15:03:2013 -- In the beginning was the code

Dear Friends, http://www.kurzweilai.net/in-the-beginning-was-the-code Be Well. David

15:03:2013 -- How Much Longer Until Humanity Becomes A Hive Mind?

Dear Friends,

http://io9.com/how-much-longer-until-humanity-becomes-a-hive-mind-453848055

Be Well.

David

How Much Longer Until Humanity Becomes A Hive Mind?

Brain-to-brain interfaces have arrived, and they are absolutely mindblowing

In a stunning first for neuroscience, researchers have created an electronic link between the of —... Read…

Last month, researchers created an electronic link between the brains of two rats separated by thousands of miles. This was just another reminder that technology will one day make us telepaths. But how far will this transformation go? And how long will it take before humans evolve into a fully-fledged hive mind?We spoke to the experts to find out.

I spoke to three different experts, all of whom have given this subject considerable thought:Kevin Warwick, a British scientist and professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading; Ramez Naam, an American futurist and author of NEXUS (a scifi novel addressing this topic); and Anders Sandberg, a Swedish neuroscientist from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford.

They all told me that the possibility of a telepathic noosphere is very real — and it's closer to reality than we might think. And not surprisingly, this would change the very fabric of the human condition.

Connecting brains

My first question to the group had to do with the technological requirements. How is it, exactly, that we’re going to connect our minds over the Internet, or some future manifestation of it?

“I really think we have sufficient hardware available now — tools like Braingate,” says Warwick. “But we have a lot to learn with regard to how much the brain can adapt, just how many implants would be required, and where they would need to be positioned.”

Naam agrees that we’re largely on our way. He says we already have the basics of sending some sorts of information in and out of the brain. In humans, we’ve done it with video, audio, and motor control. In principle, nothing prevents us from sending that data back and forth between people.

“Practically speaking, though, there are some big things we have to do,” he tells io9. “First, we have to increase the bandwidth. The most sophisticated systems we have right now use about 100 electrodes, while the brain has more than 100 billion neurons. If you want to get good fidelity on the stuff you’re beaming back and forth between people, you’re going to want to get on the order of millions of electrodes.”

Naam says we can build the electronics for that easily, but building it in such a way that the brain accepts it is a major challenge.

The second hurdle, he says, is going beyond sensory and motor control.

“If you want to beam speech between people, you can probably tap into that with some extensions of what we’ve already been doing, though it will certainly involve researchers specifically working on decoding that kind of data,” he says. “But if you want to go beyond sending speech and get into full blown sharing of experiences, emotions, memories, or even skills (a la The Matrix), then you’re wandering into unknown territory.”

Indeed, Sandberg says that picking up and translating brain signals will be a tricky matter.

“EEG sensors have lousy resolution — we get an average of millions of neurons, plus electrical noise from muscles and the surroundings,” he says. “Subvocalisation and detecting muscle twitches is easier to do, although they will still be fairly noisy. Internal brain electrodes exist and can get a lot of data from a small region, but this of course requires brain surgery. I am having great hopes for optogenetics and nanofibers for making kinder, gentler implants that are less risky to insert and easier on their tissue surroundings.”

The real problem, he says, is translating signals in a sensible way. “Your brain representation of the concept "mountain" is different from mine, the result not just of different experiences, but also on account of my different neurons. So, if I wanted to activate the mountain concept, I would need to activate a disperse, perhaps very complex network across your brain,” he tells io9. “That would require some translation that figured out that I wanted to suggest a mountain, and found which pattern is your mountain.”

Sandberg says we normally "cheat" by learning a convenient code called language, where all the mapping between the code and our neural activations is learned as we grow. We can, of course, learn new codes as adults, and this is rarely a problem — adults already master things like Morse code, SMS abbreviations, or subtle signs of gesture and style. Sandberg points to the recent experiments by Nicolelis connecting brains directly, research which shows that it might be possible to get rodents to learn neural codes. But he says this learning is cumbersome, and we should be able to come up with something simpler.

