Fox 新闻3月5日：美国航空航天局的科学家声称发现外星生 ...

Riccardo Guerrero / Richard B. Hoover / Journal of Cosmology

A photograph taken through a scanning electron microscope of a CI1 meteorite (right) is similar in size and overall structure to the giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox (left), an organism found here on planet Earth, a NASA scientist said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/05/exclusive-nasa-scientists-claims-evidence-alien-life-meteorite/#ixzz1FoAciToO

We are not alone in the universe -- and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought.

That's the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology.

Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, has traveled to remote areas in Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska, amongst others, for over ten years now, collecting and studying meteorites. He gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late Friday evening in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. In it, Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites -- only nine such meteorites are known to exist on Earth.

Though it may be hard to swallow, Hoover is convinced that his findings reveal fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites, the remains of living organisms from their parent bodies -- comets, moons and other astral bodies. By extension, the findings suggest we are not alone in the universe, he said.

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover told FoxNews.com. “This field of study has just barely been touched -- because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

In what he calls “a very simple process,” Dr. Hoover fractured the meteorite stones under a sterile environment before examining the freshly broken surface with the standard tools of the scientist: a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to search the stone’s surface for evidence of fossilized remains.

He found the fossilized remains of micro-organisms not so different from ordinary ones found underfoot -- here on earth, that is.

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,” Hoover told FoxNews.com. But not all of them. “There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stumped.”

Other scientists tell FoxNews.com the implications of this research are shocking, describing the findings variously as profound, very important and extraordinary. But Dr. David Marais, an astrobiologist with NASA’s AMES Research Center, says he’s very cautious about jumping onto the bandwagon.

These kinds of claims have been made before, he noted -- and found to be false.

“It’s an extraordinary claim, and thus I’ll need extraordinary evidence,” Marais said.

Knowing that the study will be controversial, the journal invited members of the scientific community to analyze the results and to write critical commentaries ahead of time. Though none are online yet, those comments will be posted alongside the article, said Dr. Rudy Schild, a scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian's Center for Astrophysics and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cosmology.

"Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis," Schild wrote in an editor's note along with the article. "No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published, he wrote."

Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, said there is a lot of hesitancy to believe such proclamations. If true, the implications would be far-reaching throughout the fields of science and astronomy, the suggestions and possibilities stunning.

“Maybe life was seeded on earth -- it developed on comets for example, and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early Earth,” Shostak speculated. “It would suggest, well, life didn’t really begin on the Earth, it began as the solar system was forming.”

Hesitancy to believe new claims is something common and necessary to the field of science, Hoover said.

“A lot of times it takes a long time before scientists start changing their mind as to what is valid and what is not. I’m sure there will be many many scientists that will be very skeptical and that’s OK.”

Until Hoover’s research can be independently verified, Marais said, the findings should be considered “a potential signature of life.” Scientists, he said, will now take the research to the next level of scrutiny, which includes an independent confirmation of the results by another lab, before the findings can be classified “a confirmed signature of life.”

Hoover says he isn’t worried about the process and is open to any other explanations.

“If someone can explain how it is possible to have a biological remain that has no nitrogen, or nitrogen below the detect ability limits that I have, in a time period as short as 150 years, then I would be very interested in hearing that."

"I’ve talked with many scientists about this and no one has been able to explain,” he said.


图：一名美国航空航天局的科学家声称CI1陨石的扫描电子显微镜照片显示外星生物的大小和结构与地球上一种叫做Titanospirillum veloxis 的巨型细菌比较接近

我们在宇宙中并不孤独，因为外星生命在形式上可能比我们预想的要更接近地球上的生命。

这是美国航空航天局科学家的一项了不起的结论，他刚刚在今年三月的《宇宙学学报》上发表了这个令人震惊的发现。

Richard B. Hoover博士是美国航空航天局马歇尔空间飞行中心的宇宙生物学家，他早些时候向福克斯新闻透露了这项在周五晚间发表在《宇宙学学报》三月号的研究。在这篇文章中，Hoover描述了他在一枚名叫“CI1碳基球粒陨石”的罕见陨石研究中的最新发现，这种陨石在地面上已知的仅有9枚。

尽管难以置信，Hoover确信这颗陨石中的化石痕迹揭示了一种地外生命的类型，进一步说，我们在宇宙中并不孤独。

“我个人认为生命在宇宙中是广泛分布，而不是（我们之前想的那样）仅仅局限于地球。” Hoover告诉福克斯新闻，“这个研究领域还没有被深入挖掘，因为坦率地说，许多科学家之前认为这根本不可能。”

Hoover博士使用了一种据他说“相当简单的方法”，他在无菌的环境中切碎陨石，然后使用科学家的标准工具：电子扫描显微镜和扫描隧道显微镜检查新鲜切面，然后寻找陨石表面化石的痕迹。

“最令人激动的是这些痕迹在很大程度上是可以被识别的，而且与地球上的类似生物非常接近”，Hoover告诉福克斯新闻，但也不完全一样，“有一些非常奇特以至于和我之前鉴定的类型完全不同。我把它们像其他的专家出示，这令他们也很困惑。”

