Panspermia
In the beginning...
The earth sat still, and empty, with an ocean and land for about 2.5 billion years. There was an atmosphere, but no oxygen as we breath now. There were no beasts, fish, or fowl. No dinosaurs, no lizards - nothing. There was only land and sea, and anaerobic bacteria. All oxygen was locked up in water molecules or bonded to iron in minerals. Not a sound could be heard, but the wind and the waves. For 2.5 billion years. Science calls this the pre-GOE ocean.
But at some point... oxygen began production. This was done by something called Cynobacteria. Cynobactera are photosynthetic and turn sunlight into energy to produce oxygen as a waste product. Suddenly the Anaerob's died off and the Cyno's took over. Then life began as we know it. This turn of events is whats called the Great Oxygenation Event.
Some believe a meteor was the catalyst that hit Earth to help create this "oxygen" event - because meteors can carry cyanobacteria. At this point, read on, because I'm about to merge science fiction with fiction. But don't take this in a light hearted manner - because I could be right...
Certain scientists have suspicions that life on meteors and the fact that they go around the universe slamming into planets is deliberate. What would you do if you were an advanced civilization facing catastrophic annihilation? What if you were being wiped out by another race of beings who were going to end your kind forever? What would you do to secure and expand life that could become similar to yours throughout in the universe? Well... there is one way, and that would be to use meteors as payloads that carry DNA, proteins, complex mixtures of alkanes, amino acids and other carbonaceous chondrites. Payloads could also include extremophiles for diverse environments and cyanobacteria similar to early microorganisms. This is whats known as the theory of directed panspermia.
This bold speculation was first proposed in 1973 by Nobel prize winner Professor Francis Crick, OM FRA, along with British chemist Leslie Orgel. Crick proposed that small grains containing DNA-the building blocks of life, could be loaded on meteors - on purpose - and fired randomly in all directions. Crick and Orgel were careful to point out that Directed Panspermia was not a certainty; but rather a plausible alternative that ought to be taken seriously.
This strategy of using of fleets of microbial capsules would be the most cost effective idea for seeding life on compatible planets at some time in the future. Because of their extremely small size, vast numbers of microorganisms can be carried, without any special equipment. Meteor storage is made for very long periods at low temperatures - and go unnoticed. Meteors could have been aimed at us, and at other clusters of new stars in star-forming clouds where they acted as delivery agents once they landed here. Once more, hardy multicellular organize (rotifer cysts) may be included to induce higher evolution.
The discovery that raw components of life are present on meteors that hit Earth have been countless and suggest that life exists elsewhere. Not only does it exist, the speculation is that when it hits this planet, it affects the balance of life here as well. To surmise that someone else began life here as we know is plausible. Sending out a little raw material of their own via interstellar travel made its way to Earth is certainly not impossible. The 1973 paper focuses on the universality of the genetic code and the role that molybdenum plays in living organisms.
Strangely enough in 2015 astrobiologist Milton Wainwright and a team of researchers found a small minuscule metal globe with a gooey biological material oozing from its center on a high-flying ballon in Earth's stratosphere. A metal globe from origins unknown. It hit the ballon hard and left a tiny impact mark like a crater, and they found it. They still don't know what it is - but they are certainly scratching their heads thinking about what Crick proposed over forty years ago. This thing they found may be proof of alien biological seeds of life. But its not just this finding, it many others including algae like fossils found in a meteorite fragment from Sri Lanka in 2013. There's been a multitude of meteors that have hit us with alien life, including the Murchison meteorite. That one hit Australia in 1969. The Murchison was part of a class of meteors called the CM group. (carbonaceous chondrites) which means these meteors experienced extensive alterations by water-rich fluids on its parent body before falling to Earth.
It is difficult to prove if life started elsewhere or here ab inito without disturbance from elsewhere. I prefer to maintain that the universe is a starry soup and the idea of contamination or infection is a feeble notion. We ourselves may be the result of certain chemistries found on other planets. We are not infecting Mars, or other planets - we are already from out there and deeply connected. We are alive, one way or the other, headed for a future, coded and set to survive, by origins - unknown.
