No, Diatoms Have Not Been Found in a Meteorite

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.

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.

Though this is known from Earth diatoms, not space diatoms...

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.

Imagine panspermia is true. Some kind of life exists in space. and some of it fell down to earth. Then life on earth would evolve down here, adapting to the particular circumstances of our planet, and the species in space would evolve, separately, to adapt to living in space. The result is that both strands would inevitably become very different.

If you brought down life from space, compared it to actual life on earth, and found they turned out to be the same, then necessarily it would mean that both strands, in completely different environments, evolved to become the same. This is not only improbable, but emphatically impossible.

Because even if life on earth came from a far far away galaxy (Millions of years ago) the way they would evolve would dependend on the environment and I bet earth is not 100% equal to any other planet on every single variable that also is close enough for a contamination to happen.

It would be ok to find one or two specimens that maybe "look" close to earth ones , but a whole bunch of them is somewhat impossible.

The earliest known life on earth is cyanobacteria from 3.5 billion years ago. The earliest diatoms we've found are from 185 million years ago, and they are believed to have arisen around 250 million years ago.

So even assuming that the earliest life on Earth included diatoms, that leaves over 3 billion years between the earliest specimens observed and these hypothetically original specimens. I don't think the odds are even worth considering that a species adapted for an extraterrestrial environment would be visually recognizable after 3 billion years of terrestrial evolution.

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.

However the stating of, "zero chance" is rather un scientific.

Imagine if a car was found in a meteorite. It looks sort of like Earth cars. One explanation is that it actually came from Earth. Another explanation would be that it really is from space, but it looks like Earth cars either due to convergent design, or a sharing of ideas in the past.

Now imagine if another car was found in a meteorite. But not just a car that looks like an Earth car. It is, in fact, a 2009 Toyota Prius. This obviously did not come from space. No amount of convergent design or sharing of ideas can explain that.

"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]"

But I strongly disagree with your last paragraph.

> I don't know why scientists just can't keep an open mind.

This little sentence is evil, and I don't say that lightly. Creationism is taught in school science lessons alongside evolution because "we need to teach both sides", we need to 'keep an open mind' - even though evolution is a very strong theory and creationism is bollocks. There are many other similar examples of truth being harmed in the name of 'open mindedness'.

But it's important to realise that scientists do keep an open mind. Any belief will change if the evidence is strong enough. For some things we have some math to predict something and some weak experimental research showing it - for those things you'd just need better math and better experimental evidence and a nice description of how it fits in with everything else.

> 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?

You're right, no-one really knows. But that's an excellent reason to be very very cautious when making claims. Start small and build the case, don't just announce that extra-terrestrial life has been found.

Putting that aside, he does provide arguments against the article, which you chose to totally ignore. If you want to refute his point of vue, please do discuss the actual arguments.

Now, concerning some of your remarks:

> Do you think this article would pass peer review and be published in a journal?

That's why it was published in slate and not a peer reviewed journal. And that's to the author's credit: if a paper was published every time a crackpotery was exposed, there would be too much noise in scientific journals.

> I don't know why scientists just can't keep an open mind.

I don't see how refuting a paper using sensible arguments is showing a lack of open mind. What do you suggest? That we all happily accept every piece of crackpotery to show that we have 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?

Well the point of the JOC article was to show that there are diatoms in meteorites. The point of the slate article is to show that the JOC article is of dubious quality, and does not prove what it claims. Let me say it again: the slate paper does NOT say that there aren't diatoms in meteorites, it just says that this has not been proved.

>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.

Yes, a warning light should go on in your head when someone uses a fallacy – but they can be very useful shortcuts – and if not presented in isolation, i.e. without any further argument, they are usually not so problematic (and discussions shouldn’t then be derailed by only focusing only on fallacies).

When scientists decide how to filter which information to take in they usually always rely – as a first step – on arguments from authority or (if you reverse it) ad-hominems. There is no time to check everything based on its merits. Journals exist to increase efficiency, as a first-defense shit filter.

