Signs of Life Found in 4.5 Billion Year Old Meteorites
A group of scientists recently found evidence of the ingredients for life in two meteorites that landed on Earth some 20 years ago. The two specimens, named Zag and Monahans, were found when one crashed near a group of boys playing basketball in Texas, while the other crash landed in Morocco a few months later.
According to a study published in Science Advances the meteorites contain liquid water, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen trapped inside salt crystals. One scientist compared the finding to a fly trapped in amber, as the meteorites are likely to be 4.5 billion years old and contain the basic elements necessary for life.
“This is really the first time we have found abundant organic matter also associated with liquid water that is really crucial to the origin of life and the origin of complex organic compounds in space,” said Queenie Chan, the study’s lead author and planetary scientist at The Open University in the U.K.
The meteorites are thought to have originated from two celestial bodies,Hebe and Ceres, that orbit in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is thought that, due to the similarity of the meteorites, the two may have impacted each other and mixed material.
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NASA scientists have been intrigued by Ceres lately, continuing the Dawn spacecraft’s mission to study the dwarf planet two and a half years longer than intended.
Ceres is the largest object within the asteroid belt and could potentially harbor life. NASA believes that there once may have been a vast ocean on the dwarf planet and are sending Dawn within 20 miles of Ceres to study its surface.
There are still other preserved crystals from the meteorites that have yet to be studied by scientists who are hoping to find further evidence of liquid water and other life-supporting elements.
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Professor Says ETs May Hitch Rides on Rogue Planets
The search for extraterrestrials in space continues as a new theory is proposed: Could rogue planets be used as spacecraft by alien hitchhikers?
Free-floating “rogue” planets are interstellar objects with planetary masses that are not gravitationally bound to a star. Scientists predict there could be billions of free-floating rogue plants in space.
With this in mind, Irina Romanovskaya, a professor of physics and astronomy at Houston Community College just published a new study proposing aliens could hitch a ride on these rogue planets.
She writes, “I propose that extraterrestrial civilizations may also use free-floating planets as interstellar transportation to reach, explore and colonize other planetary systems. I discuss how extraterrestrial civilizations may travel from their home worlds to free-floating planets, and how they may transfer from their free-floating planets to other planetary systems.”
And as Romanovskaya wrote in an email to VICE, “Some advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, if they exist, might hitch a ride on free-floating planets… which is why I call such hypothetical civilizations Cosmic Hitchhikers.”
Is this idea so far-fetched? Or could it be possible?
