All hail our new alien overlords! Well not quite exactly, because the tiny fossils of algae and bacterium found by NASA and reported today were of long ago dead hitch hikers encased in rocks - but that doesn't make it any the less cool.
In an article released today by The Guardian, the jolly good chaps across the pond had this to say about NASA's discovery.
Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist at the US space agency's Marshall space flight centre in Alabama, said filaments and other structures in rare meteorites appear to be microscopic fossils of extraterrestrial beings that resemble algae known as cyanobacteria.
Some of the features look similar to a giant bacterium called Titanospirillum velox, which has been collected from the Ebro delta waterway in Spain, according to a report on the findings.
Laboratory tests on the rocky filaments found no evidence to suggest they were remnants of Earth-based organisms that contaminated the meteorites after they landed, Hoover said. He discovered the features after inspecting the freshly cleaved surfaces of three meteorites that are believed to be among the oldest in the solar system.
The news of this discovery probably has half the word holding their breath in anticipation of what will happen next, and the other half running to their places of worship crying foul and wailing "Won't someone PLEASE think about the children!"
The discovery of these fossils gives some extremely heavy weight to the theory of panspermia which basically proposes that life in the universe was created from rocks and other cosmic projectiles smashing into other planets and despositing life there.
NASA has sent out their findings to hundreds of scientists in order to have their findings and discovery verified and vetted, but if you ask me the proof is in the pudding: There is other life out there, and we just found it ... but we will all have to wait until tomorrow before all these really smart people with PHD's confirm it all.
And now, back to Pope Benedict in The Vatican ... Pope?
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