British scientists claim to have found proof of alien life

[That Alien Guy.]

Focus! You're on the air chimps, you can all be famous if you just dismiss all that wishful thinking and concentrate on escalating the Syrian massacres. The Galactic community likes your comedies.

Anyway, those microbes are probably part of the life up there. Did you think it stopped when it reached the tops of your trees? No wonder you can't even get a global holy war started. I swear your ancestors might have been less technologically advanced, but they did know how to put on a spectacular when it came to murdering each other. You keep this fronking nonsense up you're all going to get cancelled by mass drivers.

Buck up your ideas, fight and struggle, you're boring the audience. My bonus is on the line.

[Skepticus]

Why isn't this all over the news everywhere? If we've discovered alien life, this is huge. HUGE. The biggest discovery in history fercryinoutloud. Anyway, they're probly just tardigrades. Those motherfuckers are everywhere, and can survive anything

Tabliods and mainstream media couldn't be arsed, because nobody believes they are aliens. Everbody knows aliens look like this:

Perhaps if somebody gave them boob jobs, hired and an agent, taught them to sing twice as well as Milley Cyrus, then booked them into rehab after a week long drunken bender; maybe THEN they would catch a little press.

Maybe that sounds ridiculous. Twice as well as Milley Cyrus you say?!!! C'mon.... NOBODY could even be taught to sing that bad. OK then. better book them for a celebratty edition 'reality' TV show, so they can prove who the aliens really are.

[Hermit]

He scotched the theory that the life forms arrived in the upper atmosphere after being blasted there from a volcano.

"The last volcano was three years ago, and the matter has all been deposited by now," he said.

I don't believe the matter has all been deposited by now. I thought I'd heard before that volcanic particulate matter can stay in the atmosphere much longer than three years. I bet Earth bacteria just live and produce up there normally.

The captured sample was a diatom frustule. The author has this to say about its likelihood of it floating about in the the lower stratosphere in July 2013 due to a volcanic eruption:

• Fig.2 shows the falling speed of spherical particles of various radii (and density 1 g cm - 3) through the atmosphere calculated by Kasten (1968) using a standard atmosphere model. From this data we calculate that a diatom of radius in the range 3 - 10 micron would fall at an average of 1cm s - 1 at a height of 20km, and that the residence time of any particle lofted to this height is about 6 hours. The conclusion is that even if a major volcanic eruption occurred a few days before the sampling event, no particles of the size of the diatom fragment resulting from it would have been retained in the stratosphere at the point of sampling.

http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf

While I remain sceptical about the conclusion drawn by Milton Wainwright, I will not dismiss it out of hand. The hypothesis is testable, and tests will be forthcoming.

[Skepticus]

He scotched the theory that the life forms arrived in the upper atmosphere after being blasted there from a volcano.

"The last volcano was three years ago, and the matter has all been deposited by now," he said.

I don't believe the matter has all been deposited by now. I thought I'd heard before that volcanic particulate matter can stay in the atmosphere much longer than three years. I bet Earth bacteria just live and produce up there normally.

The captured sample was a diatom frustule. The author has this to say about its likelihood of it floating about in the the lower stratosphere in July 2013 due to a volcanic eruption:

• Fig.2 shows the falling speed of spherical particles of various radii (and density 1 g cm - 3) through the atmosphere calculated by Kasten (1968) using a standard atmosphere model. From this data we calculate that a diatom of radius in the range 3 - 10 micron would fall at an average of 1cm s - 1 at a height of 20km, and that the residence time of any particle lofted to this height is about 6 hours. The conclusion is that even if a major volcanic eruption occurred a few days before the sampling event, no particles of the size of the diatom fragment resulting from it would have been retained in the stratosphere at the point of sampling.

http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf

While I remain sceptical about the conclusion drawn by Milton Wainwright, I will not dismiss it out of hand. The hypothesis is testable, and tests will be forthcoming.

Could they test the hypothesis more rigorously, by repeating the experiment from the International Space Station?

[rainbow]

Could they test the hypothesis more rigorously, by repeating the experiment from the International Space Station?

One would expect samples collected from the surface of the moon to be full of these.
I'd rather have expected them to have been checked for organisms by now.

[Tyrannical]

Who knows how high up some simple bacteria could live, especially if they go into suspended animation? Maybe bacteria could survive in small specs of dust hundreds of miles up if thrown up by something big for a long time and slowly rain down. Maybe some bacteria can survive and reproduce up there getting nutrients and water from dust they could attach to.
Too many unanswered questions to make wild claims I think

[mistermack]

You have to ask yourself which is more likely. Alien life forms constantly raining down on the earth, but apparently not on the moon, or some unknown mechanism for tiny scraps of life to be circulated in the very high atmosphere.

It doesn't seem very scientific, to assume that there is no unknown mechanism to waft stuff higher than we thought.
I would suspect thunder storms of doing something that we didn't know about.

[cronus]

The balloon that takes the detector to altitude expands tremendously and blows up - seems there is room in that for a bit of contamination? Especially if ice from lower down leaves biological matter behind on one of these helium balloons.

[mistermack]

The balloon that takes the detector to altitude expands tremendously and blows up - seems there is room in that for a bit of contamination? Especially if ice from lower down leaves biological matter behind on one of these helium balloons.

Maybe that is possible, but why go for an outlandish explanation like that, when it's obviously far more likely to be bits of aliens.

[cronus]

The balloon that takes the detector to altitude expands tremendously and blows up - seems there is room in that for a bit of contamination? Especially if ice from lower down leaves biological matter behind on one of these helium balloons.

Maybe that is possible, but why go for an outlandish explanation like that, when it's obviously far more likely to be bits of aliens.

If only these science geeks had a imagination like mine they'd go far.

[Hermit]

Who knows how high up some simple bacteria could live, especially if they go into suspended animation? Maybe bacteria could survive in small specs of dust hundreds of miles up if thrown up by something big for a long time and slowly rain down. Maybe some bacteria can survive and reproduce up there getting nutrients and water from dust they could attach to.
Too many unanswered questions to make wild claims I think

If you check the bottom of page three of the link I provided, you'll find those calculations have been done in 1968. Diatom fructules of the size found with the balloon at 22 - 27 km altitude would have come down in about six hours.

[Skepticus]

Could they test the hypothesis more rigorously, by repeating the experiment from the International Space Station?

One would expect samples collected from the surface of the moon to be full of these.
I'd rather have expected them to have been checked for organisms by now.

That's exactly what I was thinking... the very moment after I had read your comment above. Doh! Why didn't I think of that.

Good thinking 99

[rainbow]

Could they test the hypothesis more rigorously, by repeating the experiment from the International Space Station?

One would expect samples collected from the surface of the moon to be full of these.
I'd rather have expected them to have been checked for organisms by now.

That's exactly what I was thinking... the very moment after I had read your comment above. Doh! Why didn't I think of that.

Good thinking 99

Cheeses love you.

[cronus]

One alternative is the earth is being seeded with biological machines by advanced aliens for reasons unknown. That'd be far easier to do from low earth orbit if the intention was wide-scale genetic manipulation. With so many 'interesting technological and historic events' lately and the uniqueness of the times? that some external intervention is taking place should not be discounted, maybe a 5% probability but that one could come home.

[rainbow]

One alternative is the earth is being seeded with biological machines by advanced aliens for reasons unknown. That'd be far easier to do from low earth orbit if the intention was wide-scale genetic manipulation. With so many 'interesting technological and historic events' lately and the uniqueness of the times? that some external intervention is taking place should not be discounted, maybe a 5% probability but that one could come home.

Well that might explain Miley Cyrus, I guess.