Monday, September 01, 2008

Panspermia in a nutshell:

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3 comments:

Derek C. F. Pegritz said...

I don't see how it would ever be possible to prove precisely where life originated in this Solar System. Let's say we find some bacteria on Mars that are full of DNA, and some of the genes match those in certain bacteria found on Earth. Well, then, did those bacteria evolve on Mars and get transported to Earth via asteroid, or are those Martian bacteria descendants of terrestrial archaebacteria transported to Mars by the same means? Dating fossil records gets fuzzier and fuzzier the further back in time you go, so I don't think we'd ever be able to know for certain which was the case--we'd just know *that* it happened, but not when or, for that matter, how.

5:25 PM
Anonymous said...

Bit confused. I'd always heard Panspermia was that "life" started as certain fields capable of stopping/slowing entropy combined w/semi-helix forming space dust. Supposedly this material fell during the period that earth was bombarded w/comets containing said organic material in ice. Eventually, the right combination "mutated" via radiation, electromagnetism, whatever into the extremely simple life. Maybe I'm wrong.

7:21 PM
Mac said...

Anon.--

No, panspermia specifically describes the migration of existing life through space, whether from planet to planet, comet to planet or otherwise. You're thinking of biogenesis - in many respects a more contentious issue.

9:36 PM

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