Some Scientists Think SARS May Have Come from Outer Space

LONDON (Reuters) ^ | May 22, 2003 | Patricia Reaney

[TaxRelief]

LONDON (Reuters) - Could SARS have come from outer space? Some scientists think so.

Instead of jumping from an unknown animal host in southern China, a few researchers in Britain believe the virus that has baffled medical experts descended from the stratosphere.

"I think it is a possibility that SARS came from space. It is a very strong possibility," Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe told Reuters.

The director of the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology in Wales and a proponent of the theory that life on Earth originated from space, admits the theory defies conventional wisdom.

But in a letter published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday he and his colleagues argue there are too many puzzling aspects about the respiratory illness that has killed nearly 700 people and infected more than 3,800 to dismiss the idea.

Other virologists believe it simply isn't possible because the virus is too fragile to survive in outer space.

"I think it is completely nuts," said Dr Anne Bridgen, a molecular virologist at the University of Ulster.

"It has a lipid (fatty) coat on the outside and it would tend to dry out in an atmosphere such as space," she told Reuters.

Professor Ian Jones, an expert in virology at the University of Reading in southern England, described the idea as bizarre.

"SARS is a new virus but it is only a new relative of a family of viruses that we understand quite well," he said, referring to the coronavirus family which includes a virus linked to the common cold.

"The difference is that it is a causing a severity of disease that we haven't seen before in the human population."

Wickramasinghe stressed that SARS suddenly appeared in China late last year and is a new coronavirus with a different genetic sequence from similar viruses in animals. Its origin has also not been traced. He believes these factors could suggest it evolved differently and may have come from a far-off place.

"There doesn't seem to have been a human origin for this. It seems to have come from somewhere else," said Dr Milton Wainwright, a molecular biologist at the University of Sheffield in England and a co-author of the letter.

"There is a lot of debate about where it could have come from and we are providing an answer," he added.

Wickramasinghe said there is no known virus that has fallen from outer space. "There is no known virus that has been picked up from high in the stratosphere," he said. "Not to date."

Yet Wickramasinghe and Wainwright believe the original outbreak in China is also significant because if the virus did fall to Earth it would most likely land east of the Himalayas, the weakest point in the stratosphere and easiest to break through.

In studies of air samples taken from 25 miles above the Earth, large numbers of micro-organisms were found, Wickramasinghe said, so it is possible SARS came from space.

"The fact that many cases in China cannot be traced to infected people means that something is dreadfully amiss in the idea of conventional wisdom," he said.

[TaxRelief]

I have a hunch that SARS escaped from a bio-weapons lab in China.

China....Outerspace, China..........Outerspace

[aristeides]

Sars virus 'came from outer space'.

[#3Fan]

It's not good for a scientist to be sarcastic. They're supposed to be accurate or at least speak accurately in their theories even if their theories prove to be wrong.

[AntiGuv]

I agree - all I'm saying is that it sounds as if she may be sarcastic (with understatement).. I dunno, it can be as hard to read sarcasm in newsprint as it is on the Internet..

[aristeides]

Tiny worms in medical center experiment survive shuttle crash .

[TaxRelief]

They are doing a jig (with their clothes on)..

[Jhoffa_]

Maybe they were stonewalling long enough for it to take hold?

I bet they were trying to get it (back?) under control...

[muawiyah]

Why would the virus be exposed to the "hostile environment of space" if it arrived in a small chunk of rock? This happens every day ~ the arrival of the rocks, if not the viruses.

[xp38]

I remember seeing that movie in 3D sometime in the 70s. When Russell Johnson (he played the professor on the Gilligan's Island tv show) appeared on the screen in a bit part everyone in the theatre yelled It's the Professor!!!

[ffusco]

I was dreaming. A perfect sunny day....picnics.....dogs catching frisbees.....smiles......It was several hours before I noticed the half eaten sandwich next to the terminal. The flies! I could only see a black metalic mound growing like a cancer on the plate beside me. My Blood runs cold and my flesh crawls. Insects always bothered me even when they were just a nuisance, the occaissoinal bee-sting... running through some cobwebs...but not like today. They aren't pests...They are a plague.

