Well, from reading the paper on the website the announcement seem to
be quite premature, making the Mars Meteor look like solid evidence
(out bad pun, out!). They noted an uncanny resemblance in the spectrum
with that of an E Coli. OK, but that does not show it was an E Coli or
something similar - what other things would also show that peak? Maybe
small carbon particles, for example?
In order to recover alien bacteria you better grab a meteor, culture
something from it and show that it was not similar to any extant
terrestrial life (or at least shown that the
alien-but-terrestrial-looking E Coli could not have infected the
sample on Earth).
I think this is a nice example of how the media can overhype a rickety
scientific announcement since it is such a cool announcement. Remember
the BT Soulcatcher Chip, electromagnetic black holes and the face on
Mars?
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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