A Cosmos Unto Infinity: Part Two

The nature of, the size, the shape and the duration of our Universe has been speculated and debated upon ever since humans gazed in wonder at the night sky. Though ideas have waxed and waned, and though modern cosmology is more focused than ever on actual observations, speculations, well that’s still the case today. My take, albeit slightly more philosophically inclined, is that our Universe is just part of an overall infinite in space and infinite in duration cosmos. 

Continued from Part One

As we noted in the example of the fridge and your body, it takes energy to reverse entropy or at least hold it at bay. A reversal of entropy is sort of like that closed box with Maxwell’s Demon (representing energy) that controls a slot that the Demon can either open or close that’s in the middle of that closed box that’s of a uniform temperature.  The Demon opens the slot whenever a rapidly moving (hot) molecule heads toward the left side or when a slower moving (cold) molecule heads toward the right side. After a while, the left side of the box will be containing just hot stuff (rapidly moving molecules) and the right side cold stuff (slowly moving molecules). Maxwell’s Demon is like a kid expending energy sorting a bag of 1000 various coloured marbles (maximum disorder) into piles of reds and greens and blues and yellows (maximum order).  Of course our infinite cosmos contains no demons, and marble-sorting kids need not apply if there’s ever a job ad for restoring order to an infinite cosmos.

Okay, without demons (or entropy reversing kids), our infinite cosmos heads towards a state of maximum entropy or maximum disorder or maximum uniformity. The cosmic temperature will be the same everywhere; matter will be evenly distributed. But, can an infinite cosmos ever reach such a state? It could or should take an infinite amount of time, but that’s also assumed. 

Yet alas, what even an infinite cosmos needs is a Maxwell’s Demon. The cosmos, if it is to retain a state of vitality for an infinite duration, needs something that recycles stuff that’s at maximum entropy (maximum disorder) back to the basics of minimum entropy (or minimum disorder) where useful things can continue to happen.

* The Role of Gravity

Gravity seems to be a Maxwell Demon’s kind of force that keeps on keeping on. As long as you have two bits of matter, even just two electrons, you have gravity. Radiation (electromagnetism) could be dispersed evenly in infinite space over infinite time, but it is hard to imagine that situation with gravity. The only real way gravity could be rendered inert and useless as an energy source would be if it was 100% concentrated in just one place – like a super ultra mother of all cosmic Black Holes. The only other way gravity could be nullified would be in matter were distributed so absolutely evenly such that every bit of matter were being gravitationally pulled on absolutely evenly in each and every direction. But the slightest nudge or deviation from this ideal theoretical state (inevitable given quantum fluctuations) would throw everything out of equilibrium. But because matter is energy and energy is matter, if gravity can disrupt the distribution of matter from a state of near perfect uniformity, then energy will follow the short and curly material bits. Light (photons) reacts to gravity as much as electrons do. Further, the one extra nice property that gravity has is that it can’t be blocked. You can block out light or shield yourself from electromagnetic effects, but nothing will shield you from gravity.

* The Recycling Role of Radioactivity

Fortunately, there are several basic ways of recycling complex cosmic stuff back into the cosmos in the form of simple stuff. The first of these however has issues. Gravity can contract and pull together interstellar gas and dust into a proto-star which will ignite under pressure via thermonuclear fusion to form a radiant star. Stars however fuse lighter elements into heavier elements, and when a star goes nova, or becomes a supernovae, those heavier elements increasingly form the next generation of interstellar gas and dust. Eventually, after many generations of enrichment, interstellar gas and dust is lacking in those lighter elements (mainly hydrogen and helium) which easily undergoes fusion. Heavy elements, like iron, just won’t fuse any more and so the continued formation of radiant stellar stuff grinds to a halt. But, there is an escape clause.

Among the heavy elements; elements that stars manufacture, are radioactive elements with unstable atomic nuclei. Radioactive decay re-releases back into the cosmos those fundamental bits and pieces that can reform into those lighter elements that are the basic building blocks for forming radiant stellar objects. There is cosmic recycling from the simple to the complex and back to the simple again.

* The Recycling Role of Cosmic Black Holes

The second way of cosmic recycling is, believe it or not, via cosmic Black Holes. Astronomical Black Holes, via the vacuum energy (quantum foam or fluctuations) and quantum tunnelling, can release elementary particles back into the cosmos. As mentioned earlier, this is known as Hawking Radiation, after theoretical cosmologist/astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. Complex stuff can go into a Black Hole, but just very simple stuff ultimately comes back out again.

