Tag: panspermia

News from Mars: Updates on Panspermia Theory

PanspermiaFor centuries now, scientists have been toying with the idea that the origins of life may owe a great deal to space borne debris. And with ongoing research in the past few years, the link between Earth and Mars have become increasingly convincing. And a new bit of research out of the University of Hawaii has provided yet another piece of the puzzle by suggesting solar wind plays a major role.

Solar wind – the stream of charged particles consisting mostly of naked protons called H+ ions – permeate our Solar System because they are periodically ejected from the sun. The University paper shows that in an airless environment, typical space rocks will react with impacting protons to create tiny vesicles of water, thus allowing water and organic molecules to travel through space in tandem.

asteroid_earthInterestingly, the paper comes soon after NASA released evidence that Mars once sported a fair amount of water in the past, and that this water is sometimes found in unexpected places. The finding that water can be generated within dry space rocks, coupled with the fact that space rocks are known to deliver organic compounds to the surface of the Earth, is yet another indication that Earth and Mars might be linked.

Other recent papers have suggested that life’s important molecules arrived intact from Mars – a primitive version of RNA is one major proposed molecular stow-away – but these researchers claim only that “complex organic molecules” came from somewhere else in space. Complex organic compounds and liquid water, in conjunction, could theoretically provide the potential for non-living material to come alive.

Comet1One important aspect of this idea is that it focuses on small particles of material, rather than comets. Prior research has looked to such large bodies as the carriers of life and the drivers of the chemistry that created it, due to their energetic impacts. It’s been suggested that the earliest living things were cobbled together from high-energy molecules that couldn’t exist unless their synthesis was driven by massive astronomical impacts.

This more passive, dust-based explanation seems to fit well with the known history of the Earth, which predicts there was a high level of dust flux in the period before life began to flourish. In addition, the theory could help explain how in the predominantly shadowy areas of the Moon – another airless silicate body – unexpectedly high levels of water have been detected.

resolve_roverNASA has plans to launch RESOLVE (Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen & Lunar Volatile Extraction) in 2018 to collect and analyze ice samples and use them to look back into just that sort of astronomical history. Large quantities of water are thought to have arrived on the Moon via impacting comets, but this research suggests that at least some of it could have been created on the Moon itself.

All of this is of extreme importance to discovering how life began on Earth, mainly because scientists are still unsure of what makes the process complete. For instance, evolutionary theory can adequately explain how a bacterium becomes a protist that becomes an animal, but it cannot explain how a pile of non-living molecules ever became a living cell.

panspermia2Evidence seems to be mounting that, whether it was seeded with dust or fused into existence by huge asteroid impacts, life on Earth needed a kickstart in its earliest days. Interestingly, Earth’s atmosphere and the abundance of messy lifeforms on its surface could mean that Earth is the single worst place to search for such evidence.

The Moon or Mars, by contrast, are perfect environments for preserving evidence of the past given their dry and airless nature. And with ongoing research into both planets and our scientific knowledge of them expanding apace, whatever role they may have played in kickstarting life on Earth may finally be learned. This could come in handy if ever we need to do a little kickstarting of our own…

Source: extremetech.com

BIG News From Space: Alien Matter Found?

Alien OrganismsIts been an exciting 48 hours for the scientific community. It began when a team of British scientists floated a balloon up into the stratosphere, more than 25 km (16 miles) up, and when it came down they found it was carrying tiny organisms. The scientists claimed that there is no way that such organisms could have come from Earth and found their way into the stratosphere, so they must have come from space.

Specifically, they must have come from a comet, given their particular characteristics, and they could even be evidence that all life on Earth really did originate in the stars. This theory is known as Exogenesis (or Panspermia), and contends that this is how organisms are spread throughout the universe – spawning in certain environments, but flourishing on worlds where they are deposited and conditions are just right.

Alien Organisms1According to Professor Milton Wainwright of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Sheffield, they are “about 95 percent convinced” of that fact, though he admits that it’s hard to be absolutely certainty. But apart from the height of the organisms, which would make it hard to imagine them being from Earth, Wainwright and his team also noted that they bear no physical signs of ever being earthbound.

As Wainwright said in the course of announcing the team’s findings:

There is no known mechanism by which these life forms can achieve that height. As far as we can tell from known physics, they must be incoming. The particles are very clean. They don’t have any dust attached to them, which again suggests they’re not coming to earth. Similarly, cosmic dust isn’t stuck to them, so we think they came from an aquatic environment, and the most obvious aquatic environment in space is a comet.

