Will influenza follow next years comet?
Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 12:20 am
There's been a lot of discussion of the new comet that will pass very close to the Earth late next year.
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012 ... -2013?lite
Such a close passage provides a good test of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe cold virus/panspermia hypothesis. That's not a popular theory, but it is very difficult to test without missions to comets to pick up material and test for active biological properties. There has been only one comet mission with a return to Earth, AFAIK, and that has had interesting results.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5845/1680.2.full
If you read the text, you'll realize the method of collection heated particles past any reasonable degree where living particles would be presumed to survive.
A discussion of the theory is here.
http://www.panspermia.org/panfluenza.htm
So if there's a terrible outbreak of influenza like illness in the early part of 2014, it could be considered evidence for the Hoyle/Wickramasinghe panspermia theory. (Don't expect me to defend this theory, I frankly doubt it is correct. However, there have been enough epidemics during close passages by comets that it's worth mentioning in advance.)
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012 ... -2013?lite
Such a close passage provides a good test of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe cold virus/panspermia hypothesis. That's not a popular theory, but it is very difficult to test without missions to comets to pick up material and test for active biological properties. There has been only one comet mission with a return to Earth, AFAIK, and that has had interesting results.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5845/1680.2.full
If you read the text, you'll realize the method of collection heated particles past any reasonable degree where living particles would be presumed to survive.
A discussion of the theory is here.
http://www.panspermia.org/panfluenza.htm
So if there's a terrible outbreak of influenza like illness in the early part of 2014, it could be considered evidence for the Hoyle/Wickramasinghe panspermia theory. (Don't expect me to defend this theory, I frankly doubt it is correct. However, there have been enough epidemics during close passages by comets that it's worth mentioning in advance.)