ESA
The mysteries of the universe are, I guess, inherently mysterious.
And there are so many of them! Who are we? Why are we here? What the fuck are garlic scapes? Are they like leeks? Why don’t they just call them leeks if they are like leeks? Or garlic leeks?
It’s shit like this that we spend billions of dollars to resolve. To make our understanding of ourselves more complete.
One of the leading theories of how life developed on Earth, a process that began with single cell organisms and culminated yesterday with you refreshing Twitter on your phone and jizz still on your hand from after you masturbated because you were too lazy to grab a towel beforehand, is that comets and asteroids rained organic material down from the heavens. (The space heavens, not the God heavens.) (Or maybe the God heavens.)
To test that hypothesis, the European Space Agency sent a fucking probe to a comet, and landed a damn lander on it. It was pretty fucking cool.
Now, after analyzing the stuff, the comet stuff, several experts believe there may be alien life on it. From Time:
Two top astronomers say the comet that is now home to the Philae lander could also be inhabited by microbial alien life.
Several characteristics of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, such as its organic-rich black crust, are best explained by the presence of living organisms beneath its icy surface, reports The Guardian.
Astronomer and astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleague Max Willis from the University of Cardiff believe comets like 67P could be home to microbes similar to “extremophiles,” which live in the most inhospitable parts of earth.
BOOM, BROS, That’s aliens. Sure, it’s not cool fucking aliens with tentacles and tentacle guns and a desire to eliminate the human race, but that’s still damn dope. The Guardian has a more in-depth look at the duo’s theory.
The scientists have carried out computer simulations that suggest microbes could inhabit watery regions of the comet. Organisms containing anti-freeze salts could be active at temperatures as low as -40C, their research shows.
The comet has a black hydrocarbon crust overlaying ice, smooth icy “seas” and flat-bottomed craters containing lakes of re-frozen water overlain with organic debris.
Wickramasinghe said data coming from the comet seems to point to “micro-organisms being involved in the formation of the icy structures, the preponderance of aromatic hydrocarbons, and the very dark surface”.
“These are not easily explained in terms of prebiotic chemistry. The dark material is being constantly replenished as it is boiled off by heat from the sun. Something must be doing that at a fairly prolific rate.”
So is this comet our God? I feel comfortable in saying that yes, it is.