In addition, the science team ruled out the possibility that the particles were originally from Earth and were blasted into the stratosphere by a volcano, noting that it’s been too long since the last volcanic eruption on Earth for the particles to have maintained such a height. So the tentative conclusion remains, that the organisms were placed in orbit by a passing comet.

DNA-1What’s even more exciting is the prospect that the organisms, though they are all likely dead at this point, are likely to contain alien DNA. If this proves to be true, it could further the idea that life on Earth may have had its beginnings in cosmos. Next month, the team plans to try the balloon test again to see if they can both confirm their results and find new organisms in upcoming meteor shower tied to Halley’s Comet.

Exciting prospects indeed. But almost immediately after the announcement been made, dissenting voices began to come forward to poke holes in the team’s theory. One such person is Phil Plait, an astronomer who upon reading the findings in the Journal of Cosmology, raised a number of concerns and criticisms about the team’s research.

First, Plait notes, one member of the research team, Chandra Wickramasinghe, has claimed numerous times that he’s discovered diatoms – a type of phytoplankton found in meteorites – and this particular paper also includes similar diatom findings. Wickramsinghe also, according to Plait, has a long history of making dubious claims about extraterrestrial life, using less-than-thorough research.

PanspermiaPlait also noted that the Journal of Cosmology, where the paper was published, has a less-than-spotless reputation. In the past, the quality of peer review at the journal has been questioned, and they have also been accused of promoting fringe and speculative viewpoints on astrobiology, astrophysics, and quantum physics. Of particular concern is the journal’s apparent bias that the theory of Panspermia is established fact, which remains a theory.

But as to the scientific findings themselves, there’s the question of whether the diatom really came from space or became attached to the balloon as it transited from the surface into orbit. While the team claims that precautions were taken and the sample was too clean, extended testing may prove this conclusion to be wrong, and possibly premature.

Second, Plait disputes the conclusion that the diatom could not have been put up in the atmosphere by a volcanic eruption. Specifically, he noted that the researchers didn’t seem to take into account things like turbulence in the stratosphere that could have kept objects previously hurled up there by volcanoes floating around for quite some time.

panspermia1Then there’s the claim that evidence points that the organisms came from a comet. The fact that it was “remarkably clean and free of soil or other solid material,” works against this conclusion, according to Plait. If indeed it came embedded in rock, there would surely be samples of soil, dust, ice or minerals attached to it, as these are things commonly found in a comet.

And finally, there’s the theory the researchers developed that these organisms are evidence that life actually began somewhere in space, then came to Earth. While Panspermia is a good theory, Plait claims that the scientists are going about arguing it in a way that is not strictly scientific:

Panspermia is worth investigating, but it’s worth investigating correctly. Outrageous claims on thin evidence with huge conclusion-jumping don’t comprise the best way to do it. Stories like this one are sexy and sure bait for an unskeptical media, of course. But at the very least they don’t help the public understand science and the scientific process, and I know some scientists take an even dimmer view of it.

But of course, the announcement was just made and there’s still plenty of checking to do. In the meantime, we can all certainly speculate, and I would like to hear from the people out there. What do you think? Does this discovery constitute a scientific breakthrough, or is it an elaborate hoax or a case of eager scientists jumping to conclusions?

Mars_Earth_Comparison-580x356And let’s not forget, this announcement comes not long after Professor Steven Benner’s similar announcement that new evidence connects the origin of life on Earth to life on Mars. No reason why Exogenesis and the Martian hypothesis can’t coexist now is there?

Sources: blastr.com, (2)

New Music Video Tells the Theory of Panspermia

Those who saw Prometheus recently, or witnessed the cinematic spectacle known as 2001: A Space Odyssey, will be instantly familiar with the concept. Basically, it asserts that life exists throughout the Universe and is distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and planetoids. In the more fantastic and imaginative version of this story, the distribution process is being helped along by alien “Engineers” or “Firstborn” who make it a point to seed worlds with their own genetic material, or tamper with existing life to promote evolution.

This new music video, produced by Tom Walsh, is a new and interesting take on the concept. Here, set to the music of “The Last Human on Earth” (by Swimming & Alex Herington), tells the story of a human engineer who is busy distributing human DNA throughout the Universe. Many times over, the name HERA comes up, which refers to Human Evolution Recovery Administration, a group that was formed in 1950 with the purpose of ensuring that humanity survives the death of our sun, our world, and any cataclysms that might come our way.

Check out the video below, and be sure to look up HERA at its website as well. Some very cool reading and watching!

Source: IO9