Life-bearing primordial planets in the solar vicinity
This article by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and colleagues has been published online in Astrophysics and Space Science. Read more in our Publication of the week section (14 May 2012).
Mars life detected in meteorite
In July 2011 a rare meteorite from Mars fell over the deserts of Morocco and was recovered fairly shortly afterwards in October at a location near the village of Tissint. This so-called Tissint meteorite was blasted off the surface of Mars by a comet or asteroid impact several million years ago.
A piece of this rare meteorite has been examined by a team of scientists at the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology and Cardiff University led by Jamie Wallis and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of BCAB. The team has completed a preliminary study and reported the discovery of signs of life in the meteorite in the current issue of the Journal of Cosmology (read full report).
A carbon/oxygen-rich particle in the interior of the Tissint meteorite. An ovoid-shaped carbon/oxygen-rich globule cracking under gold coating in an SEM examination.
Spherical globules rich in carbon and oxygen have been discovered in the interior of the meteorite embedded in the rocky matrix. No reasonable explanation is available for these structures unless they have been produced by life. Jamie Wallis, a PhD student, who carried out the laboratory work on the meteorite said: “Other work to confirm our proposal is well under way and all the indications are that structures such as we have found are evidence of life on Mars. The spheres are probably remnants of polysaccharide shells surrounding algal type cells.”
Searches for life on Mars over the past 4 decades have had a speckled record. The results of the experiments carried out by NASA’s Viking Landers in 1976 under the leadership of Professor Gil Levin were regarded as indecisive or negative for a long time, but a recent reappraisal has led to the conclusion that the Viking results can only be interpreted as evidence for life. In 1996 the Mars meteorite ALH84001 turned up with images and spectra that were interpreted as signs of life but later disputed as being inconclusive.
The new results on the Tissint meteorite could provide further compelling evidence for life on Mars – at any rate at the time the meteorite was blasted off from the planet millions of years ago.
For further information, contact:
Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe: Tel. +44 7778389243
Jamie Wallis: Tel. +44 7817766674
Prof. Daryl Wallis: Tel. +44 7817766070
Historic lectures now available
The theory of cometary panspermia was developed by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and the late Sir Fred Hoyle from the 1980s onwards. The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation invited Prof. Wickramasinghe to deliver the inaugural lecture in a new series “Expanding Mind” on 3 April 1980. In December 1982 Fred Hoyle gave the opening lecture in a conference organised by the Sri Lanka Institute of Fundamental Studies in the presence of H.E. President J.R. Jayawardene, the President of Sri Lanka. These lectures are available to listen to or watch in the archive of key historical publications.
Press coverage for Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe (4 March 2012)
A report from Los Angeles by Walter Jayawardhana on recent articles by Professor Wickramasinghe and BCAB colleagues in the International Journal of Astrobiology and Journal of Cosmology was published on the Sri Lanka news website Onlanka News. The headline is: “Life predated the Earth – its origins go back very close to the start of the Universe itself”. Read the article on the Onlanka News website.
Microbial fossils in meteorites confirmed (12 January 2012)
Carbonaceous meteorites such as the Orgueil meteorite are generally thought to be relics of comets, after their volatiles dry out after many passages around the Sun. The possible existence of fossilised microorganisms in such extraterrestrial rocks has been debated over several decades. Now unambiguous chemical evidence shows that they are indigenous to the meteorite and could not result from modern contamination. Richard Hoover’s paper on this subject presented at the prestigious Gordon Research Conference provides the most powerful argument in support of the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe theory of cometary panspermia. The paper generated much discussion. Read the full text.
One of many microbial fossils in the Orgueil meteorite presented by Richard Hoover at the Frontiers of Science - Gordon Research Conference on the Origin of Life on 9 January 2012
A five-decade long trail from cosmic dust to life (17 December 2011)
Exactly 50 years ago Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle began their epic quest to unravel the nature of interstellar dust. In the process they overturned astronomical paradigms and effectively gave birth to the new discipline of astrobiology. Progress in this endeavour is chronicled in an article to be published in the online Journal of Cosmology (and available for download here).
