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tonyPick [soylentnews.org] writes:

Nautilus has an interview with Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist and astrophysicist at the University of Sheffield who believes he has evidence for panspermia - the hypothesis that life travels through the cosmos via meteoroids and other objects [nautil.us]:

Wainwright sends large balloons up to the stratosphere, as high as 25 miles above the planet’s surface, to look for microorganisms drifting in from space.

“Nearly every time we go to the stratosphere, we find these unusual organisms,” he says. “They’re not coming up from Earth.” If they were, he argues, his samples would contain earthly particles or look like earthly beings—which, he says, they don’t. But he’s had a hard time overcoming his critics’ skepticism that the samples differ enough from Earth-bound life to count as aliens. “We cannot get away from the ‘little green man syndrome,’” he says.

The article contains a summary of the key points, and the full interview from January is available [youtube.com] for viewing.

This earlier space.com article has more details on the counter arguments [space.com] to these theories, and wikipedia has more background on Panspermia theories [wikipedia.org].

Originally spotted at Cocktail Party Physics Week in Review [typepad.com].

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