I don't think that there are many people who are trying to detect life in meteorites. Most of us are trying to detect prebiotic organics in meteorites — that is, molecules that may have played a role in helping life get started on Earth. While there are some folks that think they've detected signs of extinct life in meteorites, I have not so far found their arguments to be very compelling.

Scott Sandford

Categorized in : Science

This sort of spectral matching is a way to identify an unknown, good spectral matches suggest possible identifications, while bad matches eliminate them. Most of the spectra are dominated by minerals that are consistent with the identification of this meteorite as a carbonaceous chondrite.