[meteorite-list] CI1 meteorites and cyanobacteria

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2011 00:39:25 -0600
Message-ID: <7F61859DB27C4C1A95287F03D79C73F9_at_ATARIENGINE2>

For those interested in microfossils in old rocks, not
just in meteorites (although they are certainly old rocks!),
I suggest "The Cradle of Life" (1999) by J. William Schopf,
the most prominent "fossilmicrobiologist," having been
involved in these studies since the Gunflint Chert discovery
in the early 1950's right on up to ALH84001.

Aside: He was the one NASA called in to examine the
ALH84001 evidence before the big press conference to
"confirm" the "discovery." He looked it all over and gave
an instant thumbs-down to the idea. Foolishly, NASA
insisted on including him in the press conference where
he repeated his negative conclusions, to their horror.
Apparently, people already convinced (as Marc has
just observed) do not listen well.

Schopf's book is a litany of all ways contamination can
occur and all the ways you can be fooled and misled. He
seems to me to be a terribly hard-headed and skeptical
investigator.

He describes the Isua rocks as "fubarized," the reason
that Isua evidence isn't proof. He is also the author of
much of the work on the microfossils from Marble Bar,
the so-called Apex Chert, which Marc just poo-poo'ed.

The evidence for their biogenicity is very impressive,
or so it looks from Schopf's book, and it seems that by
the year 2000, no one really doubted them. So, why
does Marc poo-poo?

Well, last month, new and much more sophisticated
studies of the kind now possible (and not possible in
the 1980's) demonstrates they weren't fossils at all.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110220/full/news.2011.110.html?s=news_rss

This was, mind you, LAST MONTH. Full disclosure,
I am frankly annoyed at dismissing 20 years of work
on thousands of samples as dopey and delusional
just because Schopf (and lots of others) looked
through a microscope.

Centuries of good science have been done by looking
through a microscope, you know, and biologists are
known to STILL look through them on occasion, even
today. (If you detect a certain irritation here, it is true
that my mother spent a working lifetime looking
through a microscope, which is why there's a giant
black optical device sitting on my shelf even though
I never look through it.)

A equally skeptical view is presented in "Microfossils"
(Second Edition, 2005) by Armstrong and Brasier (an
Apex Chert doubter), in which book, BTW, they cite
Schopf's papers in an evidenciary way, over 70 times.
(Interestingly, they are accepting of ALH84001 which
Schopf rejected).

In the Nature paper cited above, the "disproof" is
not entirely conclusive:
<Quote>
    "...the study did find an intriguing detail in the
rock matrix surrounding the filaments - it contained
carbonaceous material, which could, perhaps, have
been formed by living things.
    Olcott Marshall suggests that this carbonaceous
material may have been accidentally sampled by
other research teams and played a part in them
identifying the filaments as biological.
    Brasier disagrees, saying instead that people wanted
to find life so badly that they ignored the obvious.
"There is a willful blindness about these structures
that sometimes has more to do with local politics
than global truth," he says.
    So although the carbonaceous material may have
created past problems, it keeps a spark of hope alive
that the Apex Chert holds evidence of ancient life.
"I remain optimistic as always, but we must remember
to adhere to the highest standards," says Brasier.
    Olcott Marshall agrees. "The question of whether
or not these rocks contain life has just got much more
complicated."
<Unquote>

I thought a "fossil" formed when a life form's shape is
replaced by minerals. Why are these shapes "cracks"
in the rock and not an organic shape's "cast"?

Personally, I think Brasier's argument (which may be
where Marc got his) that those who do agree with him
are delusional is not strictly a valid piece of logic.

If you reasonably refute an oponent's evidence (which
it seems Olcott Marshal has), what is the point of gratuitiously
attributing the earlier investigator's "error" to delusional
mental states? Is that an example of "adher[ing] to the
highest standards," as Brasier calls it?

To Brasier (who is British), I say "Bad form, old boy."

Only a portion of the Armstrong and Brasier book is
devoted to early (Archean) microfossils. They suggest
a variety of mechanisms to produce the Banded Iron
Formations ("BIF's") that do not require life forms to
produce them. They also suggest that stromatolites
(modern as well as ancient) are evaporite deposits
that have nothing to do with life forms, that they
are entirely an inorganic formation. They're rocks,
not fossils.