其他的科学家告诉福克斯新闻这项研究的推论令人震惊，他们认为此类发现具有高度的多样性，往往是非同寻常的。美国航空航天局AMES研究中心的David Marais 博士声称他将审慎的对待这个研究结果。

此类说法之前也曾出现过，最终被证明是错误的。

“这是一项非同一般的发现，我需要非同一般的证据” Marais 这么说。

“鉴于此项研究充满争议，学报邀请了科学界的多名会员一同分析研究结果，并将评论文章与原文一同呈现。尽管这些文章尚未上线，这些评论文章将会列在原文的边上。”来自哈佛－史密斯天体物理学中心的Rudy Schild 博士这么说，他同时也是《宇宙学学报》的首席编辑。

“鉴于他的发现的巨大争议性，我们邀约了100位专家，并向科学团体中的超过5000名科学家发出邀请，请他们一同审阅这篇文章，并作出他们的分析。”Schild 在编辑导语中写道，“在此之前历史上没有一篇文章接受过如此严密的检查，之前也从未有过在发表前就进行批判性分析的先例。”

Seth Shostak 博士是SETI机构的高年资天文学家，他声称他很迟疑的接受了这篇文章的结论。假如最终被证明是正确的话，这将触及科学和天文学的边界，无论是推论还是由此带来的巨大可能都是令人惊异的。

“也许生命是被播种在地球上的——它们被彗星带来，然后降落在早期地球上，”Shostak 猜测道，“这将提示，生命并不是在地球上产生的，它也许诞生在太阳系形成之初。”

Hoover认为在科学界，迟疑地接受新发现是某种常见且必要的现象。

“要科学家们转变他们的想法往往需要等待很长时间，需要时间来证明新发现是否是基于可靠的证据。我确信现在许多许多科学家会充满怀疑，则没有任何问题。”

除非Hoover的研究结果能够被其他独立的研究重复，Marais 说，这个发现在目前应该只被看作“生命的潜在印迹”。他还说，科学家们应该行动起来进行包括在另一个实验室里进行的重复独立研究在内的更高层次的复查，以便此项发现可以被确认是一项“被证实的生命印迹”。

Hoover声称他完全不担心这个过程，同时他愿意就任何问题作出解释。

“如果有人能够说明为什么年代不足150年的生物残留中没有氮的痕迹或者说氮的含量低于检测范围，我将会很有兴趣地洗耳恭听。”

“我向许多科学家提出了这个问题却没有人能够回答，”他说。


Riccardo Guerrero / Richard B. Hoover / Journal of Cosmology

A photograph taken through a scanning electron microscope of a CI1 meteorite (right) is similar in size and overall structure to the giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox (left), an organism found here on planet Earth, a NASA scientist said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/05/exclusive-nasa-scientists-claims-evidence-alien-life-meteorite/#ixzz1FoAciToO

We are not alone in the universe -- and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought.

That's the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology.

Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, has traveled to remote areas in Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska, amongst others, for over ten years now, collecting and studying meteorites. He gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late Friday evening in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. In it, Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites -- only nine such meteorites are known to exist on Earth.

Though it may be hard to swallow, Hoover is convinced that his findings reveal fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites, the remains of living organisms from their parent bodies -- comets, moons and other astral bodies. By extension, the findings suggest we are not alone in the universe, he said.

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover told FoxNews.com. “This field of study has just barely been touched -- because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

In what he calls “a very simple process,” Dr. Hoover fractured the meteorite stones under a sterile environment before examining the freshly broken surface with the standard tools of the scientist: a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to search the stone’s surface for evidence of fossilized remains.

He found the fossilized remains of micro-organisms not so different from ordinary ones found underfoot -- here on earth, that is.

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,” Hoover told FoxNews.com. But not all of them. “There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stumped.”

Other scientists tell FoxNews.com the implications of this research are shocking, describing the findings variously as profound, very important and extraordinary. But Dr. David Marais, an astrobiologist with NASA’s AMES Research Center, says he’s very cautious about jumping onto the bandwagon.

These kinds of claims have been made before, he noted -- and found to be false.

“It’s an extraordinary claim, and thus I’ll need extraordinary evidence,” Marais said.

Knowing that the study will be controversial, the journal invited members of the scientific community to analyze the results and to write critical commentaries ahead of time. Though none are online yet, those comments will be posted alongside the article, said Dr. Rudy Schild, a scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian's Center for Astrophysics and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cosmology.

"Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis," Schild wrote in an editor's note along with the article. "No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published, he wrote."

Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, said there is a lot of hesitancy to believe such proclamations. If true, the implications would be far-reaching throughout the fields of science and astronomy, the suggestions and possibilities stunning.

“Maybe life was seeded on earth -- it developed on comets for example, and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early Earth,” Shostak speculated. “It would suggest, well, life didn’t really begin on the Earth, it began as the solar system was forming.”

Hesitancy to believe new claims is something common and necessary to the field of science, Hoover said.