Considering the repute of a journal and the editors involved as a first step makes total sense. Phil Plait is not a biologist. If he wouldn’t write for Slate about stuff like this, he probably would have seen the name of the journal, recognized it as extremely problematic and dismissed the research as most likely bullshit. And that’s that. It’s a perfectly valid approach.

So much crap is published every day, there just isn’t enough time to consider everything based on its merits.

Even though there really isn’t much of a need in this case, Phil Plait doesn’t stop there and pushes further, presenting some very solid arguments for why this research is bullshit, going even so far as to directly consulting experts in the field. If that’s not thorough (for a non-scientific publication, you know, a blog post) I don’t know what is.

Yeah, Phil Plait has a writing style that isn’t for everyone (I’m personally not a huge fan, but I still like him), but really, you are putting style over substance there.

All the while you drone on about ad-hominems, only to launch a huge one yourself. You completely ignore his arguments in favor of the writing style.

Conclusion: This research is bullshit. Plus, if you open your mind too much your brain will fall out (says Tim Minchin). And Phil Plait has an axe to grind. With bad science. And that it’s bad is something he quite elegantly demonstrates. There is no need to stay perfectly neutral in tone when you discuss obviously bad science.

"Wickramasinghe is a proponent of the idea of panspermia: the notion that life originated in space and was brought to Earth via meteorites. It’s an interesting idea and not without some merits."

The article author does not write off panspermia. It is not panspermia that is the issue. His issue with Wickramasinghe is not his support for panspermia, but that he makes claims that pretty much anything and everything is evidence of panspermia, even when it plainly isn't.

He addresses specific issues that raises very substantial doubts about the validity of this specific "research", and further points out that this quality is part for the course for both the journal it was published in and the researchers.

He acknowledges his ad hominem, but also points out that when we want to evaluate whether or not to believe in a claim, whether or not the source is reputable is in fact important unless we have the skill and inclination to accurately assess the claims made ourselves.

It is reasonable to be extra sceptical of claims made by someone with a history of making claims that turns out to be totally ridiculous and false, in the interest of not wasting time on every crackpot claim out there.

If this was a journal article, this would not have been acceptable - if we take the trouble of formally assessing the claims made, then we should do just that and leave the ad hominems out.

But this was not a journal article. And for good reason: Not many who would be likely to read the journal articles and have the skill to assess the claim would take these claims seriously in the first place. But a lot of people will have seen the news reports repeating the dubious claims made.

Frankly, your comment comes across like someone who has an axe to grind.

> 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?

You're probably right. And the article writer seems to mostly agree with you on this:

> Having said that, I do think there is life in space, or at least that’s the way to bet. We know there are billions of planets in our galaxy, and we know life on Earth arose almost as soon as conditions on our newly-formed planet were right for it. So I’m confident that, statistically speaking, there is life on other planets, at the very least “primitive” life such as one-celled plants. > > It’s even possible life arose on Mars before it did on Earth and was carried here via meteorite. It’s an interesting idea. But it’s one with a lot of holes in it, the biggest being we have zero evidence of life on Mars. Getting it here is not that big a problem, but then having it live long and prosper is another issue altogether. > > So to me, panspermia is an interesting idea but has no evidence to support it. There are a host of other problems with it as well, but I think the biggest black eye it has right now is the support it gets from both pseudoscience and sloppy science.

He is skeptical, but does not rule it out. He does, however, rule out the specific claims made by Wickramasinghe in this instance based on actually evaluating the evidence presented.

There's not a 'maybe'. If you weren't so concerned with the tone of the article and being offended by his personality you'd actually see the meat of the criticisms he makes.

These 'papers' would not make it to peer review. Period. The characterization sucks, the samples suck, the analysis sucks.

The way to find extraterrestrial diatoms is not wandering around a warm, moist country poking at dirty rocks. You will find life then, but nothing that should be shocking to anybody but Robert Hooke.

Also the notion that a blog post should be written in the same style as a scientific journal article is obtuse.

EDIT: removed an extra "not"