Well its been a lot of time and may be many of us would have forgotten the disaster resulted due to the spread of SARS Virus.....
I was today just going through Stephen Hawkings site and read about Jayant Narlikar(Last time I had heard about him was that he counducted some experiments to check bacterias in outer space....)
Well just for the information for u all guys..Jayant Narlikar is India's most prominent Astrophysicst-astronomer and is knowm world widw for his work in cosmology, astrophysics. He even had shared his office with Hawkings during their stay at Cambridge. He had been awarded Padmabhushan at an early age of 26 way back in 1965.
Well coming back to what I was intended to say was that according toi the experiment done by Mr. Narlikar there are various bacterias and micro-organism which live in outer space.
Now by this experiment Narlikar is trying to suggest that SARS was not an earthly virus but it was an alien virus which did this....now thats sound intresting....
Below I am pasting a summarized interview of Mr. Narlikar for u all to read....
Have a good time...
Interview with Jayant Narlikar, astrophysicist-astronomer
Virus from outer space
He seems to be a distant figure, scanning outer space for signs of extraterrestrial life. That is far from true: Jayant Narlikar's feet are very much on terra firma, the renowned astrophysicist-astronomer living a simple life.
We are not saying this is the only way you can understand SARS. What we are saying is, since it is a new disease, we should explore different possibilities of its origin.
Sitting in his office at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, he explained to The Week how SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) could have come from outer space. He recently sent a letter to Lancet about this.
Excerpts from the interview:
How did you arrive at the conclusion that SARS could be from outer space?
About 25 years ago physicists Fred Hoyle (mentor of Narlikar) and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe (a srilankan atronomer) had proposed this hypothesis that inter-stellar spaces are full of panspermia, that is live organisms. They felt that some of these bacteria and viruses could come to Earth by riding on comets. Sometimes cometary tails brush the Earth's atmo-sphere and these microorganisms could descend to the surface.
They gave the example of the 1918 influenza epidemic that spread very fast across the globe. It was hard to understand that it was happening by person-to-person contamination because people could not travel that fast (then). People in Bombay and Boston got it within a day's gap. This can be understood easily if you think of a global shower on Earth.
Taking that example, one of the things we would like to test is whether the Earth's atmosphere at great heights has any microorganisms. Earlier, it was thought that the conditions are too hostile for any such thing to survive. So we conducted an experiment which has shown that bacteria exist in outer space.
Now if some people say that we may have found bacteria gone up from Earth, they have to tell us how the bacteria could go to that height-41 km. A normal volcanic eruption, which is the most forceful way of ejecting anything, doesn't reach beyond 25 km. And even if it reaches that height, it settles down to the ground within a few weeks. Our samples were collected when there had been no volcanic eruptions for at least two years.
Another suggestion was the bacteria were from manmade satellites that go to great heights. But then the debris that fall off these satellites as estimated by agencies like NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) is too small to explain what we found.
There is this theory that it is from comets, meteorites and other extraterrestrial visitors. We are not saying this is the only way you can understand SARS. What we say is, since it is a new disease, we should explore different possibilities of its origin.
The layer of atmosphere it has to traverse would be less on the Himalayan site because of the great height of the mountain; wind and lateral forces could have driven it eastwards towards China. It may later come down somewhere else, too.
Was it possible to test the bacteria from 41 km up in space?
The bacteria have been identified, and it is somewhat similar to a terrestrial bacterium. The panspermia hypothesis says life on Earth started initially on bombardments. So whatever you find on Earth would reflect similarity with what you find up there. But there may be marginal differences because bacteria tend to adapt to whatever conditions there exists.
These bacteria are not culturable. Because it is non-culturable, its overall number will be very small; the chance of it being contaminated is rather low.
Although we had collected samples, we had not tested for viruses because viruses are smaller and they go through filters that we use to track bacteria. We suggest more experiments for in-depth studies.
How can humans find preventive or curative medicines for bacteria that have evolved in an alien space?
You can think of antibodies. So you study the structure of the virus. One way of testing it would be to do a more exhaustive study of the atmosphere to see what is up there. The kind of experiments we did, we can do them more efficiently. It will help us understand better the kind of environment we live in. The Earth is not an isolated system. That appreciation itself will make us more imaginative in facing these threats.
Has there been any progress in experiments similar to what you did 25 years ago?
We have made a proposal to the Indian Space Research Organisation for a more exhaustive experiment. We hope to hear from them soon.
Is there any facility to test the SARS virus for outer space connections?
The thing is to take samples and check whether the viruses are similar.
That would mean the involvement of medical researchers, too?
You can identify the DNA sequence of the viruses which can be done by molecular biologists. Our colleagues in the UK are doing it.
Is there any move to set up a lab to conduct such experiments?
I believe the US has now set up an astro-biology lab, but what exactly are its aims we don't know. They may be more interested in knowing what is going on in Mars rather than on what is at our doorstep. A centre for astro-biology was opened at Cardiff in the UK. N.C. Wickramasinghe (scientist of Sri Lankan origin settled in the UK) is in charge of the centre.
Would you suggest scientists to start experiments or wait for some proof before taking up serious study?
The purpose of sending a letter to Lancet was that if it got published in a reputed journal like it more people would take notice. And some of them would feel that even to disprove the idea you would have to do an experiment. So they would launch an experiment to test the idea critically, which is the purpose of the whole exercise.