One way is to boost learning. Some research shows that amphetamine and presumably other learning stimulants can speed up language learning. Recent work on the Nogo Receptorsuggests that brain plasticity can be turned on and off. “So maybe we can use this to learn quickly,” says Sandberg.

Another way is to have software do the translation. It is not hard to imagine machine learning to figure out what neural codes or mumbled keywords correspond to which signal — but setting up the training so that users find it acceptably fast is another matter.

“So my guess is that if pairs of people really wanted to ‘get to know each other’ and devoted a lot of time and effort, they could likely learn signals and build translation protocols that would allow a lot of ‘telepathic’ communication — but it would be very specific to them, like the ‘internal language’ some couples have,” says Sandberg. “For the weaker social links, where we do not want to spend months learning how to speak to each other, we would rely on automatically translated signals. A lot of it would be standard things like voice and text, but one could imagine adding supporting ‘subtitles’ showing graphics or activating some neural assemblies.”

Bridging the gap

In terms of the communications backbone, Sandberg believes it’s largely in place, but it will likely have to be extended much further.

“The theoretical bandwidth limitations of even a wireless Internet are far, far beyond the bandwidth limitations of our brains — tens of terabits per second,” he told me, “and there are orbital angular momentum methods that might get far more.”

Take the corpus callosum, for example. It has around 250 million axons, and even at the maximal neural firing rate of just 25 gigabits, that should be enough to keep the hemispheres connected such that we feel we are a single mind.

As for the interface, Warwick says we should stick to implanted multi-electrode arrays. These may someday become wireless, but they’ll have to remain wired until we learn more about the process. Like Sandberg, he adds that we’ll also need to develop adaptive software interfacing.

Naam envisions something laced throughout the brain, coupled with some device that could be worn on the person’s body.

“For the first part, you can imagine a mesh of nano-scale sensors either inserted through a tiny hole in the skull, or somehow through the brain’s blood vessels. In Nexus I imagined a variant on this — tiny nano-particles that are small enough that they can be swallowed and will then cross the blood-brain barrier and find their way to neurons in the brain.”

Realistically, Naam says that whatever we insert in the brain is going to be pretty low energy consumption. The implant, or mesh, or nano-particles could communicate wirelessly, but to boost their signal — and to provide them power — scientists will have to pair them with something the person wears, like a cap, a pair of glasses, a headband — anything that can be worn very near the brain so it can pick up those weak signals and boost them, including signals from the outside world that will be channeled into the brain.

How soon before the hive mind?

Warwick believes that the technologies required to build an early version of the telepathic noosphere are largely in place. All that’s required, he says, is “money on the table” and the proper ethical approval.

Sandberg concurs, saying that we’re already doing it with cellphones. He points to the work of Charles Stross, who suggests that the next generation will never have to be alone, get lost, or forget anything.

“As soon as people have persistent wearable systems that can pick up their speech, I think we can do a crude version,” says Sandberg. “Having a system that’s on all the time will allow us to get a lot of data — and it better be unobtrusive. I would not be surprised to see experiments with Google Glasses before the end of the year, but we’ll probably end up saying it’s just a fancy way of using cellphones.”

At the same time, Sandberg suspects that “real” neural interfacing will take a while, since it needs to be safe, convenient, and have a killer app worth doing. It will also have to compete with existing communications systems and their apps.

Similarly, Naam says we could build a telepathic network in a few years, but with “very, very, low fidelity.” But that low fidelity, he says, would be considerably worse than the quality we get by using phones — or even text or IM. “I doubt anyone who’s currently healthy would want to use it.”

But for a really stable, high bandwidth system in and out of the brain, that could take upwards of 15 to 20 years, which Naam concedes is optimistic.

“In any case, it’s not a huge priority,” he says. “And it’s not one where we’re willing to cut corners today. It’s firmly in the medical sphere, and the first rule there is ‘do no harm’. That means that science is done extremely cautiously, with the priority overwhelmingly — and appropriately — being not to harm the human subject.”

