A controversial finding last year of microbes high in Earth’s atmosphere and thought to have come from space gained another scientist’s support this week. The organisms, collected by a balloon mission to the stratosphere in January 2001, were first studied by Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University, co-proponent with the late Sir Fred Hoyle of the modern theory of panspermia. The theory states that the Earth was seeded in the past, and is still being seeded, with microorganisms from comets.