Indian Space Research Organization: Discovery of New Microorganisms in the Stratosphere. (Via: Universe Today)
Three new species of bacteria, which are not found on Earth and which are highly resistant to ultra-violet radiation, have been discovered in the upper stratosphere by Indian scientists. One of the new species has been named as Janibacter hoylei, after the Distinguished Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, the second as Bacillus isronensis recognising the contribution of ISRO in the balloon experiments which led to its discovery and the third as Bacillus aryabhata after India’s celebrated ancient astronomer Aryabhata and also the first satellite of ISRO.I love the fact that the bacteria is named after one of my favorite physicists of the 20th Century, the late Fred Hoyle, who rejected Big Bang mythology and biogenic fossil fuel mythology.
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41 comments:
Hoyle was nearly as stoopid as Gold. These two could only find jobs as quants on Wall Street nowadays.
What do you know? A peaker...
Brewskie,
I should've suspected as much...:P
Well, it is neat there are bacteria in orbit around the Earth.
Actually, if you don't believe me that there are bacteria in gravitational orbit around the Earth, then I'd invite you to look at the E-coli in the guts of the ISS astronauts.
@ OilIs Mastery:
Your instincts are correct about WHT. He runs Mobjectivist, a rabid "Peak" oil site. There is a lingering smell of death and forlorn misery at the Mobjectivist website.
@ WHT:
Oil is abiotic, and the majority of oil & natural gas deposits are offshore, of which 75% of possible territory has not been explored.
You and your doom & gloom crowd will grow old waiting for "Peak" oil.
Someday in the future, Earth's hydrocarbon supplies may be over-taxed, but that is more than 30 years from now.
In other words, that "someday" is over the economic horizon, meaning it has no impact on today's economic climate.
WHT, you will continue baying at the "Peak" oil moon until you are old and gray before actual physical shortage of hydrocarbons impacts the energy markets.
Yours is a pathetic and dark path.
Anaconda and Oil Is Mastery,
Yeah, WHT is one of the old tired sows who still grazes in the peak oil fields. He still has links to the extinct or near extinct peak oil cows, such as Savinar or From the Wilderness. It's time to go to the meat grinder, oh bloated Hindu herd.
In case you missed it, the Oil Drum today fired off blanks again: 2008 is the new 2005, it's the year oil peaked. The dipshits didn't even get the correct 2008 production stat. down.
OIM,
How does the existence of bacteria in the stratosphere exactly "defy" gravitation? I can only suppose that the reasoning is because there is no mechanism for them to get up there? One might well believe that of elephants and giraffes but air current should be sufficient to loft microgram sized organisms up there.
BTW, these balloon experiments sound similar to what Fred Hoyle's protege, a guy by the name of Wickramasinghe, is doing. I'm not sure if he was involved in this particular discovery or not. Wickramasinghe is the chief proponent of modern panspermia - life is everywhere. What is the OIM take on panspermia?
Brewskie,
"The dipshits didn't even get the correct 2008 production stat. down."
Typical. Numbers have never been their strong point.
Tom,
"How does the existence of bacteria in the stratosphere exactly 'defy' gravitation?"
Bacteria are heavier than nitrogen molecules and should fall to the Earth as required by the now falsified so-called "theory of universal gravitation."
"I can only suppose that the reasoning is because there is no mechanism for them to get up there?"
No. According to the so-called "theory" of gravitation the mechanism is God's divine miracle work.
"...lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other, he [God] hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, 1687
"One might well believe that of elephants and giraffes but air current should be sufficient to loft microgram sized organisms up there."
Bacteria are heavier than nitrogen molecules and therefore defy gravitation and gravity.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/alien_bacteria_001127.html
Alien Microbe Reported Found in Earth's Atmosphere
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 10:29 am ET
27 November 2000
A group of scientists says it has collected an alien bacterium 10 miles (16 kilometers) above Earth, plus signatures of other extraterrestrial microbes even higher in the atmosphere. The claims were met with immediate skepticism by other scientists.