Nearly supernatural

I asked Sandberg how the telepathic noosphere will disrupt the various way humans engage in work and social relations.

“Any enhancement of communication ability is a big deal,” he responded. “We humans are dominant because we are so good at communication and coordination, and any improvement would likely boost that. Just consider flash mobs or how online ARG communities do things that seem nearly supernatural.”

Cell phones, he says, made our schedules flexible in time and space, allowing us to coordinate where to meet on the fly. He says we’re also adding various non-human services like apps and Siri-like agents. “Our communications systems are allowing us to interact not just with each other but with various artificial agents,” he says. Messages can be stored, translated and integrated with other messages.

“If we become telepathic, it means we will have ways of doing the same with concepts, ideas and sensory signals,” says Sandberg. “It is hard to predict just what this will be used for since there are so few limitations. But just consider the possibility of getting instruction and skills via augmented reality and well designed sensory/motor interfaces. A team might help a member perform actions while ‘looking over her shoulder’, as if she knew all they knew. And if the system is general enough, it means that you could in principle get help from any skilled person anywhere in the world.”

In response to the same question, Naam noted that communication boosts can accelerate technical innovation, but more importantly, they can also accelerate the spread of any kind of idea. “And that can be hugely disruptive,” he says.

But in terms of the possibilities, Naam says the sky’s the limit.

“With all of those components, you can imagine people doing all sorts of things with such an interface. You could play games together. You could enter virtual worlds together,” he says. “Designers or architects or artists could imagine designs and share them mentally with others. You could work together on any type of project where you can see or hear what you’re doing. And of course, sex has driven a lot of information technologies forward — with sight, sound, touch, and motor control, you could imagine new forms of virtual sex or virtual pornography.”

Warwick imagines communication in the broadest sense, including the technically-enabled telepathic transmission of feelings, thoughts, ideas, and emotions. “I also think this communication will be far richer when compared to the present pathetic way in which humans communicate.” He suspects that visual information may eventually be possible, but that will take some time to develop. He even imagines the sharing of memories. That may be possible, he says, “but maybe not in my lifetime.”

Put all this together, says Warwick, and “the body becomes redundant.” Moreover, when connected in this way “we will be able to understand each other much more.”

A double-edged sword

We also talked about the potential risks.

“There’s the risk of bugs in hardware or software,” says Naam. “There’s the risk of malware or viruses that infect this. There’s the risk of hackers being able to break into the implants in your head. We’ve already seen hackers demonstrate that they can remotely take over pacemakers and insulin pumps. The same risks exist here.”

But the big societal risk, says Naam, stems entirely from the question of who controls this technology.

“That’s the central question I ask in Nexus,” he says. “If we all have brain implants, you can imagine it driving a very bottom’s up world — another Renaissance, a world where people are free and creating and sharing more new ideas all the time. Or you can imagine it driving a world like that of 1984, where central authorities are the ones in control, and they’re the ones using these direct brain technologies to monitor people, to keep people in line, or even to manipulate people into being who they’re supposed to be. That’s what keeps me up at night.”

Warwick, on the other hand, told me that the “biggest risk is that some idiot — probably a politician or business person — may stop it from going ahead.” He suspects it will lead to a digital divide between those who have and those who do not, but that it’s a natural progression very much in line with evolution to date.

In response to the question of privacy, Sandberg quipped, “Privacy? What privacy?”

Our lives, he says, will reside in the cloud, and on servers owned by various companies that also sell results from them to other organizations.

“Even if you do not use telepathy-like systems, your behaviour and knowledge can likely be inferred from the rich data everybody else provides,” he says. “And the potential for manipulation, surveillance and propaganda are endless.”

Our cloud exoselves

Without a doubt, the telepathic noosphere will alter the human condition in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. The Noosphere will be an extension of our minds. And as David Chalmers and Andy Clark have noted, we should still regard external mental processes as being genuine even though they’re technically happening outside our skulls. Consequently, as Sandberg told me, our devices and “cloud exoselves” will truly be extensions of our minds.

