Life on the Philae Comet?

[RobM77]

There's a chance that life may exist on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko that Philae has landed on. Nothing's been proven, but the speculation makes interesting reading:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/06/phi...

http://news.sky.com/story/1514080/alien-life-on-ph...

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-an...

http://time.com/3946292/comet-philae-life-microbia...

We'll probably never really know for sure, which is a shame.

[RobM77]

Eric Mc said:

Still pretty much speculation to be honest. When a newspaper report mentions the word "could" umpteen times you know they are just bigging up some idle speculation by the scientists.

Frankly, scientists have been saying things like this for years about comets.

Very much so. I subscribe to Nature and seeing the transformation of a scientist's words from that or Radio 4's "Inside Science" into the mainstream press is quite revealing!

With this story though it's reported in a similar way across all those different links, so it's quite interesting. It boils down to a situation of "likely, based on what we can see, but we'll never prove it".

[RobM77]

XM5ER said:

http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/07/life-on-comet-spec...

Pretty much sums it up.

That's a pretty harsh article. Nobody is saying there's life on this comet, just that some formations on its surface could well have been created by life. It's an intriguing possibility, and nothing more than that.

[RobM77]

Eric Mc said:

Wild claims need harsh treatment.

They weren't claiming anything, they just said what they saw was likely to have come from a lifeform of some sort.