Although no scientific scrutiny was organized for data from Rosetta, the European Space Agency probe orbiting the comet, the researchers still claimed in a presentation before the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) that microorganisms could eke out life beneath the comet’s black crust.
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Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe, an astronomer and astrobiologist who became part of the mission planning 15 years ago, said that people should be more open to the idea that alien life exists.
Many astrobiologists, however, including the Australian Centre for Astrobiology’s Malcom Walter, refuted the claims of the two scientists from the United Kingdom, saying that there simply was no actual evidence to support the notion that there is extraterrestrial life on comet 67P.
After it was dropped by Rosetta in November, Philae had a hard time attaching itself to the surface of the comet and eventually bounced off the land and made a stop in the shade. It landed at a dark remote location where direct sunlight was not available, causing it to lose battery power for close to six months before it came back to life this June after its solar panels got charged by sunlight again.
He did computer simulations which found microbes could inhabit watery regions of the comet up to temperatures of -40C if they contained anti-freeze salts. The rock has a layer of ice on which a hydrocarbon black crust is present as well as craters containing lakes of frozen water and icy seas filled with organic debris.
Wickramasinghe explains: “These are not easily explained in terms of prebiotic chemistry”.
“They might be viral particles”, said Prof Wickramasinghe. The dark material is being constantly replenished as it is boiled off by heat from the Sunday.
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“Data coming from the comet seems to point to micro-organisms being involved in the formation of the icy structures, the preponderance of aromatic hydrocarbons, and the very dark surface. Something must be doing that at a fairly prolific rate”. The scientists claim that comets such as this may have helped the beginning of life on our planet and on others, like Mars, in the very early existence of our solar system. I think it’s inevitable that life is going to be a cosmic phenomenon. After that revolution our thinking has remained Earth-centred in relation to life and biology.