“Potentially very enhancing extensions,” he says, “although unlikely to have much volition of their own.”

Sandberg argues that we shouldn’t want our exoselves to be too independent, since they’re likely to make mistakes in our name. “We will always want to have veto power, a bit like how the conscious level of our minds has veto on motor actions being planned,” he says.

Veto power over our cloud exoselves? The future will be a very strange place, indeed.

Top image: agsandrew/Shutterstock, Nicolesis lab.

13:03:2013 -- Building Unbreakable Codes Beyond The Bounds Of Earth

Dear Friends,

http://www.insidescience.org/content/building-unbreakable-codes-beyond-bounds-earth/957

Be Well.

David

Building Unbreakable Codes Beyond The Bounds Of Earth

Rights information:

http://bit.ly/QafmwK

 

Quantum satellites may beam down powerful data encryption keys.

Originally published:

Mar 13 2013 - 1:30pm

By:

Joel N. Shurkin, ISNS Contributor

(ISNS) -- Scientists are pushing to create a space-based quantum communications network that could enable impossible-to-monitor transmissions.

In doing so, they might make it possible for someone named Scotty to really teleport some information into space.

It would be enough "to spook" Albert Einstein, said Thomas Jennewein of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, one of the top researchers in the field.

The encryption research could have immediate practical implications. The process would make use of entangled photons, what Einstein--who resisted the consequences of quantum theory until his death --called "spooky action at a distance."

"If we can use correlations between entangled photons to establish a quantum key, it could be used for secure communications," said Jennewein.

Einstein and two colleagues theorized in 1935 that if you had two quantum systems that interacted, such as two atoms in a molecule, and then separated them, they would remain entangled, meaning their properties would be inextricably linked. Measuring one atom would instantly produce a change in the other no matter how far apart they were.

Einstein believed that there was a universal speed limit: nothing could travel faster than light so he thought such communication—"spooky action"—would be impossible.

But in 1972, a group of U.S. scientists showed that is exactly what happens, at least over the short distances of their laboratory experiment.

Decades before, another physics giant, Werner Heisenberg, proposed in his famous uncertainty principle that merely  observing a particle or otherwise disturbing it changes its properties, and--according to quantum theory--so instantly would that of its entangled twin.

Common encryption involves using keys, series of numbers, and letters that code and decode messages. The sender has one key that encrypts the message; the person receiving the message has another which decodes it.

Scientists can envision sending beams of quantum signals from one place to another to produce encryption keys, but there is a problem.

Quantum communications signals have not been able to travel very far on Earth. The current record is 89 miles set in the Canary Islands by Jennewein and a team, then of the University of Vienna. The problem is transmission loss or scattering in the atmosphere.

Even using fiber-optic cables is not the answer, according to Joshua Bienfang, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, another expert in the field. The chances of a single photon traveling safely more than around 250 miles in a fiber-optic cable is slim, he said.

That's why Jennewein and other researchers are looking to space, where the beams would not scatter in the vacuum. His lab, among others, now has produced a design for such satellites that would test that out.

Jennewein describes a system in which a device in a satellite creates entangled photon pairs and simultaneously transmits one of each pair to two ground stations in beams of millions of photons, all in entangled quantum states. That means both stations should have the same key.

The two stations would compare them. If the transmissions were not intercepted or modified by an eavesdropper, the two keys should be identical. The sender can then send a conventionally encrypted message secure in the knowledge no one is listening.

But, if there is any alteration in the keys, which would happen if anyone intercepted the key message, Heisenberg's theory would strike, and the photons would be altered. The two parties would know if there was an eavesdropper and either resend the keys or try another system.

Several corporations and government research facilities around the world are working on similar satellite systems.

"Moreover, long-distance 'quantum teleportation' experiments could be conducted--the first baby steps towards realizing the famous Star Trek 'Beam me up, Scotty' command may be only a few years away," Jennewein wrote in the magazine "Physics World." In quantum teleportation, actual objects themselves are not beamed up. Instead, their information—encoded in a quantum state—would vanish from a particle on Earth and then reappear in a particle in space.

