3 ms·
Maybe we could test this someday with petri dishes in orbit. Outfit satellites with catch basins that funnel into various potentially habitable pods and see wha
by hirundo 7y ago
Maybe we could test this someday with petri dishes in orbit. Outfit satellites with catch basins that funnel into various potentially habitable pods and see what grows. Park them in a lagrange point for better isolation.
But if panspermia is true such critters in the cosmic wind would be cousins of life on earth, and it would be difficult (impossible?) to distinguish an alien microbe from domestic contamination. If it's false we see nothing, and wonder if it's because space is sterile or we're just not yet offering it the right primeval soup.
- bdamm 7y agoPanspermia doesn’t only work (if it works) by microbes floating in space. Rather the idea is that microbes are embedded and somewhat protected in asteroids which then land somewhere habitable. The occasional close brushes between stars and their asteroid clouds provide the medium where microbes could be transferred between stars quickly enough to launch and land before the radiation destroys any hope of survival (like 20 thousand years.)
- sjg007 7y agoCosmic rays sterilize everything in time, so it seems unlikely we would find anything.