guerrero]

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World's sixth mass extinction may be underway: study

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AFP/File – This file photo shows a colobus monkey kissing his newly born sibling. In the last five centuries, at …

by Richard Ingham and Laurent Banguet – Fri Mar 4, 12:58 am ET

PARIS (AFP) – Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction in Earth's history, according to a paper released by the science journal Nature.

Over the past 540 million years, five mega-wipeouts of species have occurred through naturally-induced events.

But the new threat is man-made, inflicted by habitation loss, over-hunting, over-fishing, the spread of germs and viruses and introduced species, and by climate change caused by fossil-fuel greenhouse gases, says the study.

Evidence from fossils suggests that in the "Big Five" extinctions, at least 75 percent of all animal species were destroyed.

Palaeobiologists at the University of California at Berkeley looked at the state of biodiversity today, using the world's mammal species as a barometer.

Until mankind's big expansion some 500 years ago, mammal extinctions were very rare: on average, just two species died out every million years.

But in the last five centuries, at least 80 out of 5,570 mammal species have bitten the dust, providing a clear warning of the peril to biodiversity.

"It looks like modern extinction rates resemble mass extinction rates, even after setting a high bar for defining 'mass extinction," said researcher Anthony Barnosky.

This picture is supported by the outlook for mammals in the "critically endangered" and "currently threatened" categories of the Red List of biodiversity compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

On the assumption that these species are wiped out and biodiversity loss continues unchecked, "the sixth mass extinction could arrive within as little as three to 22 centuries," said Barnosky.

Compared with nearly all the previous extinctions this would be fast-track.

Four of the "Big Five" events unfolded on scales estimated at hundreds of thousands to millions of years, inflicted in the main by naturally-caused global warming or cooling.

The most abrupt extinction came at the end of the Cretaceous, some 65 million years ago when a comet or asteroid slammed into the Yucatan peninsula, in modern-day Mexico, causing firestorms whose dust cooled the planet.

An estimated 76 percent of species were killed, including the dinosaurs.

The authors admitted to weaknesses in the study. They acknowledged that the fossil record is far from complete, that mammals provide an imperfect benchmark of Earth's biodiversity and further work is needed to confirm their suspicions.

But they described their estimates as conservative and warned a large-scale extinction would have an impact on a timescale beyond human imagining.

"Recovery of biodiversity will not occur on any timeframe meaningful to people," said the study.

"Evolution of new species typically takes at least hundreds of thousands of years, and recovery from mass extinction episodes probably occurs on timescales encompassing millions of years."

Even so, they stressed, there is room for hope.

"So far, only one to two percent of all species have gone gone extinct in the groups we can look at clearly, so by those numbers, it looks like we are not far down the road to extinction. We still have a lot of Earth's biota to save," Barnosky said.

Even so, "it's very important to devote resources and legislation toward species conservation if we don't want to be the species whose activity caused a mass extinction."

Asked for an independent comment, French biologist Gilles Boeuf, president of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, said the question of a new extinction was first raised in 2002.

So far, scientists have identified 1.9 million species, and between 16,000 and 18,000 new ones, essentially microscopic, are documented each year.

"At this rate, it will take us a thousand years to record all of Earth's biodiversity, which is probably between 15 and 30 million species" said Boeuf.

"But at the rate things are going, by the end of this century, we may well have wiped out half of them, especially in tropical forests and coral reefs."

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Artificial 'Honey Pot' Cells Lure Deadly Viruses, Then Deactivate Them

By Clay DillowPosted 03.02.2011 at 4:32 pm0 Comments

Parainfluenza CDC

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Weill Cornell Medical College have found a new means to hunt viruses the old fashioned way: by luring them in for the kill. Using artificial, protocellular “honey pots,” the researchers have devised a way to trap deadly human viruses and terminate them with extreme prejudice.

A new paper describes how these artificial honey pots can be disguised as the very cells a certain class of viruses--known as henipaviruses--is designed to infect. These viruses, which include respiratory syncytial virus, mumps, measles, and parainfluenza, infect cells via two predatory proteins that work in tandem to track and infect their prey.

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One of these proteins works as a spotter, identifying the receptor protein on target cells and pointing it out to another protein. This second protein then essentially harpoons the target and pulls it in close so the virus can deliver its infectious payload. The catch, however, is that each virus can only do this once.

The honey pot protocells have a silica core to provide structure and are wrapped in a membrane like a normal cell. That membrane contains the “honey”: a protein known as Ephrin-B2, a target of henipaviruses. In experiments using non-pathogenic analogs to henipaviruses, the decoys were effective at essentially clearing a solution of active viruses, as they wasted their shot at proliferation trying to infect synthetic cells.

In the immediate term, the protocell honey pots could provide a powerful research tool for understanding how these viruses interact with--and eventually infect--healthy cells. But the more exciting prospect is that it could lead to a new class of antivirals. Since the honey pots target the infection method rather than the viruses themselves, it would be tough for viruses to evolve a resistance. Since the protocells are “infected” the same way as human cells, it’s likely that any evolutionary measure that emerged to avoid the protocells would also render viruses ineffective at infecting real cells as well.

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