The scheme would require three photons, Jennewein said. One, the input photon, to be teleported, and two others, entangled and separated.

"The input photon is correlated with one of the entangled ones, and thereby its quantum state is fully transferred onto the other entangled photon, which can be at a distance," Jennewein said. "The final photon is the new 'original,' and the initial photons completely lose their information."

An additional benefit of developing a quantum satellite system is that it would enable physicists to test quantum theory over much greater distances.

Joel Shurkin is a freelance writer based in Baltimore. He is the author of nine books on science and the history of science, and has taught science journalism at Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

14:03:2013 -- Mental Telepathy – Thoughts Have Wings

Dear Friends,

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/03/12/mental-telepathy-thoughts-have-wings/

Be Well.

David

Mental Telepathy – Thoughts Have Wings

March 12, 2013 | By admin | 14 Replies

Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., New Dawn

Waking Times 

Telepathy is real. Thoughts have wings. Of this I am certain. It is a shame that telepathy, direct mind-to-mind interaction independent of the known senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, balance, and so on), is still shunned and mocked by many people. This despite the extensive studies of telepathy,precognition, and similar mental phenomena, carried out for more than a century by some of the best minds, including Ph.D. scientists and Nobel laureates.1

The basic phenomena of telepathy have been demonstrated over and over again, and even put to practical use. A vast scientific literature onparapsychology (which encompasses the study of telepathy) exists, with specialised journals and societies.2

There is strong laboratory evidence for telepathy, from classic card-calling studies to controlled experiments where an agent inserts material telepathically into a subject’s dreams, through more sophisticated tests for telepathic information transfer in the fully conscious state or at the threshold of consciousness between sleep and waking (hypnagogia).

A large and compelling body of evidence from spontaneous cases supports the reality of telepathy, such as crisis events when a person has telepathic awareness, or even “sees” an apparition, of a loved one experiencing emotional turmoil, pain, suffering, or death. Telepathy and related parapsychological phenomena have been successfully applied to intelligence gathering. Jimmy Carter, 39^th President of the United States (1977-1981), testified to their efficacy.

The proven results of these exchanges between our intelligence services and parapsychologists raise some of the most intriguing and unanswerable questions of my presidency… They defy logic, but the facts are undeniable.3

Recently Dr. Daryl J. Bem of Cornell University released the results of nine experiments, involving over a thousand participants, documenting consistently significant positive results for precognition and retroactive influences, important components of parapsychology.4 Despite the overwhelming evidence for telepathy and related phenomena, many scientists do not consider parapsychology a science and, knowing nothing about the subject, feel free to make disparaging statements concerning the field and its practitioners.

At this point I believe it is time to move beyond assuaging the debunkers and scoffers, for no amount of evidence will ever convince some that telepathy is genuine. Let us concentrate on studying the phenomena and unravelling the secrets of telepathy. Thoughts may have wings, but how far can they fly?

Telepathy is often considered independent of distance; that is, thoughts are free to fly as far as they desire. But, is this really the case? There are well-attested instances of telepathy occurring over thousands of kilometres, but to conclude that all telepathy is literally independent of distance is premature. It is extremely difficult to measure the strength of a telepathic signal apart from the delivery of the message (in analogy, an audible message may be received across a room whether yelled or whispered).

A few controlled studies indicate that at least sometimes telepathy may attenuate with distance.5 Attenuation might be expected unless perhaps telepathy is a nonlocal quantum mechanical phenomenon. Possibly there are multiple forms of telepathy: information carried on extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves, information transferred by quantum mechanical means, and information propagated via some other mechanism.

We must also consider the psychological aspects of telepathy. A person may preferentially focus telepathically on the thoughts and emotions of someone who is psychologically “near,” even if far removed in physical space.