The bacterium was collected at that altitude by a balloon operated by the Indian Space Research Organization. Chandra Wickramasinghe, who leads a study into the results, called the microbe a previously unknown strain of bacteria and said it likely came from a comet.
Wickramasinghe and a colleague, Fred Hoyle, say the findings support an idea they pioneered, called panspermia, which holds that the seeds of life are everywhere in space and are the source for life on Earth.
Matthew Genge, an expert on meteorites and cometary debris at London's Natural History Museum, said he was flabbergasted by the claim.
"I don't believe the authors have provided the kind of evidence that would be needed to support their claim," Genge said. "Their announcement appears premature."
Genge, who does not rule out panspermia as a possibility, said nonetheless that the supposed alien bacteria could have been previously unknown strains of terrestrial bacteria.
"Hitherto unknown strains of bacteria are found virtually every day," Genge told SPACE.com. "If no one had ever seen or heard of an elephant and suddenly one was discovered this wouldn't be evidence that it comes from space."
Wickramasinghe countered that procedures precluded the instruments aboard the balloon from being contaminated on the ground or on the way up, but he acknowledged the possibility of contamination at the point where the collection was made.
"Earthly bacteria could get up to 15 kilometers from several sources," Wickramasinghe told SPACE.com. "Also there is a chance that unknown strains of bacteria were lofted from the heights of the Himalayas."
Wickramasinghe said his group wouldn't reveal details until the microbe is studied further.
Genge echoed the cautions of other scientists in saying that dust carrying terrestrial bacteria had been found in the collection filters of NASA U-2 aircraft doing similar research for 15 years.
"There is in fact enormous amounts of dust from the Earth's surface at high altitude, both artificial and natural in origin, and some of it undoubtedly carries bacteria," Genge said.
"Another possible form of contamination could also be human waste," Genge said. "Passenger aircraft fly at 10 miles altitude and eject human waste into the atmosphere. A fine spray of such liquid released into the atmosphere at high altitude will form tiny ice grains containing bacteria. These will become widely dispersed."
NASA also commented on the claim, pointing out that living spores have been found previously as high as 10 miles.
"While NASA's astrobiology effort has certainly not come down on the side of panspermia, it has identified panspermia as worthy of serious investigation, along with more conventional ideas about the origin of life on Earth," said a press release out of NASA's Ames Research Center.
Other scientists also urged caution in interpreting the results. Meanwhile, recent studies by other groups have boosted panspermia into the spotlight, and many leading researchers are warming to the idea that microbes may be hardy enough to endure the rigors of space travel.
More evidence of alien microbes
Wickramasinghe and his colleagues, based at the recently formed Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in Wales, also studied data from a 1999 Leonid fireball, collected at 52 miles (83 kilometers) altitude. The original study on this data, produced by a team led by Ray Russell of the Aerospace Corporation, found organic compounds indicating that the building blocks of life could have survived a trip from space to Earth.
Working with the Leonid fireball data in a separate study, the Cardiff team concluded that the fireball actually did contain a signature of microbes that rained down from space. The study analyzed the infrared light emitted by the fireball, which the researchers say showed signs of burning bacteria. Further, they say this signature resembled the infrared spectra of comet dust.
"There is little chance of any earthly bacteria resident at such great heights," Wickramasinghe said.
But Genge flatly refuted the group's analysis of the Leonid fireball data.
"The infrared spectra of the Leonid meteors are not evidence for bacteria, nor are the infrared spectra of comets," Genge said. He added that the data show a feature that is common in all organic material.
"If you took me, put me in an oven, dried me at 300 degrees and then took my infrared spectra, I'd have [this feature] too. This would certainly not be evidence that you'll find Matt Genges on comets.
The whole debate is reminiscent of claims of microscopic fossils in a meteorite from Mars, reported by NASA scientists in 1996. Scientists are still debating that finding.
@OIM "Bacteria are heavier than nitrogen molecules and therefore defy gravitation and gravity."
The actual criterion for positive buoyancy is that the density of the bacterium is less than the density of the atmosphere it is embedded in. I'm not sure the same concept applies once the density of the atmosphere gets small enough that molecular collisions get less and less frequent. Maybe something like Brownian motion takes over but I'm not sure.
