England To Search For Alien Life – With Video
Oct 5, 2010 5 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
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(Oct. 5) — Space, the final frontier — or is it? Scientists hope to find alien life forms closer to home — in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
British researchers from Cranfield University, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, plan to launch a balloon this week from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, with on-board instruments that will search for non-Earth bacteria and micro-organisms.
Team leader and electronic engineer Clara Juanes-Vallejo spoke to AOL News from above the Arctic Circle, where she and her team were waiting for the launch of the Cranfield Astrobiological Stratospheric Sampling Experiment, or CASS-E.
“We have an interest in looking for life in extreme environments, like the planet Mars, because if we can find life in a harsh environment, like Earth’s stratosphere, then we might be able to find life on Mars,” Juanes-Vallejo said.
“In the stratosphere, it’s minus-90 degrees Celsius, and a near-vacuum, in addition to extreme radiation, where there’s no atmosphere to protect you. If we find very strange life up there, we can say it’s not ours.”
And such a discovery would support the theory that life on Earth came from somewhere else in the cosmos.
Many scientists believe life may have arrived on Earth in any number of ways: piggy-backing a ride on comets, asteroids or, as Juanes-Vallejo points out, windfalling.
“That means it’s attracted by gravity and it’s slowly pulled down out of orbit, and then falls through the atmosphere all the way down to the ground.”
But how could bacteria or micro-organisms survive the unfriendly conditions of space?
“If, for example, there had been a comet impact on Mars, in an area where the planet may have been seeded with life, and a piece of Mars broke off, those bacteria that might have been happily living on Mars would suddenly find themselves in the harsh environment of space where they would become spores,” Juanes-Vallejo said.
“While they’re spores, they could survive, and if eventually they reach Earth’s atmosphere, they might revert from sporal form back to bacteria.”
The search-for-life experiment package will be launched from a balloon platform, where it’s expected to take almost an hour and a half to travel more than 20 miles into the stratosphere.
There, it will float for one to five hours, collecting samples of air — and, researchers hope, microbes — through a special filter. Afterward, the gondola will break away from the balloon and parachute back to Earth where a recovery team will pick it up.
Juanes-Vallejo and her team will then begin their analysis to see if they’ve successfully scooped up any friendly out-of-this-world life forms. “If we find any kind of life, we have a good chance of knowing and proving that it’s not ours.”
Juanes-Vallejo explained why such a discovery would be important to science and to all of us on Earth.
“Well, everybody wants to know where we came from, who we are, what we’re doing here, and if we can start to find life in extreme places — places that we think we cannot find life — then this means that there is life out there, perhaps not intelligent life, but life is not as uncommon as we think. And in our next mission to Mars, maybe we’ll find life there.”
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She and her team are excited about the prospects of their work. “This is an unbelievable experience. We’re doing an experiment that could actually mean something. We’re not trying to measure things just for the sake of measuring things; this could be a great discovery for the scientific community.
“I haven’t slept for days. I’ve been working constantly, making sure everything is perfect for the launch, and we’re now waiting for the weather.”
The balloon launch is scheduled for Wednesday, weather permitting. Juanes-Vallejo must submit her analysis conclusion report to the European Space Agency by January.
“It would be nice to know we’re not alone, isn’t it? Even if it’s just little bacteria.”
You can follow the team’s progress at the CASS-E website.