There is another, most curious, aspect of telepathy. Telepathic-type phenomena are not limited to the present, but transcend the boundaries of time. Telepathic information can be received from the future and the past, with the proviso that telepathic experiences drop off dramatically as one moves temporally further away from the present.6 Various forms of precognition, such as those confirmed by Dr. Bem, can be explained in terms of telepathic information received from the future, the future agent in some cases being the same person as the receiver (the percipient) in the present. You can receive telepathic information from your future self! Perhaps this sounds strange, but it may just be the way the world is. Indeed, if you think about it, who is closer emotionally and psychologically to you than yourself?

About the Author

Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., is renowned for his work on re-dating the Great Sphinx. Based on his geological studies, he determined that the Sphinx’s origins date prior to dynastic times. He has also focused his attention on the Great Pyramid and various other temples and tombs in Egypt, as well as studying similar structures around the world. Dr. Schoch is an author and coauthor of both technical and popular books, including the trilogy with R. A. McNally: Voices of the Rocks: A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations(1999), Voyages of the Pyramid Builders: The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America (2003), and Pyramid Quest: Secrets of the Great Pyramid and the Dawn of Civilization (2005). Dr. Schoch’s most recent book is The Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research (2008, compilation and commentary by Robert M. Schoch and Logan Yonavjak). Website: www.robertschoch.com.

Footnotes:

1. For example, Charles Richet, Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, 1913, and Brian Josephson, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1973.

2. See articles reprinted in, and references cited in, Robert M. Schoch and Logan Yonavjak, compilers and commentators, The Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research, New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2008.

3. Jimmy Carter quoted in a Politico article, “Carter’s weird science” by Patrick Gavin, posted on the Internet 20 October 2010 at:  www.politico.com/click/stories/1010/carters_weird_science.html  (Accessed 20 October 2010).

4. Daryl J Bem, “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in press. Manuscript posted at:http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf (Accessed 11 November 2010).

5. See discussion in Schoch and Yonavjak (note 2), 346-347; William Braud, “Psi and Distance: Is a Conclusion of Distance Independence Premature?”, 2010, article posted at:http://inclusivepsychology.com/uploads/Psi_and_Distance_-_A_Premature_Conclusion.pdf (Accessed 20 November 2010).

6.  See discussion in Schoch and Yonavjak (note 2), 345-346 & 347-349..

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 124 (Jan-Feb 2011). 

If you appreciated this article, please consider a digital subscription to New Dawn.

© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, http://www.newdawnmagazine.com. Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.

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14:03:2013 -- Is this alien life?

Dear Friends,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2292042/Second-study-finds-extra-terrestrial-fossils-meteor-fragment.html

Be Well.

David

Is this alien life? Controversial scientists publish second paper claiming they have found 'extra-terrestrial fossils' in meteor fragment

• New paper reiterates claims made in January that meteorite contains traces of life from outer space
• It reportedly landed in Sri Lanka in December after burning green in the sky, leaving bystanders with burns
• Critics rubbish claims, saying that the researchers methodology is 'even flakier' than in first paper - and they have not ruled out contamination

By DAMIEN GAYLE

PUBLISHED: 11:21 GMT, 12 March 2013 | UPDATED: 12:53 GMT, 12 March 2013

• Comments (166)
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Algae-like structures found inside fragments of a meteorite which struck Sri Lanka last year prove that life exists elsewhere in the Universe, a new study claims.

A paper by an international team of scientists, their second on the subject, makes the extraordinary claim that electron microscope images of the rocks have revealed tiny fossilised life forms from outer space.

The authors are convinced that their findings offer firm evidence of panspermia, the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe and is spread by meteoroids, asteroids and planetoids.

From outer space? This electron microscope image of a meteor fragment shows a  microfossil of extraterrestrial origin, a study claims

The microorganism that fell to Earth: This picture shows a close up of the point marked (b) in the image above: The paper claims that the rock in which these were found came from a meteor which landed in Sri Lanka

Undeniably organic? The paper reiterates claims first made in January in an earlier study led by controversial scientist Chandra Wickramasinghe

However, sceptics are already lining up to pour scorn on their methodology.

