Is SARS really from outer space? Scientists weigh in on controversial claim

[Ivan Seeking]

BBC report

 

[iansmith]

One leading expert said Professor Wickramasinghe's letter "must be a joke"; another said it is simply ridiculous.

I think it summurize my opinion.

One unusual sequence and it is from space Wow

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by iansmith
I think it summurize my opinion.

One unusual sequence and it is from space Wow

Yeh I don't get it. Why would this guy go for such an extreme position? Just a nut? Failed logic?

Is there any real evidence for this claim generally - that life on Earth may have been seeded by extraterrestrial sources [eg viruses]?

 

[iansmith]

Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
Is there any real evidence for this claim generally - that life on Earth may have been seeded by extraterrestrial sources [eg viruses]?

There some analysis on space rock that show amino acid and some nucleic acid on the rock (I am not sure if I am totally rigth). So from these results people suggested that live migth be from extraterrestrial source.

There also a bacteria called Bacillus radioduran which is extremely resistance to U.V. therefore some russian scientist did some theoretical analysis and suggested that the bacteria migth evolve on a planet such as Mars because the bacteria could not develop a resistance to high U.V. concentration on earth. The problem is that the U.V. resistance migth not be due to U.V. exposure but to so other mutagenesis factor.

so its as far as I know the evidence that leads to people to believe that life on Earth was seeded by an extraterrstial source.

the only evidence suggest by the SARS guy is the unusually DNA but hey I see unusual stuff everyday (sometime its as if the bacteria I am working with has a brain and decide to laugh at me by not growing )

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by iansmith
...but hey I see unusual stuff everyday

Maybe it's all from ET ...yes I am joking!

 

[John MacNeil]

You know, there might be something to that story, and if there is, I bet it had something to do with this weird guy I saw coming out of the bar the other night. He looked just like this,

http://home.clara.net/lucypringle/photos/2002/uk02dl.html

Of course he didn't look exactly like that when I saw him, 'cause now he had a tuke pulled low down on his forehead, and he had a nose ring, and a tattoo on the side of his face, but it could have been the same guy.

 

[damgo]

Wickramasinghe (the guy proposing this) is kind of a nut... I liked the other researchers' opinions -- "Researchers who have been working on Sars reacted with a mixture of disbelief and ridicule. There is nothing strange about the Sars coronavirus, they said; it certainly evolved from other known viruses. One leading expert said Professor Wickramasinghe's letter "must be a joke"; another said it is simply ridiculous."

They've sequenced the SARS genome and done linkage analysis on its proteins, see http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/pdf/proteinanalysis.pdf . It's pretty obviously a relative of other coronaviruses. That a virus so similar to other coronoviruses, with the same proteins, specifically designed to succesfully infect and spread among mammals, would have been carried in from outer space instead is really just absurd.