The earth sat still, and empty, with an ocean and land for about 2.5 billion years. There was an atmosphere, but no oxygen as we breath now. There were no beasts, fish, or fowl. No dinosaurs, no lizards - nothing. There was only land and sea, and anaerobic bacteria. All oxygen was locked up in water molecules or bonded to iron in minerals. Not a sound could be heard, but the wind and the waves. For 2.5 billion years. Science calls this the pre-GOE ocean.
But at some point... oxygen began production. This was done by something called Cynobacteria. Cynobactera are photosynthetic and turn sunlight into energy to produce oxygen as a waste product. Suddenly the Anaerob's died off and the Cyno's took over. Then life began as we know it. This turn of events is whats called the Great Oxygenation Event.
Some believe a meteor was the catalyst that hit Earth to help create this "oxygen" event - because meteors can carry cyanobacteria. At this point, read on, because I'm about to merge science fiction with fiction. But don't take this in a light hearted manner - because I could be right...
Certain scientists have suspicions that life on meteors and the fact that they go around the universe slamming into planets is deliberate. What would you do if you were an advanced civilization facing catastrophic annihilation? What if you were being wiped out by another race of beings who were going to end your kind forever? What would you do to secure and expand life that could become similar to yours throughout in the universe? Well... there is one way, and that would be to use meteors as payloads that carry DNA, proteins, complex mixtures of alkanes, amino acids and other carbonaceous chondrites. Payloads could also include extremophiles for diverse environments and cyanobacteria similar to early microorganisms. This is whats known as the theory of directed panspermia.
This bold speculation was first proposed in 1973 by Nobel prize winner Professor Francis Crick, OM FRA, along with British chemist Leslie Orgel. Crick proposed that small grains containing DNA-the building blocks of life, could be loaded on meteors - on purpose - and fired randomly in all directions. Crick and Orgel were careful to point out that Directed Panspermia was not a certainty; but rather a plausible alternative that ought to be taken seriously.
This strategy of using of fleets of microbial capsules would be the most cost effective idea for seeding life on compatible planets at some time in the future. Because of their extremely small size, vast numbers of microorganisms can be carried, without any special equipment. Meteor storage is made for very long periods at low temperatures - and go unnoticed. Meteors could have been aimed at us, and at other clusters of new stars in star-forming clouds where they acted as delivery agents once they landed here. Once more, hardy multicellular organize (rotifer cysts) may be included to induce higher evolution.
The discovery that raw components of life are present on meteors that hit Earth have been countless and suggest that life exists elsewhere. Not only does it exist, the speculation is that when it hits this planet, it affects the balance of life here as well. To surmise that someone else began life here as we know is plausible. Sending out a little raw material of their own via interstellar travel made its way to Earth is certainly not impossible. The 1973 paper focuses on the universality of the genetic code and the role that molybdenum plays in living organisms.
Strangely enough in 2015 astrobiologist Milton Wainwright and a team of researchers found a small minuscule metal globe with a gooey biological material oozing from its center on a high-flying ballon in Earth's stratosphere. A metal globe from origins unknown. It hit the ballon hard and left a tiny impact mark like a crater, and they found it. They still don't know what it is - but they are certainly scratching their heads thinking about what Crick proposed over forty years ago. This thing they found may be proof of alien biological seeds of life. But its not just this finding, it many others including algae like fossils found in a meteorite fragment from Sri Lanka in 2013. There's been a multitude of meteors that have hit us with alien life, including the Murchison meteorite. That one hit Australia in 1969. The Murchison was part of a class of meteors called the CM group. (carbonaceous chondrites) which means these meteors experienced extensive alterations by water-rich fluids on its parent body before falling to Earth.
It is difficult to prove if life started elsewhere or here ab inito without disturbance from elsewhere. I prefer to maintain that the universe is a starry soup and the idea of contamination or infection is a feeble notion. We ourselves may be the result of certain chemistries found on other planets. We are not infecting Mars, or other planets - we are already from out there and deeply connected. We are alive, one way or the other, headed for a future, coded and set to survive, by origins - unknown.
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