5 ms·
Wow, that's... actually pretty sensical. The science part of me rejects it for having no evidence. But the pragmatic part of me would put its money underneath t
by ReaLNero 6y ago
Wow, that's... actually pretty sensical. The science part of me rejects it for having no evidence. But the pragmatic part of me would put its money underneath the theory. The reason
The bigger question is: how did the first Protozoa form? The usual primordial soup theory of random chance?
One good thing about this theory is that if there are 10^7 habitable planets at any given moment, each of them are "trying to produce life." So the chance that life gets to Earth increases multiple fold.
One problem for this theory is that if it takes a thousand years for Earth to get protozoa from another planet, then we would expect to have gotten multiple different types of Protozoa. But there is basically no variety on Earth: it's all carbon, and 99% uses oxygen (a few use sulfur).
- swagasaurus-rex 6y agoSo evidence pointing towards a common ancestor for all life here on Earth, or at least very similar common ancestors, might imply that of a seeding event, there wasn't much variety. However, if we assume a seeding event happened, what's to say it couldn't happen on a lot of planets around the same area at the same time? The Fermi paradox is too speculative to say we aren't the only ones. One thing that's missing is a seeding mechanism. Can an asteroid eject enough debris for some of it to reach escape velocity on a planet like ours? Did these protozoa come from a very different (but chemically compatible) environment?
- ramraj07 6y agoI am curious if floating microbes in our atmosphere can just randomly leave the planet - like are particles small enough to undergo Brownian motion subject to the same escape velocity ?
- ramraj07 6y agoIf we work under this assumption, then I’d expect all the living material out there to be of the same chemistry and origin - again unproven conjecture but I’ll be surprised if two life forms of completely different chemistries can compete on comparable levels in the same environment - one will probably always be more efficient than other due to fundamental limits on the chemistry of their constituent molecules; I feel like new life of any chemistry can only form in a sterile environment since pre existing life seems to find ways to harness all available energy in any environment quite soon. Thus if we have life of a particular form floating ready to contaminate any new planet, then it’s possible that life of no other form can form in that galactic neighbourhood! So the Star Trek episode where they discover why all the species around the galaxy all have DNA based genetics is probably on the money if you ask me!
- jinglebells 6y agoIf all the environments are made of rocks and water (and therefore oxygen and hydrogen atmosphere) then chemically you've got enough for converting sunlight to power, surely?