There is one alternative to the defying gravity scenario and that is that these bacteria are extraterrestrial, something your favorite scientist Hoyle believed in.
Gravitational distribution of small masses is determined by a statistical energy distribution based on temperature, and electrical effects certainly can play a large role in that distribution as well. In fact, photon absorption and thus electromagnetic heating is what causes thermals. Anyhow, at such small scales, brownian motion, electrostatic intermolecular forces, and the mean free path also plays an essential role. As for bouyancy, that is a result of gravitational energy and mass density distributions as well.
"...lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other, he [God] hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, 1687
Yes, because as everyone knows, the opinion of the first person to suggest anything is locked in as the TRUTH forever.
Give me a break, OiM... you can not actually trust in this yourself. How disconnected from reality must you be?
There are no modern scientists who think the stars are fixed in place, or that God (if He exists) put them far apart so that Newtonian gravity wouldn't pull them all togther.
By OiM's criteria, Hoyle's cosmology is occult as well.
If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of...
Hoyle, Fred, Evolution from Space, Omni Lecture, Royal Institution, London, January 12, 1982
Tom,
"The actual criterion for positive buoyancy is that the density of the bacterium is less than the density of the atmosphere it is embedded in."
Great.
Unfortunately for you and gravitation, density does not appear in any of Newton's formulas.
The Universal Law of Gravitation is:
F = G x m^1m^2/r2
No density there. It says mass.
Jeffery,
"Yes, because as everyone knows, the opinion of the first person to suggest anything is locked in as the TRUTH forever."
Is this an admission that Newton's so-called "theory of universal gravitation" is not locked in truth?
YOU are the one saying that 17th century Newtonian occultism is locked in truth forever!
I say gravitation is falsified.
"There are no modern scientists who think the stars are fixed in place, or that God (if He exists) put them far apart so that Newtonian gravity wouldn't pull them all togther."
A lie. You don't know all modern scientists and the theory of gravitation is a theory of fixed stars and miracles by definition.
"...to establish it [gravitation] as original or primitive in certain parts of matter is to resort either to miracle or an imaginary occult quality." -- Gottfreid W. Leibniz, polymath, July 1710
I forgot how much fun this was.
Quoth Me: "Yes, because as everyone knows, the opinion of the first person to suggest anything is locked in as the TRUTH forever."
Is this an admission that Newton's so-called "theory of universal gravitation" is not locked in truth?
I'm saying Newton's Theory was incomplete and wrong on several points. Especially where he credit God. You keep bringing up his opinion on the matter as if it had bearing on modern thought.
Finally...It. does. not.
Read those words and try...cudgel thy brain to remember: Newton's findings were superceded long, long ago.
YOU are the one saying that 17th century Newtonian occultism is locked in truth forever!
I say gravitation is falsified.
A lie. You don't know all modern scientists and the theory of gravitation is a theory of fixed stars and miracles by definition.
Not so much a lie as an implication.
"...to establish it [gravitation] as original or primitive in certain parts of matter is to resort either to miracle or an imaginary occult quality." -- Gottfreid W. Leibniz, polymath, July 1710
Again, the opinion of a guy dead in the ground for almost 300 years does not bear on the conversation. Leibniz did not have our instrumentation and point of view.
I'm convinced. You are mentally challenged in some fashion. You cling to your dead thinkers like they were life itself and you refuse to understand.
It's not that you don't see. You don't want to see. You are incapable of comprehension or compromise. Understanding would remove your view of yourself and your favorite scientists as persecuted victims.
Jeffery,
"I'm saying Newton's Theory was incomplete and wrong on several points."
Welcome to the 21st century.
"Again, the opinion of a guy dead in the ground for almost 300 years does not bear on the conversation."
If that's true, why do you believe in gravitation?
"You cling to your dead thinkers"
You're the one clinging to the theories of the deceased!
Are you aware that Newton and Einstein are both deceased?
