Contrary to previously hyped headlines, there exists no evidence to support the claim of extraterrestrial life on comet 67P, Churyumov-Gerasimenko, according to leading astrobiologists.
The Headline That Rocked The World
The commotion over extraterrestrial life existing on the comet 67P began as news outlets from around the world reported earlier this week on the findings of two British astronomers, Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, and Dr. Max Wallis of the University of Cardiff. The two claimed that comet 67P, also referred to as Churyumov-Gerasimenko, after the two Soviet scientists who discovered it in 1969, shows signs of extraterrestrial life in microbial form due to certain features visible on photos of the comet’s surface.
Their claims were presented in Llandudno, Wales, at the National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society. Their claims further stated that ice from the surface of the comet could melt as it comes closer to the Sun, combining with certain organic compounds present on the comet to facilitate extraterrestrial life in the form of micro-organisms.
A Flight of Fancy
Many astrobiologists, however, including the Australian Centre for Astrobiology’s Malcom Walter, refuted the claims of the two scientists from the United Kingdom, saying that there simply was no actual evidence to support the notion that there is extraterrestrial life on comet 67P. One of the scientists who helped to develop the COSAC analyzer on the Philae probe, France’s Uwe Meierhenrich of the Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, also stated that none of the scientists on the Rosetta team assumes that there is extraterrestrial life on the comet. NASA’s Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Ames Research Center, even stated that to go from the established presence of ice and organic compounds on comet 67P’s surface to claiming the existence of extraterrestrial life is quite the leap that goes beyond the data available.
A Historic Mission
The Rosetta Mission is a project of the European Space Agency, launched in 2004 as a joint project with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It is hailed as the first mission in human history to have orbited and touched down on a comet. After ten years of chasing the comet 67P, the Philae probe was launched from the main Rosetta spacecraft and landed on 67P on November 12, 2014. It has been sending data back to Earth since then, including many photographs.
It is the photographs sent back by the Rosetta mission that spurred the claims of extraterrestrial life on comet 67P.
