Astronomers say comet may host alien life
Print Edition
Astronomers proposed a novel explanation yesterday for the strange appearance of the comet carrying Europe鈥檚 robot probe Philae through outer space: alien microscopic life.
Many of the frozen dust ball鈥檚 features, which include a black crust over lakes of ice, flat-bottomed craters and mega-boulders scattered on the surface, were 鈥渃onsistent鈥 with the presence of microbes, they said.
Observations by the European Space Agency鈥檚 Rosetta comet orbiter has shown that 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko 鈥渋s not to be seen as a deep-frozen inactive body, but supports geological processes,鈥 Max Wallis of the University of Cardiff said in a statement issued by the Royal Astronomical Society.
In fact, the comet racing towards the Sun at a speed of 32.9 kilometers per second, 鈥渃ould be more hospitable to micro-life than our Arctic and Antarctic regions.鈥
Wallis and his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, presented their theory to a meeting of the RAS in Llandudno, Wales.
They pointed to Rosetta鈥檚 detection of complex organic material, which gave the comet its surprisingly super-dark and low-reflecting surface, as 鈥渆vidence for life.鈥
Wickramasinghe said that 67P鈥檚 gas ejections started 鈥渁t distances from the Sun too far away to trigger surface sublimation.鈥
This implied that micro-organisms under the comet鈥檚 surface had been 鈥渂uilding pockets of high pressure gases that crack overlying ice and vent organic particles,鈥 he said.
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