"People might try to say that what we found were terrestrial contaminants. Contamination after landing on Earth is ruled out absolutely because of the way the diatoms are woven between the rock matrix. In any case we found many diatom types that are not known to be present on the soil where the meteorite landed."
The scientists said minutes after a large fire ball seen by a large number of people in Sri Lanka on 29 December 2012 a large meteorite disintegrated and fell in the village of Araganwila located few miles away from the historic city of Polonnaruwa.
At the time of entry into the earth’s atmosphere on 29 December 2012 the parent body of the Polonnaruwa meteorite would have had most of its interior porous volume filled with water , volatile organics and possibly viable living cells. The scientists said a remarkable coincidence was the red rain.
They said the red rain analyzed at the Medical Research Insitute in Colombo contained red biological cells that show spontaneous movement and the ability of reproducing. Abnormally high in arsenic and silver they are connected to a non territorial habitat , possibly connected with a cometary asteroidal body. The four scientists said the Polonnaruwa meteorite was a result of a fragmentation of such a body.
The electron microscopic studies of the Polonnaruwa meteorite had been done at the School of Earth Sciences of the Cardiff University, in the United Kingdom.
The scientists said in the meteorite microfossils rather than living cells were seen . The scientists said in the meteorite the donut shaped structure seen has a striking similarity to Kerala red rain cells and the cells contained in the red rain that followed the meteorite fall in the Polonnaruwa area.
The scientists said contamination is decisively ruled out in the meteorite since the structure is deemed to be fossilized and fossil diatoms were not present on the surface of the ground where it fell.The scientists said , contamination is excluded by the circumstance that the elemental abundances within the structures match closely with those of the surrounding matrix. There is also evidence of structures morphologically similar to red rain cells that may have contributed to the episode of red rain that followed within days of the meteorite fall. They said , “We conclude therefore identification of the fossilized diatom of the Polonnaruwa meteorite is firmly established and unimpeachable.”
They also said,” Since this meteorite is considered to be an extinct cometary fragment , the idea of microbial life carried within comets and the theory of cometary panspermia is vindicated.”
Fossil algae found in meteorite -> panspermia hypothesis proven
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