Scientist Chandra Wickramasinghe, who examined a meteorite found in Sri Lanka, claims to have found evidence of extraterrestrial life.
The Cosmology Journal has published an in-depth article titled "Fossilized Diatoms in a New Carbon Meteorite," authored by astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasingh.
The publication reports that a group of scientists examined the remains of a meteorite that fell on December 29, 2012 near the village of Polonnaruwa (Sri Lanka) using an electron microscope and found convincing evidence on it that life exists in the universe.
Wickramasingh, who is the director of the Buckingham Center for Astrobiology, said he found on the meteorite "microstructures and morphologies characteristic of a wide class of terrestrial diatoms."
Based on this data, Chandra and his colleagues concluded that "the presence of structures of this kind in any extraterrestrial material can be interpreted as unambiguous evidence of biology," in other words, evidence that there is life outside of planet Earth.
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It is worth noting that Wickramasingh is a supporter of panspermia - a hypothesis according to which all life on our planet appeared thanks to the "embryos of life" brought in from outer space.
“We have absolutely accurately identified the diatoms found on the meteorite debris. Thus, the results of our study support the panspermia hypothesis,”says the director of the Buckingham Center for Astrobiology.
However, his article drew not only positive reviews - astronomer Phil Plait criticized the words of the eminent astrobiologist.
“Vikramasingh assures everyone that living cells come to us from space, but his evidence is highly questionable. The geologists who first examined the meteorite reported that it might be an ordinary stone that was struck by lightning. Personally, I doubt that a piece of rock fell from the sky, - this is Plait's opinion, which he shared with readers of Slate magazine.
It is worth noting that earlier Wickramasingh stated that pathogenic microorganisms leading to epidemics on Earth were also brought in from interplanetary space.
Anna Romantseva