Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, thinks he may have found bacteria in a meteorite.

Yes, you read that right. The question is, is he right?

I don’t know. Dr. Hoover has published his findings in the online Journal of Cosmology (see below for more about this journal), and it was reported today by Fox News (thanks to Sheril at The Intersection for the tip).

Basically, Hoover found structures inside a rare type of meteorite — the Orgueil meteorite which fell in France in 1864 — that look very much like microbes of some sort. Here’s an example from the paper:

Those are odd and intriguing formations, to be sure. If I were scanning through a meteorite and saw those, I’d be pretty surprised too.

But appearances can be deceiving. Are these actually fossilized microscopic life forms?

Hoover makes several claims to show that a non-biotic origin for these structures is very unlikely. I am not an expert and won’t cast my vote either way here. This is not the first time Hoover has made such claims; he gave ...

UPDATE:  SOLVED by Sean at 12:02 CDT

Tom and I are getting ready to run a bonus riddle later this month.  I’ll have an announcement for you in a couple of days.

In the meanwhile, I think it’s about time to ring your chimes with another Sci Fi subject.  I wouldn’t want you to get bored and complacent over there.  Besides, I like playing around with Sci Fi subjects, and it’s all about me, right?  Me, me, me, me, me… oh!  Sorry about that.  I had a moment.

Today’s answer is a Sci Fi concept.

NASA image - you know who this is, right?

Like all good Sci Fi concepts, you’ll find this rooted in reality.

This concept has been kicked around since about 700 BCE.

It became more familiar to us in the late 19th century.

Image by Ferdinand Schmutzer 1921

This concept shows up in a lot of strange places; like through a looking glass.

This might be a one-way street.

Sometimes this happens spontaneously in fiction; just don’t take a nap at a mountain.

This iconic image has been around for a while

You’ll find this concept in places where you wouldn’t expect it to be lurking; like in a Dickens novel.

It’s even made an appearance in pop music.

Lots of people today - but you should know this one

There you go – one fun, fast riddle.  I’m hanging out in the comments, so don’t abandon me!

If true–and not a case of contamination or mistaken identity–this could be big:

Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, has traveled to remote areas in Antarctica, Siberia, and Alaska, amongst others, for over ten years now, collecting and studying meteorites. He gave FoxNews.com early access to the out-of-this-world research, published late Friday evening in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology. In it, Hoover describes the latest findings in his study of an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites — only nine such meteorites are known to exist on Earth.

Though it may be hard to swallow, Hoover is convinced that his findings reveal fossil evidence of bacterial life within such meteorites, the remains of living organisms from their parent bodies — comets, moons and other astral bodies. By extension, the findings suggest we are not alone in the universe, he said.

For now I’ll say I’m intrigued, but also somewhat skeptical–at least until we learn more. What do readers think?

[Update: Phil's got a great post up on the possibility of fossilized microscopic life forms.]

Look, I have a homepage. I wanted a site that pulls together my various social media stuff as well as a record of my other writing and speaking engagements.

Top twelve picks

“Dead world at sunset.” I’m not going to spoil the topic but just read this, okay? This is beautiful, lyrical and amazingly tight writing, of the kind that makes me want to be a better writer. Hats off to Jessa Gamble. My favourite thing in a week of top stuff.

“Forming, finding or defending a vacuum-sealed echo-chamber online is extremely difficult, if at all possible.” Bora Zivkovic destroys the “internet is an echo chamber” meme

“Cognitive science is full of crap – except when it’s not. Which makes it like most science, only more so” – a cogent analysis and defence by David Dobbs

“Does school science still divide people into “pure scientists, applied scientists & failures”? By Alice Bell

A beautiful ode to the photon, by Lily Asquith

“The mere existence of whales suggests that is possible to suppress cancer many-fold better than is done in humans.” Carl Zimmer on Peto’s Paradox

“Followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Churches believe they should maintain a home for all of God’s creatures around their places of worship. The result? Forests ringing churches.” An amazing post by Delene Beeland on the “church forests” of Ethiopia

“In the 1970s, he transplanted an entire monkey head onto another monkey’s body. And, for a short time, the severed head lived.” By Hannah Waters

In a medical detective tale worthy of House, a top plague scientist dies of… the plague. It’s more surprising than you think.

“The aim is so simple that the complexity and magnitude of the undertaking is easy to miss. Starting from scratch, with new computer tools and more data than has ever been used, they will arrive at an independent assessment of global warming.” Great Ian Sample feature on Richard Muller, the Berkeley Earth project, climate science & open data

No one puts baby in a cohort! Mark Henderson on a new study that’s recruiting 100,000 UK babies (paywall). Meanwhile, Helen Pearson writes about the “study of a lifetime” – a group of thousands of Brits whose health has been tracked since 1946.

What made scientist/murderer Amy Bishop snap? Amy Wallance has the story.

