REAL LIFE NEWS: IS THERE LIFE ON COMET 67P? PROBABLY NOT
by Hazed
A pair of scientists sparked breathless headlines earlier in the week when they suggested that it was possible that comet 67P contained alien life.
Dr Max Wallace and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe were speaking at a conference on Monday when they suggested that the comet could contain alien “organisms”, possibly similar to the kind found in slime. They went on to speculate that they might become “active” as the comet nears the sun and warms up.
Their speculation was based on the features of 67P, which are consistent with a mixture of ice and organic material that would allow active micro-organisms to be supported.
Further discussion pondered whether these alien lifeforms could be responsible for the sinkholes seem on the comet (I told you about them last week).
However, the scientists who are actually in charge of the Rosetta mission to comet 67P have now issued a statement dismissing such wild speculation. “No scientist active in any of the Rosetta instrument science teams assumes the presence of living micro-organisms beneath the cometary surface crust,” Uwe Meierhenrich of Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, France, told the Guardian newspaper.
Professor Monica Grady of the Open University, who helped design one of the Philae lander’s sophisticated instruments, said: “I think it is highly unlikely.”
Oh well, it was exciting to imagine for a short while that there might be alien slime heading into the centre of the solar system.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/07/astroboffins_argue_over_whether_comet_is_filled_with_aliens/