Insects have always lived among us, busy behind our walls and in our yards and we lived side by side since the first man and woman lived in a cave. No one is sure why the insects suddenly became immune to our pesticides. Many people blame it on the "simple flu shot" that was common a few years ago. Others think it is the hormones in poultry (If you have never tried chicken, you aren't missing much- they're extinct, but rat is similar I'm told) Some other see it as a sign the end is near. Either way I hope death comes during the weekday, perhaps the mailman will find me before the insects. I know I'm not being rational..........!

[_Jim]

    human body parts survive the Columbia crash,

LENDS a whole new perspective on the phrases "can you lend me a hand", "He's got two left feet" and the all time favorite "Well, he's finally lost his head on this flgiht" ...

[Betty Jo]

I dont think SARS is an accident from a bio weapons lab.

I think SARS is from Bin Laden and his co-horts and fellow travelers.

Remember,the terrorists who dont care if they die?

The ones who kill their own?

I think the terrs have pulled off a huge Shock and Awe.

They did it.

We're going to die.

And because they are "slightly dysfunctional" they dont care if millions of Muslims die in the process.

Unlesss, when they engineered SARS they came up with the vaccination or an antidote.

Check out Bin Ladens buddies and funders in the biotec healthcare game for decades now.

[Logical Extinction]

The End Of The Beginning

The Times

It was deep into the Last Days when the messages began to appear upon the Matrix.

The virus was raging in Africa, exploding in Asia, and had already killed more Americans than the Vietnam and Korean War combined.

There were an estimated 16,000 new infections a day, but no one knew the real numbers. The virus was sweeping through the human species like wildfire. HIV had broken out of Africa and could now be found in every major population. It was within this cauldron of woe that the messages first appeared.

The Matrix, at that time, was largely a toy for the bored and lonely. But those were not innocent days. Beneath the mundane ran a tremor of something dark.

Erotica, which had driven the first cyberspace expansion, turned more profane, more degrading and raw.

Discussion nodes on the Matrix filled with anger and derision. Shadows of dark mixed with the light - the Matrix was both the Changer and the Changed.

The First Message

The first message was written in the language of math. A new math that was barely as old as the Matrix itself. It was the math of Chaos - the study of rhythms.

The math of Chaos is rooted in epiphany. A young wunderkind named Mitchell Feigenbaum, while playing with a cheap calculator, sensed something in the the seemingly random flow of numbers.

He looked into the very core of our universe, saw something beautiful and changed the world.
What Mr. Feigenbaum discovered was an undercurrent of rhythms.

Rhythms in the Chaos. Rhythms that were not only mathematically pure, but that appeared to permeate every aspect of physical existence.

It was as though he had discovered the fingerprints of God. He saw that Chaos was filled with perfect rhythms - too complex for mortal perception.

Perhaps the most startling of these rhythms was the discovery that all orderly systems disintegrate into Chaos in exactly the same way. The locust in Africa - the oil flowing smoothly in a Siberian pipeline - and the drip of water from the tap, all change from order to disorder in exactly the same beautiful dance of math.

The rhythm is so precise that it is expressed in a number (4.669) carried to four decimal places.

Fittingly it is called the Feigenbaum Constant.

Other rhythms have acquired similar names. One, which describes a complex dynamic system, is called the Strange Attractor.

While the language of chaos is often oblique, the first message described an ancient rhythm, correctly identified it as a Strange Attractor, and listed several universal criteria with remarkable clarity.

Words deeply rooted in the truth have a special kind of power. The whole of their influence extends beyond the thoughts expressed. Thus it was with the first message. It was called Futures

[TaxRelief]

"The virus is unexpectedly novel and appeared without warning in mainland China," Prof Wickramasinghe writes. "A small amount of the culprit virus introduced into the stratosphere could make a tentative fallout east of the great mountain range of the Himalayas, where the stratosphere is thinnest, followed by sporadic deposits in neighbouring areas.

"If the virus is only minimally infective, as it seems to be, the subsequent course of its global progress will depend on stratospheric transport and mixing, leading to a fallout continuing seasonally over a few years."

Ok...So wouldn't it have had more "index" patients?

[PJ-Comix]

YAWN! That movie was already made. Andromeda Strain.

[byteback]

[TaxRelief]

I think SARS is from Bin Laden and his co-horts and fellow travelers.

Why did they go to China first? Secret vendetta?

[Rushmore Rocks]

My "goosebump threshold" just lowered a bit.

[EternalHope]

Thanks for the article. It's always good for us to be reminded that some scientists are idiots.

LOL!

[TaxRelief]

That is too crude to even put in italics...