Science/news/writing

Lab to red carpet: an NYT piece on famous actors with science backgrounds, including Natalie Portman (here she is on Pubmed – she’s the fifth author). And from Wikipedia: “Due to her sci pubs, Portman is among small number of actors w/ a finite Erdos-Bacon number”

Oscar science: based on movie-star faces, we now prefer younger, more feminine women… and men

“Comment Is Free… sometimes what they publish is worth every penny of that.” ZING! Language Log destroys a piece which claims that languages with good spelling systems have no word for dyslexia.

The strange history of tropical neurasthenia, a “relatively short-lived colonial affliction”.

The hairy beast with seven fuzzy sexes

Terrorist taunts may tell attack timing. “”It is very possible we may be identifying the linguistic predictors of bin Laden himself.”

Obama orders investigations into 1940s experiments that deliberately infected Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhoea

“A large crowd of bystanders & a tired operator led to a mistaken direction of exploration.” Early neurosurgery failures, by Emily Anthes (the piece, not the failures).

“I’d always dreamed of walking into a room stacked ceiling to floor w/hippo skulls.” Hannah Waters on museum collections.

An orchid parasitising a fungus, by Lucas Brouwers

Here’s a great idea: let’s save practically no money by cutting 100% of the government’s poison control centers.

Are 10,000 buttons safer than one fancy screen? At this Russian nuke plant, yes. By John Pavlus

It’s not your imagination, that guy really IS taking a long time to buckle his %&$@ seatbelt. By SciCurious

China’s “heavenly horse“. And by “heavenly”, I mean “parasite-riddled”.

“Infested by the Wizard of Oz” – Vaughan Bell on delusional parasitosis

The “greenhouse effect” that’s actually cooling the world.

Mo Costandi on the increasingly shaky ‘broken mirror neurons‘ theory of autism

Visions of Africa shaped eye evolution.

Give postdocs a career, not empty promises, urges Jenny Rohn

Blum on Boom – why explosions in science class can be excellent

How many clocks of life are there?

By our powers combined, we are Global Virus Response Network

What was disgraced cloner Woo Suk Hwang doing in Libya? This story just keeps on giving.

They “superglued the [mantis shrimps] to Plexiglass & dropped stainless steel balls on them” by Matt Soniak

Even ideas – such as swimming strokes – conjure up colours for some synaesthetes

Costa Rica announces 2.47 million acre marine reserve

Heh/wow/huh

If we told you what this press release was about, we’d have to shoot you.

Hipster science (“My data don’t need to fit to your ‘model’.”)

You can order flesh-eating beetles through the post! Comes w/ free frog to start the skeletonising fun

XKCD on cladistics

Man draws perfect circle in less than a second. Man is nerd Jedi

C3P0 reminds “parents of earth” to make sure their children are “fully immunized” in awesome ’70s PSA

Speech impediment irony

Whiteboard troll

Golden-haired spider that looks like an ant. Nature! Hell yeah!

Psychologists – they’re all just screwing with each other.

A poster for Brian Cox’s next series?

Physics troll (not Internet kind) explains how physics ought to work

Heh. Scientists – all you do is stick PINS in stuff.

Gummi bear vs oxidation. Gummi bear loses.

DRAAAAAAAAINAGE. Awesome geo-art

James Delingpole, the gift that keeps on giving

“The success of MORDOR will open up the majority of the bone specimens previously not available for sampling”

Arnie, in calling for fossil fuel termination, quotes Conan: “Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.”

Blogging/journalism/internet/society

Gladwell, proven spectacularly wrong on social media, dismisses critics as pajama-wearing bloggers in Brooklyn. Really, Malcolm? You are critiquing us on sartorial grounds?

And the misleading headline of the week goes to the Independent. Based on this, the Knight Science Journalism Tracker says “Many Brit outlets do seem markedly fond of starting readers off with caution- and irony-free hyperbole, and then as a story proceeds titrating its consumers back to reality.” Great. Just great. England f**king expects, okay?

The Battle for Control – what people who worry about the internet are really worried about

A hive for long-form journalism on the Internet.

Fox News kept out of Canada by law saying that you can’t lie on broadcast news

I’m in the middle of a chain retraction

It’s the Inequality, Stupid. A great infographic.

When manning up involves pushing women out

Wow. German defense minister Guttenberg resigns after losing his PhD for a plagiarized thesis. Ivan Oransky has the story.

Spiders and penises are two things most people want to keep far, far apart. Until now. New research suggests that the venom of one aggressive arachnid could be used in future treatments for erectile dysfunction (that is, if it doesn’t kill you first).

Say hello to the Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria nigriventer), also known as the armed spider, or as the banana spider. With an over four-inch leg span, this South and Central American native normally creeps around banana plantations, although some have wound up in American supermarkets and Canadian grocery stores. Flaccid fellows beware: On top of severe pain, a single bite from this eight-legged foe can cause you to lose control of your muscles—and if it’s not treated, the bite can screw up your ability to breathe so much so that you slowly die of oxygen deprivation.With a sip of the anti-venom, though, you’d recover in a week. And truth be told, only 10 people out of 7,000 are known to have actually died from a bite. Survivors tell of experiencing painful erections that last for more than four hours—a medical ailment known as priapism.

It’s this ...