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I wonder if they could similarly survive on, say, comets or asteroids.
by kitd 6y ago
I wonder if they could similarly survive on, say, comets or asteroids.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIt is a popular theory that that's how life on earth started; the google term is panspermia iirc.
- imeron 6y agoAnd how did life start on the asteroid? :D
- nayaketo 6y agoBy similarly frozen microbes from other asteroids of course.
- wongarsu 6y agoThe idea is that life starts on one planet and can spread from there to other planets (for example on rocks ejected through volcanic activity). We have found Martian rock on earth [1] 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
- croon 6y agoI think the intended point was "and before that?".
- ceejayoz 6y agoGod doesn't solve that issue, for identical reasons.
- wongarsu 6y agoWe don't really know. But if life started through some extremely lucky event like lightning repeatedly hitting just the right collection of particles in an early planet's ocean, then panspermia gives you a plausible mechanism how this happening just once in a galaxy could still lead to multiple planets having life (and maybe one of them developing into intelligent life that can ask itself how this happened). It opens up the number of possible timelines for the development of life because it allows our evolutionary heritage to be older than our planet alone allows for.
- croon 6y agoI don't want to derail anything. Also disclaimer that I'm not religious. Off topic: This reminds me of what annoys me about "Intelligent Design" vs science. It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old, he/she/they created all animals separately with no evolution, etc, etc. And likewise what came before the big bang? Ultra dense, hot steady state? And before that? While If I were any denominational god, I'd have created the rule set and frameworks for the entire system and then boot it up. Why can't "god" have created the big bang, evolution, the physics ruleset and just let it play out? Of course we'll never get the answer to any of that before (or not) the inevitable event horizon of death, but I don't get the antagonism within the evangelical movement... other than the obvious loss of power to secularity and science/agnosticism. End of rant.
- Udo 6y ago> It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old [...] And likewise what came before the big bang? The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. One is a set of very specific but unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the universe, and the other is a scientific theory supported by observation and models. Since it is way easier to churn out unsubstantiated claims than viable scientific theories, relying on a mindset that gives equal consideration to everything is a surefire way for science to be simply drowned out. In this specific case, I'd also like to point out that the big bang model does not claim to yield, or is required to yield, information on what came "before". There are multiple hypotheses around for what could have happened, a fundamental part of which is usually a proper definition of what "before" means in this context. Again, none of these are doctrinal claims, they're just a process of finding out more about the universe. Religious claims on the other hand are a method of asserting you already know something. > While If I were any denominational god, I'd have created the rule set and frameworks for the entire system and then boot it up. Consider that most religions want people to behave in very specific ways, mostly because deities and their spokespeople say so. The "god" you are describing does not fit into that. You are being very charitable towards religious claims by allowing them to retreat into this generic fold. On a scientific level, your hypothesis is not immediately contradicted by observation. But it's also not clear how an unsupervised universe would be different from a curated one. If it doesn't really matter to the outcome whether the universe was created intentionally or not, a good bet is to assume the simpler model. Any such god would themselves have to exist in order to create a universe. They would presumably also have to have had a creator themselves, or have come into existence by natural means. This pushes the problem of the origin of the universe up the chain without necessarily resolving anything. It's not impossible that the universe is such a stack of simulations, and I'd argue it's worth looking into that, but it's not a solution to the question what the root of existence itself is.
- thearn4 6y agoMaybe life originated during the habitable epoch in the very early, very small universe and spread from there? https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613 https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613
- phy6 6y agoMy dear friend, it's asteroids all the way up!
- kitd 6y agoYeah, that's kind of where I was leading ;)
- 24gttghh 6y agoI still lean towards something along the lines of The Miller-Urey experiment[0]. There are many very interesting theories[1]. But who is to say it isn't a combination of both? The question would be, from whence did the life on comets/extra-terrestrial bodies originate? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
- naruhodo 6y agoI wonder if we'll find their ilk on Mars.