“A lot of times it takes a long time before scientists start changing their mind as to what is valid and what is not. I’m sure there will be many many scientists that will be very skeptical and that’s OK.”

Until Hoover’s research can be independently verified, Marais said, the findings should be considered “a potential signature of life.” Scientists, he said, will now take the research to the next level of scrutiny, which includes an independent confirmation of the results by another lab, before the findings can be classified “a confirmed signature of life.”

Hoover says he isn’t worried about the process and is open to any other explanations.

“If someone can explain how it is possible to have a biological remain that has no nitrogen, or nitrogen below the detect ability limits that I have, in a time period as short as 150 years, then I would be very interested in hearing that."

"I’ve talked with many scientists about this and no one has been able to explain,” he said.


图：一名美国航空航天局的科学家声称CI1陨石的扫描电子显微镜照片显示外星生物的大小和结构与地球上一种叫做Titanospirillum veloxis 的巨型细菌比较接近

我们在宇宙中并不孤独，因为外星生命在形式上可能比我们预想的要更接近地球上的生命。

这是美国航空航天局科学家的一项了不起的结论，他刚刚在今年三月的《宇宙学学报》上发表了这个令人震惊的发现。

Richard B. Hoover博士是美国航空航天局马歇尔空间飞行中心的宇宙生物学家，他早些时候向福克斯新闻透露了这项在周五晚间发表在《宇宙学学报》三月号的研究。在这篇文章中，Hoover描述了他在一枚名叫“CI1碳基球粒陨石”的罕见陨石研究中的最新发现，这种陨石在地面上已知的仅有9枚。

尽管难以置信，Hoover确信这颗陨石中的化石痕迹揭示了一种地外生命的类型，进一步说，我们在宇宙中并不孤独。

“我个人认为生命在宇宙中是广泛分布，而不是（我们之前想的那样）仅仅局限于地球。” Hoover告诉福克斯新闻，“这个研究领域还没有被深入挖掘，因为坦率地说，许多科学家之前认为这根本不可能。”

Hoover博士使用了一种据他说“相当简单的方法”，他在无菌的环境中切碎陨石，然后使用科学家的标准工具：电子扫描显微镜和扫描隧道显微镜检查新鲜切面，然后寻找陨石表面化石的痕迹。

“最令人激动的是这些痕迹在很大程度上是可以被识别的，而且与地球上的类似生物非常接近”，Hoover告诉福克斯新闻，但也不完全一样，“有一些非常奇特以至于和我之前鉴定的类型完全不同。我把它们像其他的专家出示，这令他们也很困惑。”

其他的科学家告诉福克斯新闻这项研究的推论令人震惊，他们认为此类发现具有高度的多样性，往往是非同寻常的。美国航空航天局AMES研究中心的David Marais 博士声称他将审慎的对待这个研究结果。

此类说法之前也曾出现过，最终被证明是错误的。

“这是一项非同一般的发现，我需要非同一般的证据” Marais 这么说。

“鉴于此项研究充满争议，学报邀请了科学界的多名会员一同分析研究结果，并将评论文章与原文一同呈现。尽管这些文章尚未上线，这些评论文章将会列在原文的边上。”来自哈佛－史密斯天体物理学中心的Rudy Schild 博士这么说，他同时也是《宇宙学学报》的首席编辑。

“鉴于他的发现的巨大争议性，我们邀约了100位专家，并向科学团体中的超过5000名科学家发出邀请，请他们一同审阅这篇文章，并作出他们的分析。”Schild 在编辑导语中写道，“在此之前历史上没有一篇文章接受过如此严密的检查，之前也从未有过在发表前就进行批判性分析的先例。”

Seth Shostak 博士是SETI机构的高年资天文学家，他声称他很迟疑的接受了这篇文章的结论。假如最终被证明是正确的话，这将触及科学和天文学的边界，无论是推论还是由此带来的巨大可能都是令人惊异的。

“也许生命是被播种在地球上的——它们被彗星带来，然后降落在早期地球上，”Shostak 猜测道，“这将提示，生命并不是在地球上产生的，它也许诞生在太阳系形成之初。”

Hoover认为在科学界，迟疑地接受新发现是某种常见且必要的现象。

“要科学家们转变他们的想法往往需要等待很长时间，需要时间来证明新发现是否是基于可靠的证据。我确信现在许多许多科学家会充满怀疑，则没有任何问题。”

除非Hoover的研究结果能够被其他独立的研究重复，Marais 说，这个发现在目前应该只被看作“生命的潜在印迹”。他还说，科学家们应该行动起来进行包括在另一个实验室里进行的重复独立研究在内的更高层次的复查，以便此项发现可以被确认是一项“被证实的生命印迹”。

Hoover声称他完全不担心这个过程，同时他愿意就任何问题作出解释。

“如果有人能够说明为什么年代不足150年的生物残留中没有氮的痕迹或者说氮的含量低于检测范围，我将会很有兴趣地洗耳恭听。”

“我向许多科学家提出了这个问题却没有人能够回答，”他说。