© ReutersProfessor Wickramasinghe, 74, and his team from the University of Sheffield sent a specially designed balloon into the atmoshphere during the annual Perseid meteor shower last month in August
Professor Wickramasinghe, 74, and his team from the University of Sheffield sent a specially designed balloon into the atmosphere above Chester during the annual Perseid meteor shower. The balloon was carrying sterile microscope slides which were only exposed to the atmosphere at heights of 27km.
When the balloon fell back down to Earth the scientists discovered microscopic aquatic algae on the microscope slides - which they say can only be alien life forms.
Their findings were published in a paper during the Instruments, Methods, and Missions for Astrobiology conference in San Diego, USA, last month.
Prof Wickramasinghe said: 'Biological entities of this nature have not previously been reported occurring in the stratosphere.
'The entities varied from a presumptive colony of ultra-small bacteria to two unusual individual organisms - part of a diatom frustule and a 200 micron-sized particle mass interlaced with biofilm and biological filaments.'
He said these findings were evidence for the theory of 'cometary panspermia'.
This states that the 'seeds of life' exist all over the Universe and travel through space from one planet to another.
Sceptics believe 'biological entities' captured in the stratosphere could have been carried high into the atmosphere from Earth - and not from space.
But Prof Wickramasinghe said: 'The biological entities found are particles of relatively large size and mass.
'By our current understanding of the means by which such particles can be transferred from Earth to the stratosphere they could not - in the absence of a violent volcanic eruption occurring within a day of the sampling event - make such a journey.
'If there is no mechanism by which these biological entities could be elevated from Earth to the stratosphere then it must have arrived from above the stratosphere and have been incoming to Earth.'
The Sri Lankan-born British mathematician, astronomer and astrobiologist is one of the leading proponents of the theory of cometary panspermia.
Panspermia is Greek for 'seeds everywhere'.
The panspermia theory states that seeds of life can be spread through space from one location to another. and that life on Earth may have originated through this process.
It requires meteors blasted from a planet's surface serve to act as transfer vehicles for spreading biological material from one planet to another.
Cool.
But events which have made me more cynical than I already was decades ago, cause concerrn that if the above ain't "PTB-approved' then to expect some PTB disinfo tactics. (E.g., Some lab rat named Oswaldo Flunkie comes forth and claims he allowed the slides to be contaminated, etc.) I hope not.
R.C.