MailOnline first reported in January the claims by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, that investigations of the meteorite had revealed evidence of alien life.

He is joint author of a new study, just published in the Journal of Cosmology, which reiterates the controversial claims on the basis of a new analysis of the rocks.

The paper tells how on the evening of December 29 last year a bright yellow fireball lit up the skies over Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, turning green as it disintegrated on entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

Blazing hot, sparkling fragments rained down on the villages and paddy fields below, according to reports, leaving some witnesses with burns and giving off fumes with a strong odour of asphalt.

More...

• The humans who are exploring 'Mars' already: Researchers in space suits recreate Red Planet base in the Utah desert
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Local police collected samples of the curious rocks and handed them to the Medical Research Institute of the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health, who then passed them on to researchers at Cardiff University for further analysis, the study says.

In total Jamie Wallis, of Cardiff's School of Mathematics, and colleagues received 628 fragments purportedly from the meteorite - three of which, they say, were 'clearly identified as possible meteorites'.

In the latest study, the researchers make the extraordinary claim than these three rocks contain fossilised biological structures fused into the rock matrix.

Furthermore, they say, their tests have ruled out the possibility of terrestrial contamination.

The team published electron microscope images of structures within the stones which they say show a complex, thick-walled, carbon-rich microfossil about 100 micrometres across.

Another image, they say, shows well-preserved flagella 100 micrometres long but only two micrometres in diameter.

Claims: Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe with the fragment of space rock in which the fossils were found

Evidence for ET? Critics say that even if the rock was indeed from outer space, research into it has failed to prove that the traces of life apparently found are not the result of contamination here on Earth

The researchers interpret that unusual long and thin configuration 'as indicating a low-gravity, low-pressure environment and rapid freeze-drying' - which could only happen in outer space.

A previous study, led by Professor Wickramasinghe and published in the Journal of Cosmology in January, also claimed to have found 'microscopic fossilized diatoms (a basic form of algae)' in the samples.

HOW DID RESEARCHERS GET HOLD OF THE 'SPACE ROCKS'?

'We got it from the medical research institute in Sri Lanka,' Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe told MailOnline.

'They got hold of it on the 29th December, when a fireball was seen in the area.

'Thousands of people spotted it, and minutes after there was a meteorite fall over a rice field.

'Farmers who rushed to pick up these stones had their hands burnt, and women fainted, so local medical staff and police were summoned to cordon off the area to collect the stones.

'One of these was sent to us by colleagues.'

However, the professor admitted at the time they the paper was a rush job and he and his colleagues did not have time to conduct the necessarily analyses to confirm it was a meteorite.

To make up for that omission, in the latest study Wallis and his colleagues also measured the chemical make up of the samples to determine their origin, claiming that low levels of nitrogen rule our the possibility of contamination by modern organisms.

The researchers say their findings offer 'clear and convincing evidence that these obviously ancient remains of extinct marine algae found embedded in the Polonnaruwa meteorite are indigenous to the stones and not the result of post-arrival microbial contaminants.'

They add: 'The presence of fossilized biological structures provides compelling evidence in support of the theory of cometary panspermia first proposed over thirty years ago.'

The study backs up the claims of Professor Wickramasinghe's widely rubbished January paper which claimed to have found evidence of alien life in the same rocks.

Smoking gun? This scanning electron microscope image purports to show the tell-tale sign of a microscopic fossil

A mathematician by training, Professor Wickramasinghe, 74, claims microbes from outer space arrived on our planet from comets which then 'multiplied and seeded' to form our life 3.8billion years ago.

A CONTROVERSIAL ACADEMIC

Chandra Wickramasinghe is notorious as the only scientist to argue against evolution during the 1981 Arkansas legal case against the teaching of creationism in schools.

The 74-year-old Sri Lankan-born British mathematician obtained a PhD from Cambridge under the supervision of the late Sir Fred Hoyle.

The pair went on to collaborate on a body of work some credit with providing the basis of the field of astrobiology. 

