A team of British scientists is claiming to have found alien life, but not from the dust craters of Mars or by picking up radio waves from the TVs of distant worlds. They believe organic matter that came back onboard an observation balloon may be alien microbes.
The balloon was sent 27km up into the stratosphere by a team from the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Sheffield. They claim to have discovered "biological organisms" on the probe upon its return, which they believe can only have originated from... SPACE.
Professor Milton Wainwright said of the bugs: "By all known information that science has, we know that they must be coming in from space. There is no known mechanism by which these life forms can achieve that height. As far as we can tell from known physics, they must be incoming."
Wainwright backs up his claim by suggesting the organisms weren't coated with cosmic dust, which suggests they may have come out of frozen ice ejected from comet trails as they hit our atmosphere and melt. And if they'd somehow floated up there themselves from here they ought to be covered in earthly debris like pollen and biscuit crumbs. [Independent]