Let the data be widely analyzed first before headlines get out of control. I remain skeptical since the Mars bacteria years ago. I think things will still remain highly inconclusive.
ping
Simple math - (was thinking about this story as I drifted off to sleep last night- you don’t have to call me strange - I know it...)
Suppose that each and every rock in the upper mile of Earth’s crust contains fossil evidence of life, and rocks and magma below that do not. Seems reasonable as a wild, and very generous for ubiquity of life, guess.
Surface(sphere) = 4 x diameter x pi. Proportion of earth contained in that upper 1 mile is Surface(Earth diameter)- Surface(Earth diameter-1mile) divided by Surface(Earth) ... which works out very close to 2/diameter. Since average Earth diameter is 7918 miles, only 0.025% of a random sampling of Earth’s rocks will show life - one in about 4000 rocks. Put another way, we would have to examine 4000 fragments from a broken up Earth to discover evidence of life.
Assuming these meteorites came from an Earth-like planet, the chances that any of the nine examined contained life from that planet is pretty darned small. It is far more likely that such a meteorite contains contamination from Earth.
I hasten to add that this assumes life requires some type of planet near a star to develop - and comets in the Oort/ Kuiper/ etc. belt can not develop life. That would certainly change the proportions drastically. However, I consider the likelihood of cometary life to be vanishingly small.