BBC Focus Magazine

[Willxx]

Stumbled on this: (Although the link is from Fox News so may be automatically invalidated at source )

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/ ... meteorite/

[Healerman]

I agree with you comments on Fox News, but as best as I can see, this story checks out.

Dr Richard B Hoover is a group leader in Astrobiology at NASA, Huntsville, Alabama. The Journal of Cosmology seems to be a well respected publication. As the pointy-eared one would say;

"Fascinating!".

[M Paul Lloyd]

Fox News, the National Enquirers on line alternative.

Perhaps he had difficulties getting anyone else to publish it?

[Thinker]

I was expecting a green martian or something. I am bitterly disappointed.

[Shadowwolf]

The Journal of Cosmology seems to be a well respected publication.

Seems to be but alas is not, seems to be little more than a website and in this instance they may be seeing patterns were there are none.

http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2011/03/is-this-claim-of-bacteria-in-meteorite.html

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/did_scientists_discover_bacter.php

[Hyrulian Outlaw]

I just read about this elsewhere and the latest is that it has been proved wildly inaccurate and is, unfortunately, not true.

[Shadowwolf]

The curse of Fox holds true.

[The Beige Avenger]

.....
http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2011/03/is-this-claim-of-bacteria-in-meteorite.html

The author of the above blog didn't know anything about field effect SEM or EDX analysis yet he saw fit to criticise the researcher's methods? I do think however that the author of the blog was correct in criticising the conclusions from the results that he got which would indicate to me that he's got a blobby magnesio-siliceous bit... you know, rock.

(I imagine that the author did not coat the sample because gold coating gives too many peaks in EDX analysis and Carbon coating would give a huge carbon spike

[Lateralman]

Well, the little squiggly things stuck in the ancient rock looked pretty damn real to me! Even if they are not wearing gold coats. So I for one believe him!

[Shadowwolf]

Not the most sound basis for a position.