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To me, it seems unlikely because, as far as I understand, life immediately began as soon as Earth cooled. So life is just barely younger than the Earth by only

by bmitc 4y ago

To me, it seems unlikely because, as far as I understand, life immediately began as soon as Earth cooled. So life is just barely younger than the Earth by only tens to hundreds millions of years. Also, it seems hard to imagine a better place for life to emerge than Earth. I can't watch the video right now, but what are the theories of how life got onto meteors in the first place?

sampo 4y ago
> To me, it seems unlikely because, as far as I understand, life immediately began as soon as Earth cooled. Yes. If life originated from panspermia, and right after the planet had cooled down, that would imply that there should be a more or less continuous bombardment of panspermic seeds from the universe. If so, we should be receiving these seeds also now, and we should then be able to detect them.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > If so, we should be receiving these seeds also now, and we should then be able to detect them. Actually, we are - precursors to stuff like RNA have been found in comets and meteorites [1]. [1] https://theconversation.com/did-comets-kick-start-life-on-earth-chemists-find-missing-piece-of-puzzle-57369 https://theconversation.com/did-comets-kick-start-life-on-ea...
  - funcDropShadow 4y ago
    But precursors to RNA have a also spontaneously emerged in experiments resembling the early earth.
    - Ancapistani 4y ago
      ... and we have no idea how things went from "RNA precursors" to "independent reproduction". All extant RNA-based organisms require host DNA to reproduce. I see no reason to believe that RNA came first.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  "and we should then be able to detect them" This, I'm not at all sure of. The density of the bombardment may be very weak, and very small. A tiny speck of dust here and there, what is there to detect?