Their joint work on the infrared spectra of interstellar grains led to developing the hypothesis of panspermia, which proposes that cosmic dust in space and comets is partly organic - and may have 'seeded' life on Earth.

They further contended that extraterrestrial life forms continue to enter the Earth's atmosphere, and may be responsible for epidemic outbreaks, new diseases, and the genetic novelty necessary for macroevolution.

In 2003 he was joint signatory on a letter sent to The Lancet which suggested that the virus which causes SARS may not come from chickens, but could in fact be from outer space.

He was head of Cardiff University's Centre for Astrobiology until two years ago, when funding was withdrawn and he was dismissed from his post.

He also believes that pathogens like the SARS virus arrived here from deep space.

'We are all aliens - we share a cosmic ancestry,' he said at the time of the original study's publication. 

'Each time a new planetary system forms a few surviving microbes find their way into comets.

'These then multiply and seed other planets.

'These latest finds are just more evidence to point to the overwhelming fact that life on Earth began on other worlds.'

Professor Wickramasinghe was head of Cardiff University's Centre for Astrobiology until two years ago when funding for the department was withdrawn and he was dismissed from his post.

The controversial professor, the only scientist to testify against evolution in the famous 1981 creationist trial in Arkansas, has since carried on the project as a private company and charity.

Critics have already lined up to rubbish the latest study's claims and to suggest that the methodology of the researchers was also flawed.

Phil Plait, author of Slate's Bad Astronomy blog, said: 'I read the paper, and really it’s more of the same as from the first paper.

'In some ways, it’s even shakier; they provide lots of technical data that gives their work a veneer of credibility, but when you look a bit deeper you find they didn’t do a lot of critically necessary tests to establish the veracity of their claims.'

Controversial: Professor Wickramasinghe, left, says the still-smoking rocks were found after they fell in Sri Lanka, right, after a dramatic meteor shower

Plait claims the tests undertaken by Wallis and his colleagues did not go far enough to confirm that the rock samples they analysed were in fact from the meteor that appeared over Sri Lanka in December, and, even if they were from space, the analysis was insufficient to eliminate the possibility of contamination here on Earth.

THE PANSPERMIA HYPOTHESIS

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe is a leading proponent of panspermia, the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe and is spread by meteoroids, asteroids and planetoids.

Panspermia proposes that life forms that can survive the effects of space, such as extremophiles, become trapped in debris that is ejected into space after collisions between asteroids and planets that harbour life.

These life-forms may travel dormant for an extended amount of time before colliding randomly with other planets or intermingling with protoplanetary disks. 

If met with ideal conditions on a new planet's surfaces, the bacteria become active and the process of evolution begins, it is believed.

He points out that another meteorite fell to Earth in the same area in 2004 and any samples picked up could have in fact been from this event - long enough ago for the rocks to have become thoroughly contaminated.

And he adds that nowhere in the latest paper do the researchers indicate that they have undertaken the usual precautions to minimise findings which may have been caused by contamination.

'So, they find some rocks, they claim (without enough  evidence) that they're meteorites, and they claim (without evidence) they're from a recent meteorite fall,' says Plait. 'They find diatoms, and they claim (without controlling for contamination) that not only these diatoms came from space, but that meteorites like this seeded Earth with life.

'Which is more likely: that, or that they found a rock from Earth that already had diatoms in it?'

When Professor Wickramasinghe's January paper was published, Monica Grady, professor of Planetary Sciences at the Open University’s Faculty of Science, told MailOnline she found the whole thing ‘laughable’.

‘There are serious inconsistencies with the data presented in the paper,' she said.

‘The most important is that the rock they have found is yet to be proven to be a meteorite.

‘Until that is done, no credence can be placed on the findings presented, especially when they are published in a non-mainstream journal.'

Read more:

• Life Found in a Meteorite? Spoiler: No | Slate's Bad Astronomy blog

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2292042/Second-study-finds-extra-terrestrial-fossils-meteor-fragment.html#ixzz2NYnlavba

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