JaXanim wrote:
Considering the fundamental importance of any discovery of this nature, I'd have expected NASA to have been all over the region and committing a lot of their vastly superior resources to it.
Imagine what would have happened if NASA had published the report "Possible Origins Of Life Rain Down in India". They'd be castigated for not taking sufficient time to research the phenomenon.
Thing is that unexplained stuff happens every day. There's much that occurs that we don't understand and scientists are understandably reluctant to make premature announcements - especially in light of the controversy surrounding the Martian meteorite press conference in 1996.
Could it be that microbal life can be seeded from space? Well, Alan Bean brought back components from Surveyor 3 during the Apollo 12 moonwalk that still harboured live bacteria, which had contaminated the unmanned lander prior to it's 1966 launch. Bean's recovery of parts from the Surveyor craft have proved that bacteria can survive for at least three years in a dry, frozen vacuum and be revived once returned to Earth.
In science, the truth it seems is almost always beyond the wildest of theories.
