56 ETERNITY OF LIFE 



but unfortunately it has not been confirmed up till now. It 

 is worthy of note that the microbes obtained by Lipman 

 seemed to be identical with the ordinary terrestrial bacteria. 

 In view of the great variability of bacteria and the readiness 

 with which they adapt themselves to external conditions, it 

 is hard to believe that exactly the same forms of micro- 

 organisms exist on other heavenly bodies as on our planet. 

 It seems far more probable that, in spite of all his precautions, 

 Lipman failed to prevent terrestrial bacteria from falling on 

 to the meteorites he was studying while he was grinding 

 them. In a letter which he sent to me, Lipman himself did 

 not insist that his results were completely unequivocal. 



In the present state of our knowledge it is, in fact, hard 

 to suppose that organisms are present inside meteorites. If 

 life had developed at some time and place on the planet from 

 which the meteorite had become separated, it would un- 

 doubtedly have left traces in the shape of biogenic forma- 

 tions. However, even after the most careful searches nobody 

 has been able to find traces of such formations anywhere in 

 meteorites. According to A. Fersman, F. Levinson-Lessing 

 and others there is nothing resembling a sedimentary 

 formation nor anything which might, in general, be ascribed 

 to biological processes. Mineralogical studies of meteorites 

 also show that they were formed under conditions incompat- 

 ible with life. 



That great expert on meteorites Vernadskil wrote as fol- 

 lows" : 



Those germs of life, ' microzoa ', cannot have any connection 

 with meteorites or any cosmic dust known to us. For nowhere 

 in the structure of the meteorites or dust do we see manifesta- 

 tions or effects of life. If we study them we find that they were 

 formed under conditions similar to those under which our own 

 deepest formations originated (high pressure and high tempera- 

 ture) or else by chemical processes from liquids and gases, also 

 at high temperatures (chondrites, moldavites). Microbes may be 

 associated with them fortuitously but are quite independent and 

 not directly connected with them. 



Thus the only possibility would be that the microbes 

 might be picked up by the meteorites in space, but they 



