Lots of people have a vested interest in finding out whether or not we are alone in the universe. The search for extraterrestrial life takes on many forms and has many funding sources, from SETI’s insistence that we can find alien life in 25 years and the Vatican’s active search for alien life forms. As it turns out, we might be closer to finding extraterrestrial life than we’d think. Scientists from the University of Sheffield and Buckingham University claim to have discovered alien life forms floating in the atmosphere over England.
Floating between the cities of Chester and Wakefield in the UK, there was a single-celled algae form known as a diatom. The researchers sent up balloons during the Perseid meteor shower in an effort to scoop up the organisms, and they found them. Apparently, the atmosphere is teeming with microscopic life forms, but apparently not this sort of life form. Scientists believe they were brought over on meteors and not cast up into the atmosphere like most microscopic life forms found in the air.
“Most people will assume that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth,” said Milton Wainwright, professor of molecular biology and biotechnology at the University of Sheffield who spearheaded the study efforts. “But it is generally accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27km. The only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of the sampling trip. In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space. Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here.”
Tags: University of Sheffield, Buckingham University, Chester, Wakefield, England, United Kingdom, milton wainwright, journal of cosmology, alien life forms, alien life found in earth’s atmosphere, alien microbes in earth’s atmosphere, unusual discoveries, extraterrestrial life, diatom
