The search for alien life hit a microscopic, earthly speed bump
In short: When scientists peered into a millimeter-sized speck of the asteroid Ryugu, they saw something that looked like extraterrestrial bacteria. For a moment, it was the most epochal find in human history—until they realized the invaders were actually hitchhikers from our own planet.
In November 2022, planetary scientist Matthew Genge and his team at Imperial College London observed rod-shaped organic matter on a tiny particle of rock retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu. The sample was part of a 5.4-gram chunk collected by Japan's JAXA Hayabusa-2 mission in 2019 and delivered to Australia in 2020. Because meteorites can be contaminated during their fall to Earth, these specific missions were designed to collect pristine material directly from space to ensure a clean laboratory environment.
The discovery initially sparked excitement because the microbes appeared to be active; they were observed gorging on nutrients and swelling in number tenfold before dying off under the bombardment of scanning electron microscope measurements. However, the behavior—a rapid boom-and-bust cycle—was characteristic of hungry earthly microbes rather than unknown extraterrestrial organisms. Even though researchers utilised aseptic equipment within advanced sterile environments and transported specimens inside airtight, nitrogen-rich vessels, certain land-based microbes succeeded in inhabiting the material.
This incident serves as a cautionary tale for astrobiology, highlighting the extreme difficulty of maintaining 'pristine' conditions when handling extraterrestrial material. While the result was embarrassing for the researchers involved, it underscores the necessity of rigorous reporting in science. The study confirms that while we haven't found alien life on Ryugu, the mission successfully provided a high-quality sample for future analysis, albeit one with a tiny, terrestrial stowaway.
The search continues with other missions like NASA’s OSIRIS-REX, which also aimed to bring back uncontaminated asteroid material. The goal remains to find signs of life without the interference of Earth's pervasive biosphere, proving that even in the vastness of space, our own biology is remarkably persistent.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Did we find microbial LIFE on an ASTEROID?
- Also: Bacteria found on a space rock turn out to be Earth-grown
- Also: How Did Microbes Contaminate a Pristine Asteroid Sample?
- Also: Samples of
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