• Question: could a meteor contain life forms on it and if so would earth be in danger???

    Asked by NAINY IS LOVE to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 16 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Steven Thomson

      Steven Thomson answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      They could, but it’s unlikely, and any life forms would probably be no bigger than bacteria so there would almost certainly be no danger to us.

      The Philae and Rosetta mission studying a comet might shed more light on what comets and meteors are made of and whether they contain advanced chemical compounds or even life. Some people even think that’s how life on Earth was started, by meteors carrying microscopic life crashing into Earth.

      We wouldn’t be in any danger though. If a meteorite makes it to the ground without burning up, the pieces are collected by scientists, and it’s very unlikely there would be any life forms on it anyway!

    • Photo: Lidunka Vocadlo

      Lidunka Vocadlo answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      @NAINY IS LOVE Actually it’s more the other way round – when we send missions to look at stuff in the solar system and beyond, we have to be careful not to contaminate what we are investigating. This is actually a very serious issue and a lot of research has gone into reducing the risk of transferring terrestrial contaminants to other parts of the solar system. I think there is quite a funny cartoon where an astronaut discovers a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on mars….

    • Photo: Jillian Scudder

      Jillian Scudder answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      This idea is part of the idea of “panspermia”! This is the idea that the basic molecules – amino acids, etc – could form out in space somewhere, or in the gas and dust the stars form out of, and could then be delivered to a planet to “seed” it with life. It’s possible that this happens occasionally, but to prove that it happens, we’d need to find those building blocks on an asteroid or a comet. This is tricky to do, since anything that’s landed on the earth is almost immediatley contaminated, and things we send out into space (while we try very hard to decontaminate them) are still potential vectors for bacteria! We can keep looking, though – if there are complex molecules out there we should be able to find them with the right instruments.

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