I was today just going through Stephen Hawkings site and read about Jayant Narlikar(Last time I had heard about him was that he counducted some experiments to check bacterias in outer space....)
Well just for the information for u all guys..Jayant Narlikar is India's most prominent Astrophysicst-astronomer and is knowm world widw for his work in cosmology, astrophysics. He even had shared his office with Hawkings during their stay at Cambridge. He had been awarded Padmabhushan at an early age of 26 way back in 1965.
Well coming back to what I was intended to say was that according toi the experiment done by Mr. Narlikar there are various bacterias and micro-organism which live in outer space.
Now by this experiment Narlikar is trying to suggest that SARS was not an earthly virus but it was an alien virus which did this....now thats sound intresting....
Below I am pasting a summarized interview of Mr. Narlikar for u all to read....
Have a good time...
Interview with Jayant Narlikar, astrophysicist-astronomer
Virus from outer space
He seems to be a distant figure, scanning outer space for signs of extraterrestrial life. That is far from true: Jayant Narlikar's feet are very much on terra firma, the renowned astrophysicist-astronomer living a simple life.
We are not saying this is the only way you can understand SARS. What we are saying is, since it is a new disease, we should explore different possibilities of its origin.
Sitting in his office at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, he explained to The Week how SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) could have come from outer space. He recently sent a letter to Lancet about this.
Excerpts from the interview:
How did you arrive at the conclusion that SARS could be from outer space?
About 25 years ago physicists Fred Hoyle (mentor of Narlikar) and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe (a srilankan atronomer) had proposed this hypothesis that inter-stellar spaces are full of panspermia, that is live organisms. They felt that some of these bacteria and viruses could come to Earth by riding on comets. Sometimes cometary tails brush the Earth's atmo-sphere and these microorganisms could descend to the surface.
They gave the example of the 1918 influenza epidemic that spread very fast across the globe. It was hard to understand that it was happening by person-to-person contamination because people could not travel that fast (then). People in Bombay and Boston got it within a day's gap. This can be understood easily if you think of a global shower on Earth.
Taking that example, one of the things we would like to test is whether the Earth's atmosphere at great heights has any microorganisms. Earlier, it was thought that the conditions are too hostile for any such thing to survive. So we conducted an experiment which has shown that bacteria exist in outer space.
Now if some people say that we may have found bacteria gone up from Earth, they have to tell us how the bacteria could go to that height-41 km. A normal volcanic eruption, which is the most forceful way of ejecting anything, doesn't reach beyond 25 km. And even if it reaches that height, it settles down to the ground within a few weeks. Our samples were collected when there had been no volcanic eruptions for at least two years.
Another suggestion was the bacteria were from manmade satellites that go to great heights. But then the debris that fall off these satellites as estimated by agencies like NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) is too small to explain what we found.
There is this theory that it is from comets, meteorites and other extraterrestrial visitors. We are not saying this is the only way you can understand SARS. What we say is, since it is a new disease, we should explore different possibilities of its origin.
The layer of atmosphere it has to traverse would be less on the Himalayan site because of the great height of the mountain; wind and lateral forces could have driven it eastwards towards China. It may later come down somewhere else, too.
Was it possible to test the bacteria from 41 km up in space?
The bacteria have been identified, and it is somewhat similar to a terrestrial bacterium. The panspermia hypothesis says life on Earth started initially on bombardments. So whatever you find on Earth would reflect similarity with what you find up there. But there may be marginal differences because bacteria tend to adapt to whatever conditions there exists.
These bacteria are not culturable. Because it is non-culturable, its overall number will be very small; the chance of it being contaminated is rather low.
Although we had collected samples, we had not tested for viruses because viruses are smaller and they go through filters that we use to track bacteria. We suggest more experiments for in-depth studies.
How can humans find preventive or curative medicines for bacteria that have evolved in an alien space?
You can think of antibodies. So you study the structure of the virus. One way of testing it would be to do a more exhaustive study of the atmosphere to see what is up there. The kind of experiments we did, we can do them more efficiently. It will help us understand better the kind of environment we live in. The Earth is not an isolated system. That appreciation itself will make us more imaginative in facing these threats.
Has there been any progress in experiments similar to what you did 25 years ago?
We have made a proposal to the Indian Space Research Organisation for a more exhaustive experiment. We hope to hear from them soon.
Is there any facility to test the SARS virus for outer space connections?
The thing is to take samples and check whether the viruses are similar.
That would mean the involvement of medical researchers, too?
You can identify the DNA sequence of the viruses which can be done by molecular biologists. Our colleagues in the UK are doing it.
Is there any move to set up a lab to conduct such experiments?
I believe the US has now set up an astro-biology lab, but what exactly are its aims we don't know. They may be more interested in knowing what is going on in Mars rather than on what is at our doorstep. A centre for astro-biology was opened at Cardiff in the UK. N.C. Wickramasinghe (scientist of Sri Lankan origin settled in the UK) is in charge of the centre.
Would you suggest scientists to start experiments or wait for some proof before taking up serious study?
The purpose of sending a letter to Lancet was that if it got published in a reputed journal like it more people would take notice. And some of them would feel that even to disprove the idea you would have to do an experiment. So they would launch an experiment to test the idea critically, which is the purpose of the whole exercise.
Nice dude , u left me in the real time ..
ReplyDeleteKeep on going, All the best :)