They knock off the Apex Chert fossils (3.5 GigaYr),
are equally snippy about the Fig Tree Chert and
its fossils (3.1 GigaYr), without any adverse citation
BTW. In fact, the earliest microfossils they will
acknowledge are the Gunflint Chert, which they
date to 1.9 GigaYr rather the usual 2.1 GigaYr.

Throw in the erratic nature of the oxygen isotope
data from early rocks as no proof of organic process
(which they do), and heck! there's NO PROOF that
the Earth was inhabited by ANY kind of life for the
first 2.3 billion years of its existence, is there? Previously,
Armstrong and Brasier spoke enthusiastically of the
"evidence" of life in ALH84001 and McKay's suggestion
that Earthly life came from Mars.

A suspicious person might suggest we are being
set up here.

OK, I take the ball and run with it. What would it
mean that if there was no life on Earth for the
first two billions years? It came from Mars? Silly
idea, and one of low likelihood. Why would Mars
have evolved life quickly and the Earth not at all?

Perhaps life takes a very long time for life to evolve?
It would seem to me that if it took billions of years
for life to evolve, the chances of something going
wrong with the process in all that time would be
very high and the chances of life evolving at all
would get much smaller as time goes by.

One thing I know, this dispute is not "pure and
simple," and the problem of evidence (and what
constitutes evidence) of early life is far from settled,
maybe even less settled now than it was before.


Sterling K. Webb
-------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Fries" <fries at psi.edu>
To: "Meteorite-list List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 5:19 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] CI1 meteorites and cyanobacteria


> Howdy all
>
> Here's my two cents, pure and simple - this paper is 110% bullshit.
> The filaments the paper addresses are nothing new. They are
> apparently amorphous sulfates formed from aqueous alteration of fine
> sulfides in the CI's. You can see that in the EDS spectra published
> in the paper - the predominant elements are sulfur, oxygen and
> magnesium. I.e., they are sulfates (e.g. Mg2SO4 + hydration water).
> Some silicon "leaks" into the measurement from materials behind one of
> the filaments.
> I happen to have two CIs on loan to me right now - Orgueil and Tonk.
> I have Raman spectra of the filaments found in both meteorites. They
> are sulfates. My personal Surprise Meter registers a whopping Zero.
> The argument is made that the lack of nitrogen in these "fossils"
> implies that they pre-date their residence on Earth. This argument
> starts with the assumption that the filaments are fossils, and then
> uses the non-detection of nitrogen to "prove" that they are fossils.
> This is a circular argument. Here's a more supportable hypothesis: no
> nitrogen was detected because they are not fossils, but rather exactly
> what has been known for decades - they are amorphous sulfate filaments
> caused by hydration of fine sulfides in the rock.
>
> This paper is a result of something I like to call the Lowell Effect.
> Basically, it is what happens when someone stares into an instrument
> expecting (or hoping) to see proof of life in the target. Percival
> Lowell did it through a telescope with Mars, drawing elaborate
> "canals" in his mind which indicated (to him) an advanced martian
> civilization. Certain other scientists do it with the Apex chert while
> peering through microscopes, and with hydrothermal graphite found in
> rocks from Isua, Greenland through all manner of instruments. The
> author of this paper pulled a Lowell Effect result out of his
> posterior after looking at CIs with an electron microscope. Where I
> come from, we also call that "letting your hopes make a fool of your
> reason".
>
> Cheers,
> Marc Fries
>
>
> On Mar 5, 2011, at 6:56 AM, drtanuki wrote:
>
>> Dear List,
>> There is a very interesting newly published paper about cyanobacteria
>> found inside CI1 meteorites:
>>
>> Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol 13, xxx.
>> JournalofCosmology.com, March, 2011
>> Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites:
>> Implications to Life on Comets, Europa, and Enceladus
>> Richard B. Hoover, Ph.D.
>> NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
>>
>> The abstract can be read here:
>>
>> http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com/2011/03/fossils-of-cyanobacteria-in-ci1.html
>>
>> Best Always, Dirk Ross...Tokyo
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Received on Sun 06 Mar 2011 01:39:25 AM PST