Newton used God merely as an explanation for initial conditions, in particular for his action at a distance equations of gravitational fields. I've yet to have seen a proof for the existance of gravitational waves or gravitons, but that seems to be what modern science is suggesting or at least heading as far as research goes. As to what dark matter and dark energy are, certainly Newton's theory did not account for those, or did it?
"...lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other, he [God] hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician and physicist, 1687
The stars are certainly fixed in his calculations of gravitational forces between masses. It takes complex differential equations or computational iterative simulations (like Euler's Method or Runge Kutta with boundary IC's or initial state IC's) to compute the multiple trajectories of the stars using Newton's or even Einstien's equations, and at that they may or may or may not be completely correct either. Here is an interesting video on the situation:
Ari Stern: Symmetry and Simulation: How Geometry Affects Scientific Computing from the Solar System to your Microwave Oven
@OIM "The Universal Law of Gravitation is:
F = G x m^1m^2/r2
No density there. It says mass."
Hmmm, just curious, OIM, what is your educational background? Have your, for instance, ever taken a college level course in physics?
The force you cite (let's call it Fg) is indeed as you mention - it is a vector pointing downward. However, it is not the only force acting on the bacterium. There is a force of buoyancy (call it Fb) which is pointing upward. It has the magnitude:
Fb = rho-air * volume * g
The vector sum of these forces (Fg + Fb + whatever other forces are acting) determines the motion of the bacterium.
QF,
"I've yet to have seen a proof for the existance of gravitational waves or gravitons"
I've yet to have seen any evidence for the existence of gravitons whatsoever. I've seen more evidence for invisible pink unicorns aboard Noah's Ark than I have seen for gravitons.
Tom,
"F = G x m^1m^2/r2"
Where is the density in that formula?
Tom,
"The force you cite (let's call it Fg) is indeed as you mention - it is a vector pointing downward. However, it is not the only force acting on the bacterium."
Don't tell that to a cosmologist they might have a heartattack.
"There is a force of buoyancy (call it Fb) which is pointing upward."
Are you saying that buoyancy is an antigravity mechanism?
@OIM
"Tom,
F = G * m1 * m2 / r^2
Where is the density in that formula?"
Easy,
m1 = rho1 * vol1
m2 = rho2 * vol2
F = G * rho1 * rho2 * vol1 * vol2 / r^2
rho1 and rho2 are the density of the 1st and 2nd objects, respectively
vol1 and vol2 are the density of the 1st and 2nd objects, respectively
You can get your density by discretizing via breaking it up into a cubic grid, approximating the mass for the centroid of the individual equal volume segments, and then summing the gravitational field from each volumetric segment at any point in space to get the total superposition of the gravitational field at all points. If the density is uniform, or varies linearly then you could use an integration of the density over volume method.
OIM, where is your evidence for invisible pink unicorns aboard Noah's Ark?
@Myself "vol1 and vol2 are the density of the 1st and 2nd objects, respectively"
Dang it, meant to say VOLUME, of course, not DENSITY
@OIM "Are you saying that buoyancy is an antigravity mechanism?"
If you want to take it that way, then Yes. The force of buoyancy acts opposite to the force of gravity.
QF,
"OIM, where is your evidence for invisible pink unicorns aboard Noah's Ark?"
The unicorns are inside the gravitons.
One explanation for why bacteria and other small particles (e.g., dust, etc.) stay suspended in the atmosphere is terminal velocity which is given by:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity
v-term = sqrt(2 * m * g / (rho * A * C-drag)
v-term is terminal velocity in meters per second
m is the mass of the bacterium in kilograms
g is the acceleration due to gravity (meters per second per second)
rho is the density of air in kilograms per cubic meter
A is the cross-sectional area of the bacterium in square meters
C-drag is the coefficient of drag (dimensionless)
At sea level, rho = 1.225 kilograms per cubic meter and g = 9.80665 meters per second per second.
Let's assume that our bacterium (assumed to be spherical) has a diameter of 3.0 microns (volume = 1.41E-17 cubic meters) and that it has the same density as water (m = 1.41E-14 kilograms). It's cross-sectional area A = 7.07E-12 square meters.
