epidemics from space
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Comet Hyakutake
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A highly controversial suggestion, by Fred Hoyle
and Chandra Wickramasinghe, that
viruses carried by comets,
and released from their tails, are the cause of mass outbreaks of influenza
and other viral diseases on Earth.1 Although the great majority
of scientists are dismissive of this idea, it was lent some credence by
the detection, in 1987, of a polymeric form of the organic molecule formaldehyde
in the dust from Halley's Comet by
the Giotto probe. Christopher Chyba
and Carl Sagan of Cornell University commented
at the time that the observations "strongly suggest the presence of complex
organic grains or organic-coated grains". There remains, however, an immense
gulf between the growing recognition that some types of basic organic chemical
synthesis do take place in space and acceptance of the idea that the evolution
of primitive life-forms takes place on cosmic
dust grains as proposed by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe.
Reference
- Hoyle, Fred, and Wickramasinghe, Chandra. Viruses From Space.
Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press (1986).
Related entries
• life in space
• panspermia
Related category
• ASTROBIOLOGY
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