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Ha! But it does solve the 'this rare event happened here on Earth but it is very unlikely to happen anywhere' because those little single cells came here from s
by monk_e_boy 11y ago
Ha! But it does solve the 'this rare event happened here on Earth but it is very unlikely to happen anywhere' because those little single cells came here from somewhere else. That source infected millions of planets.
It moves the problem of starting everywhere to starting in one place (more likely)
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoGetting it to occur once is more likely than getting it to occur many times. However, it does give you a new problem: making cells that can survive hard vacuum, radiation, and extreme cold, for millenia (at least), and still be viable when they reach a new planet. We're not talking speed-of-light propagation here. We're probably not even talking 0.01 c. So even to the nearest neighboring star is probably thousands or tens of thousands of years. In vacuum. In extreme cold. Without even photosynthesis to provide energy. Yeah, I'm kind of skeptical of this actually working.
- civilian 11y agoIf panspermia does happen in the universe, I bet that it happens with the sheltering of asteroids and meteors. Life develops on low-gravity planets with turbulent atmosphere -> some cells get into space -> get caught by comets and other objects -> slowly propagate within comet -> comet has an unstable orbit that sends it to another system, where it has an encounter with a habitable planet. An icey comet could provide radiation protection and it could accidentally go through a gravity assist to increase it's speed. I suppose that the best evidence we could collect to prove or disprove panspermia is to see if it's happened between planets/moons/objects within our own solar system.