Coronavirus Might Have Come From Outer Space
“I’m not saying it was aliens…but it was aliens.”
By Jessie Schiewe
Credit: Beckie/Flickr
What if the deadly coronavirus, which has killed more than 4,000 people so far, came from a meteorite that exploded over China last year?
People in the northeast region of the country reported seeing the brilliant fireball flying through the air around 12:16 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 11. Those who saw it described it as being so bright, it turned the night sky into day.
The belief that coronavirus was brought upon us by this meteorite is now circulating thanks to Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology.
The Sri Lankan-born British scientist believes the extraterrestrial rock may have contained viral particles that managed to survive the structure’s galactic journey. Upon crashing into the Earth, the infectious matter would have been released.
“The sudden outbreak of a new coronavirus is very likely to have a space connection,” Wickramasinghe told The Express last month.
“We think it probable that [the meteorite] contained, embedded within it, a monoculture of infective 2019-nCoV virus particles that survived in the interior of the incandescent meteor. We consider the seemingly outrageous possibility that hundreds of trillions of infective viral particles were then released embedded in the form of fine carbonaceous dust.”
The fact that the coronavirus outbreak happened in the same Chinese province where the meteorite was spotted is also a “remarkable aspect” that the professor felt only further proved his point.
Wickramasinghe is a proponent of panspermia, the belief that viable life exists in the universe and that it can be transported elsewhere in the universe through space dust, asteroids, comets, spacecrafts, and other atmospheric materials.
“Sending Frozen Sperm Into Outer Space”
In the 1970s, he and the English astronomer Fred Hoyle began supporting the theory, and were able to prove early on that some interstellar space dust contains organic matter.
And, while panspermia can happen with whole organisms, living matter from other places in the universe can also be transported in smaller packages, namely as strands of DNA, which are the building blocks of life.
That’s what Wickramasinghe thinks happened with coronavirus: the meteorite released infected DNA strands that then bonded with microscopic organisms already living on Earth, mutating them into killing machines.
“There is growing evidence that says this DNA comes from space and it is carried into our atmosphere on micro-meteorites before dissipating,” he told The Express. “It is then taken up by bacteria and viruses. That new insert could have come from space. This disturbing outbreak is due to this, there is no doubt meteorites carry living structures.”
And, if you ask Wickramasinghe, this is not the first case of panspermia — or, put another way, the first time something from outer space has killed numerous humans. Many illnesses in the past, such as the 1918 flu pandemic and certain outbreaks of polio and mad cow disease, may also have had extraterrestrial origins.
“We believe infectious agents are prevalent in space, carried on comets, and can fall towards Earth through the troposphere. These, we think, can and have in the past gone on to bring about human disease epidemics,” Wickramasinghe said.
There are, of course, those who disagree with the theory that coronavirus came from space. IFLScience spoke with an infectious disease specialist who was quick to debunk Wickramasinghe’s argument, pointing out the many similarities between coronavirus and other recent viral outbreaks.
“The most compelling evidence that SARS-CoV-2 didn’t come from a meteorite is that it is so closely related to other known coronaviruses,” Dr. Dominic Sparkes told IFLScience. “It’s closely related to the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus that caused an outbreak in the early 2000s and the MERS (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome) virus which still causes disease currently.”
All of these viruses were also passed onto humans in the same way: through animals. So if it’s happened once before, why couldn’t it have happened again with coronavirus? Especially when you consider that the point of origin was a market that sold the meat and bodies of wild animals, the space-based coronavirus theory starts to unravel a bit.
“SARS was found to be the result of bats transferring virus to civet cats which transferred on to humans, while MERS is known to be passed on to humans from camels. It therefore is far less of a leap to assume the closely-related SARS-CoV-2 virus has been passed on to humans in the same way,” Dr. Sparkes added.
So did coronavirus come from space or from eating exotic animals?
Science is still on the fence.
And unfortunately the easiest way of solving this problem, or of at least ruling out one of the possibilities, is not available to us. The meteorite from October 11 is nowhere to be found — or at least no one has reported coming across its crash site.
Were it in a physical location, scientists could have tested the soil in the surrounding area.
But alas, the most likely scenario is that the meteorite simply burned up on its own while still flying through the sky, making it unlikely that we’ll ever have an official answer to the question of: Was it aliens?
JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN MERMAIDS AND THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.
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