NASA Scientist Dr Richard Hoover claims to have found evidence of alien life

NewsCore From: NewsCore March 06, 2011

While some scientists are excited by the finds, others say more evidence is needed that we have found alien life. File picture Source: Supplied

WE are not alone and alien life forms may have more in common with life on Earth than we had thought, according to a NASA scientist.

The out-of-this-world research by Dr Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre, was published in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology.

In the report, Dr Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites - only nine such meteorites were known to exist on Earth.

The scientist was convinced that his findings revealed fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites and by extension, suggests we are not alone in the universe.

"I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet Earth," Dr Hoover said.

"This field of study has just barely been touched because quite frankly, a great many scientists would say that this is impossible."

In what he called "a very simple process," Dr Hoover fractured the meteorite stones under a sterile environment before examining the freshly broken surface with the standard tools of the scientist: a scanning electron microscope and a field emission electron scanning microscope, which allowed him to search the stone's surface for evidence of fossil remains.

He found the fossil remains of micro-organisms not so different from ordinary ones found underfoot on Earth.

"The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognisable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth," Dr Hoover said.

But not all of them. "There are some that are just very strange and don't look like anything that I've been able to identify, and I've shown them to many other experts that have also come up stumped."

Other scientists say the implications of this research were shocking, describing the findings variously as profound, very important and extraordinary.

But Dr David Marais, an astrobiologist with NASA's AMES Research Centre, said he was very cautious about jumping on the bandwagon.

These kinds of claims have been made before, he noted and found to be false.

"It's an extraordinary claim, and thus I'll need extraordinary evidence," he said.