Scientific Censorship and Evolution
patrick at corona
Wed Apr 5 23:09:28 EST 1995
On Mon, 3 Apr 1995, Kevin O'Donnell wrote:
> >Viruses resembling _Pedomicrobium_ and influenza were
> >identified by Hans Dieter Pflug in a meteorite in 1981 (see
> >"The Facts of Life" page 239 for further details).
> This sounds very interesting. Do you have a reference from a
> peer-reviewed journal for this discovery?
A statement by anyone that they had found a _virus_ floating about in
space (which goes along with meteor hitchiking) is automatically suspect.
A virus cannot exist BEFORE a host exists. A virus cannot exist WITHOUT
a host. A virus must develop AFTER a potential host already
exists...where is the host for a space-floaty virus? How would it be
produced so as to be planted on a space rock? More importantly, how
could a proteinaceous/nucleic acid containing virion survive the several
thousand degree temperatures of atmospheric entry? DNA and RNA are
actually rather fragile, particularly without repair systems up and
running. Even if a virus was dessicated (as it would HAVE to be) in the
vacuum of space, this wouldn't preserve it. The ionizing radiation
levels in space are much higher than they are on earth, and so most
protein and nucleic acid structures would be ionized out of any useful
structure or function in rather short order.
Finding a virus or bacterium on a meteorite would be BIG news and you
would hear of it, as would we all. It would be on the cover of Nature,
Science, PNAS, etc, as soon as it was confirmed. MOST LIKELY, any such
discovery from a meteorite would be due to CONTAMINATION AFTER IMPACT.
For it to have any real meaning and value as evidence, it would have to
be brought back from the vacuum of space under VERY clean, sterile
conditions to prevent any possibility of contamination.
Amino acid remnants and, perhaps, nucleic acid remnants, have been pulled
from meteorites, just as amino acids have been detected by spectral
studies of interstellar nebulae. As someone else has stated in this
group, that is a LONG way from life. It merely goes to show that the
building blocks for life are not hard to come by...supporting evolution
A space virus...pah!
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