Eagle’s Nest dust cloud 1000 light years away in the constellation Aquila
Cosmic dust shows up as dark clouds and conspicuous patches and striations against the background of stars in the Milky Way (see figure, above). These are the clouds from which new stars and planets form, … and possibly life begins.
In 1961 the prevailing view was that interstellar dust was composed of tiny (sub-micron) ice particles, similar to the ice grains which exist in the cumulus clouds of the Earth’s atmosphere. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe showed this idea to be wrong and instead proposed and developed the theory that cosmic dust was made of carbonaceous material. In the years from 1962 to 1982 with the arrival of new astronomical data they proposed a series of carbonaceous dust models – graphite, soot-like dust, organic polymers, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and finally dust composed of freeze-dried bacteria. This latter model, although still unpopular and contested in some circles, matches astronomical observations far better than any of the other proposed models. It solves in one stroke the twin problems of the nature of cosmic dust and the origin of life. Evidence grows steadily for life to be a truly cosmic phenomenon: the dust in clouds like the Eagle might include bacterial cells as well as their degradation products.
Interstellar dust was also the topic of a major international conference held last month in Pune, India at which Chandra Wickramasinghe gave the opening review paper. The presentations at this meeting are published online.
Siliceous fragments in space micro-dust: evidence for a new class of fossil (17 November 2011)
Interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) containing carbonaceous-siliceous fibres and whiskers have been recovered from the upper stratosphere, some integrated into cometary agglomerate particles; coatings with salt and other components show aggregation on the comet. Two examples of fibres have also been found in a carbonaceous chondrite (Tagish Lake). The fibres and whiskers may have formed in the comet environment, but their accumulation from the dust cloud in which the solar system formed is not excluded. Composition and morphologies suggest the fibres and whiskers are fragments of fossilized organisms, with similarities to some species of terrestrial diatoms. Read the full article in PDF format in Journal of Cosmology.
From astrochemistry to astrobiology and beyond (10 October 2011)
Volume 16 of the Journal of Cosmology is devoted to celebrating 30 years of the launching of the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe Theory of Cometary Panspermia, 10 years after the passing of Fred Hoyle. This historic issue is now on line at:
http://journalofcosmology.com/JoC16pdfs/indexVol16CONTENTS.htm
The Earth’s oceans came from comets (6 October 2011)
After a debate that has lasted for over three decades, recent studies of Comet 103P/Hartley2 by ESA’s Hershel Space Observatory suggest that comets were responsible for delivering water to form the Earth’s oceans, and possibly (in our view) life as well. For more details see Comet Hartley.pdf.
Genes predated life on Earth: invitation for commentary (2 October 2011)
Chandra Wickramasinghe invites you to publish commentary on a co-authored paper, “Genetics Demonstrates Extra-Terrestrial Origin of Genetic Life and the First Gene” (to be published with neurobiologist Dr. R. Joseph, in the on line Journal of Cosmology). The article (which is In Press) can be viewed at this link:
http://journalofcosmology.com/Abiogenesis200.html
This article demonstrates that the genetic origins of life extend at least 5.8 billion and more likely over 10 billion years backwards in time. This does not imply unequivocally that life began 10 billion years ago, but rather that the first gene was fashioned long before the formation of Earth. Read more about the article (PDF format): Abiogenesis.
Comet C/2010 X1 Elenin: a benign messenger from space (30 September 2011)
Comet C/2010 X1 Elenin was discovered by a Russian astronomer in December 2010. Since then it has been the subject of intense irrational speculation, possibly linked to statements attributed to a Mayan calendar, forecasting destruction of our planet. All such speculations are wrong, of course, and based on unfounded propositions such as the claim that a dwarf star is trailing behind the comet. What is undeniably true is that Comet C/2010 X1 Elenin is an insignificant small comet in a highly elliptical orbit lying very close to the orbital plane of the Earth. Read Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe’s full article (PDF format): Comet Elenin.
Red rain of Kerala and orange rain of Alaska (September 2011)
The red rain that fell over Kerala, India in 2001 and the vast quantity of orange particulates that were washed ashore on 3 August 2011 in Kivalina, Alaska (see photo above) are beginning to show remarkable parallels. An extraterrestrial source cannot be excluded on the evidence available to date. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe has studied the phenomena. Read the full article (PDF format): Orange rain
