Alien Life Found!

We are not alone in the universe -- and alien life forms may have a lot
more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought.

That's the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing
his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of
the Journal of Cosmology.

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.

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than
restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover told FoxNews.com. “This
field of study has just barely been touched -- because quite frankly, a
great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

In what he calls “a very simple process,” Dr. Hoover fractured the
meteorite stones under a sterile environment before examining the
freshly broken surface with the standard tools of the scientist: a
scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning
microscope, which allowed him to search the stone’s surface for evidence
of fossilized remains.

He found the fossilized remains of micro-organisms not so different from
ordinary ones found underfoot -- here on earth, that is.

“The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can
be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth,”
Hoover told FoxNews.com. But not all of them. “There are some that are
just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to
identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come
up stumped.”

Other scientists tell FoxNews.com the implications of this research are
shocking, describing the findings variously as profound, very important
and extraordinary. But Dr. David Marais, an astrobiologist with NASA’s
AMES Research Center, says he’s very cautious about jumping onto the
bandwagon.

These kinds of claims have been made before, he noted -- and found to be
false.

“It’s an extraordinary claim, and thus I’ll need extraordinary
evidence,” Marais said.

Knowing that the study will be controversial, the journal invited
members of the scientific community to analyze the results and to write
critical commentaries ahead of time. Though none are online yet, those
comments will be posted alongside the article, said Dr. Rudy Schild, a
scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian's Center for Astrophysics and the
editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cosmology.

"Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100
experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists
from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their
critical analysis," Schild wrote in an editor's note along with the
article. "No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a
thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the
scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an
important research paper before it is published, he wrote."

Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, said there is
a lot of hesitancy to believe such proclamations. If true, the
implications would be far-reaching throughout the fields of science and
astronomy, the suggestions and possibilities stunning.

“Maybe life was seeded on earth -- it developed on comets for example,
and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early
Earth,” Shostak speculated. “It would suggest, well, life didn’t really
begin on the Earth, it began as the solar system was forming.”

Hesitancy to believe new claims is something common and necessary to the
field of science, Hoover said.

“A lot of times it takes a long time before scientists start changing
their mind as to what is valid and what is not. I’m sure there will be
many many scientists that will be very skeptical and that’s OK.”

Until Hoover’s research can be independently verified, Marais said, the
findings should be considered “a potential signature of life.”
Scientists, he said, will now take the research to the next level of
scrutiny, which includes an independent confirmation of the results by
another lab, before the findings can be classified “a confirmed
signature of life.”

Hoover says he isn’t worried about the process and is open to any other
explanations.

“If someone can explain how it is possible to have a biological remain
that has no nitrogen, or nitrogen below the detect ability limits that I
have, in a time period as short as 150 years, then I would be very
interested in hearing that."

"I’ve talked with many scientists about this and no one has been able to
explain,” he said.