Oolite Bulletins

El Viejo wrote:

To leave Earth, an escape velocity of 11.2 km/s (approx. 40,320 km/h, or 25,000 mph) is required.

I remember calculating this value in the first week we started at University by just using the math we learned at school.
Very satisfactory to see how you could use that dry school-math for some real live calculations .

Unfortunate truth, it also might be just a big scream for attention. I took a bit reading upon the subject, including looking at author himself. It is not the first time Dr. Hoover published something like this, and his previous claims have been debunked by NASA. Also, couple things do raise suspicion. The article was published in relatively obscure journal, with low "impact factor", and that has already announced its termination within few months. Also, from biologist point of view...the bacteria seem to be very similar to Cyanobacteria. These are photosyntetic bacteria....they require liquid water, oxygen and sunlight to thrive...and to our knowledge, Earth is only place in whole solar system that has all these factors in quantity nescessary for them.

Actually, I read also the article. It is not very well structured from a scientific point of view, it is very amateur, even the publishing is limit (Some title should be in bold when they are not etc...). The analysis, however, are interesting.
Bacteria have been found up to 40km in the stratosphere.

Let's suppose some bacteria could survive at 80 km and a meteorite could skim this upper layer of the stratosphere..... If you read the article, you understand that the Orgueil meteorite was a part of a much larger body (a comet ?) which just escape from the collision in 1806. The isotopic ratios of carbon seem to deny an origin from earth. In geochemistry, there is a classical isotopic ratio 13C/12C. You make the ratio of the sample vs the normal, substract 1 and multiply by 1000. Usually, one should get a value less 10. Cretaceous limestone have a value of 0. Value of living organisms are less than -10 if I remember well. For this meteorite, we got a ratio of +60 which is really out of range of terrestrial results.

About bacteria requirements, there seems to have most of them: oxygen is not a must, it is actually a poison for most bacteria. CO2, sulfur or ammonia is important, but you have this on comet. Light, you have it. Water, you have it and it seems there was a kind of brine because they found Mg salts.