'Space bacteria' being probed: Narlikar

pune: existing theories about the origin of life on earth and existence of life in the universe are likely to undergo changes following recent experiments conducted by indian scientists, which found evidence of live bacteria cells at a height of 41 km from the earth's surface. under a joint research project, the pune-based inter-university centre for astronomy and astrophysics (iucaa) and the indian space research organisation (isro), highly sterilised probes were sent to the stratosphere to collect air samples to find out whether extra-terrestrial micro-organisms existed.speaking to reporters here on wednesday, iucaa director jayant narlikar said further experiments to identify the bacteria, to determine whether they are known or new, their reaction to chemicals and enzymes are being conducted at the centre for cellular and molecular biology, hyderabad and cardiff university. efforts are also being made to study their properties, including dna sequencing, which is expected to take a few months, dr narlikar stated. he said indian scientists are also thinking in terms of repeating the same experiment at greater height to see if they get more samples of bacteria cells. "probes can also be sent through satellites which can go as high as 600 km in space, and we are thinking in those terms," he added. however, for the time being, 41 km is the highest height at which life forms have been found till date, he added. asked whether this indicated the possible existence of higher forms of life in outer space, dr narlikar said it was too early to arrive at such a conclusion. "conditions outside earth are too hostile for life, and only hardy forms of life like bacteria can survive in conditions characterised by presence of radiation and lack of air," dr narlikar clarified. on how the scientists' community in the world had reacted to the findings, dr narlikar stated they were very cautious and wanted confirmation that the living cells were indeed from space and not contamination from earth. he pointed out that the probes (containers) sent via balloon to collect air samples were highly sterilised. besides, if the micro-organisms were from earth, their numbers would have declined sharply with height. on the other hand, population of micro-organisms from space would not fall drastically while coming down to earth and preliminary tests done at cardiff indicated that the numbers had not decreased drastically, he said. dr narlikar said the theory of bacterial cells coming from space was not new and was revived by astronomers fred hoyle and chandra wickramsinghe in the mid-1970s. as circumstantial evidence, they had cited the example of the 1918 influenza epidemic that erupted in mumbai and boston within a span of a day. spread of contamination from person to person would have taken more than one day to cover the distance between mumbai and boston; hence both the scientists had suggested that the virus may have come from space. the recent experiment was entirely funded by isro, which provided rs 60 lakh for it. the air samples were divided into two batches and sent to hyderabad and cardiff, so that results of the experiments could be confirmed.