Let's assume the coefficient of drag, C-drag equals that of a sphere, 0.47:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient
We now, can solve our equation:
v-term = 0.26 meters per second
It will take the bacterium 64 minutes to fall 1 kilometer. Taking into account varying sizes of the bacterium we can derive the following formula:
v-term = sqrt(8 * rho-bact * r-bact * g / (3 * rho-air * C-drag))
rho-bact is the density of the bacterium (kg / m^3)
r-bact is the radius of the bacterium (m)
rho-air is the density of the air (kg/m^3)
So terminal velocity is proportional to the square root of the size of the bacterium. Some bacteria are as small as 0.3 micrometers in diameter, which means they would have a terminal velocity of 0.08 meters per second - it takes 3.4 hours to fall one kilometer.
Thus, if small particles get up into the atmosphere it will take some time for them to fall back down to the ground.
Tom,
"If you want to take it that way, then Yes. The force of buoyancy acts opposite to the force of gravity."
Ah yes, buoyancy, the fifth fundamental force of astronomy and astrophysics.
Looking forward to the paper discussing the dominance of buoyancy over gravitation in the universe.
How does the antigravitational force of buoyancy effect the orbits of the planets?
Since buoyancy is antigravity, I wonder how much stronger it is than gravity.
@OIM "Since buoyancy is antigravity, I wonder how much stronger it is than gravity."
You've seen a turd float, haven't you? There's your answer - it's much, much stronger.
I never thought about the fact that turd defies gravitation. Thx.
Tom,
What causes buoyancy?
Could it be the fact that electrons have the same electric charge and repel eachother?
LOL!
That's right, particularly bouyant turds do float in water.
why does an iceberg, say, float on water? Same damned material, but the solid is less dense than the liquid. This, however, doesn't happen in an orbital freefall condition though because there is no gravitational field to define which direction is up and which direction is down.
According to a Newtonian physical model, in the absense of gravitation there does need to first be a change in momentum, an impulse, to cause the less dense object to slide through the more dense object at a faster rate and to have a viscous shear effect occur at the boundary layer. Gravitation provides that impulse, and because it is a body force related to mass, it acts on the denser object more than it acts on the lighter object.
No, I'm not so at ease with my own explanation of that though. In my own mind, I've used the idea that bouyancy can be explained by the principle that a soccer ball will be kicked higher into the air than a bowling ball will be provided the same amount of impulse for each kick. The bowling ball simply has more mass inertia than the soccer ball does, and so the same amount of energy will drive one higher than the other.
On the molecular scale of collisions, every collision is like different masses being kicked around against each other. Statistically, the lighter masses should end up higher than the heavier masses provided that the same amount of impulse is given to all of them. Unfortunately, the Earth is an open system and thereby is exposed to the light from the sun, so different molecules will absorb different wavelengths and get different levels of impulses than other molecules do so you can get the paradox of a bowling ball going higher than a soccer ball, metaphorically. Anyhow, bouyancy is modeled as statistical steady state closed system under a gravitational field whereby the energy is evenly dispersed (constant temperatures).
@OIM "What causes buoyancy? Could it be the fact that electrons have the same electric charge and repel eachother?"
Gee, OIM, I would have thought you would declare buoyancy to be a myth, just like gravitation. You need to add "The Myth of Buoyancy" to your tag line.
@Quantum_Flux "On the molecular scale of collisions, every collision is like different masses being kicked around against each other. Statistically, the lighter masses should end up higher than the heavier masses provided that the same amount of impulse is given to all of them."
I'm not sure that's a satisfactory explanation for buoyancy. For nearly incompressible fluids (e.g., water, most liquids) I can get a better sense for what's going on. You take your sailboat and plop it in the water. It displaces the water, which since it is incompressible must go on the top of the surrounding water. The displaced water therefore has higher gravitational potential energy than before - wants to fall downward - it transmits this force through the fluid to the boat causing an upward force. With gases it's not so clear since they are compressible.
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