* The Recycling Role of Life

Life can be an entropy buster as in the case of Maxwell’s Demon, the kid who sorts the marbles, the mum who does the housework, the bird or beaver who gathers up forest debris to make a nest. But, it takes outside energy to accomplish these things and at the end you haven’t decreased complexity – the marbles are still marbles; twigs are still twigs. But microbes like bacteria, etc. can break down complex stuff (like twigs) and turn it into less complex stuff which can be recycled into hundreds of new and different complex things. So, when our home planet eventually meets its Waterloo, and gets scattered back into the cosmic winds, thanks to bacteria, there will be more simple stuff floating around than would otherwise be the case

So complex stuff gets recycled back into simple stuff, all brought together again by gravity to ultimately form complex stuff again. The cosmos receives recycled stuff back, from which it can keep on keeping on!    

* A Fly in the Ointment

In a cosmos that’s both infinite in space and infinite in duration, here’s an interesting ‘angels on the head of a pin’ question. There are two forces which in theory can extend their influence indefinitely, that is, unto infinity. They are electromagnetism (of which light is a prime example) and gravity. So, can the influence of a force cross an infinite space if it has an infinite amount of time to do it in?

Perhaps Maxwell Demon’s ‘closed box’ isn’t really an appropriate ‘container’ for an infinite cosmos. If the cosmos is infinite, can it be described as a closed system? 

The Multiple You

And so finally, consider and reconsider the quantum mantra: “Anything that isn’t forbidden is compulsory; anything that can happen will happen”. That’s even more the case when you have infinite time and space to play around with! So, I add to that mantra “and will happen again and again and again, an infinite number of times”. That actually means, or at least very strongly suggests that every possible scenario, every possible history, and every possible variation on each and every scenario or on any theme that you care to think of or think up will happen again and again and again. That, by the way, includes you. You are a scenario, and you, and every possible variation of you and your history will transpire numerous times; actually an infinite number of times. If that isn’t spooky, I don’t know what is, but it’s a logical consequence of having an infinite cosmos. 

Seven Alien Misconceptions Revisited: Part Two

The scientific community and the general community tend to have differences of opinion over the topic of extraterrestrial life, especially intelligent extraterrestrial life with advanced technological capabilities. The scientific community tends to be ultra conservative; the great unwashed are way less critical since they get their news and views from the tabloids and sci-fi programs. Perhaps the middle ground is a more viable option than either side’s extremely conservative or uncritical point of view. 

An article titled “7 Huge Misconceptions about Aliens” by Natalie Wolchover has appeared recently on several websites including Space.com; Life’s Little Mysteries (prime site); and the Huffington Post (abridged to just five). It’s all about how scientists view the existence and nature of advanced ET as opposed to the more common perceptions of the great unwashed. The following comments are my addressing of the common misconceptions raised. Let’s see if I agree or disagree with the verdicts, and most important, why. Oh, of course the “THEY” referred to is our intelligent and technologically advanced ET. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

THEY WON’T EAT US: Agree

Alien biochemistry wouldn’t be absolutely identical to our biochemistry. So, we might as well be as indigestible to them as cellulose is to us. We’d give them the equivalent of an alien tummy ache. That aside: if aliens arrive from there to here, then presumably they know how to produce ‘artificial’ food supplements – produce their nutritional requirements from raw materials. I mean there are no supermarkets or fast food joints along the interstellar highway. Of course if aliens have master-chefs, well perhaps they might like to take a human or two and sauté them up in a super-duper alien stew. There’s an awful lot of missing persons who forever seem to remain missing! So where on (or off) Earth is Jimmy Hoffa, the crew of Flight 19, Glenn Miller, the crew of the Mary Celeste, or for that matter the entire Ninth Roman Legion? Joking aside, if humans are a food of last resort, well then, the cosmos is way more resource impoverished than I would have thought possible. 

THEY’RE IMMUNE TO EARTH’S BACTERIA: Agree

Alien biochemistry wouldn’t be absolutely identical to our biochemistry. Our biochemistry isn’t 100% identical with the biochemistry of other terrestrial species. And thus, 99.9% of the diseases that afflict one species can’t be passed onto another species. My cat sneezes – I don’t catch their cold. I sneeze – my cats don’t catch my cold. I can’t catch Dutch Elm Disease; Elm trees are pretty safe from all the germs I carry around and about with me. So, the odds ET will catch terrestrial diseases and vice versa are pretty damn slim. But, another reason is that presumably ET is pretty skilled when it comes to medicine. If there was any chance Earth’s microorganisms could infect ET, well ET would have tested for that in advance and done the proper procedures to nullify any potential threat. The “War of the Worlds” scenario and resolution is ultimately bovine fertilizer. 

THEY DIDN’T PUT US HERE: Disagree

Why would aliens ‘create’ humans? Why do humans ‘create’ slavery or jobs or employ beasts of burden, even if mechanical, perhaps ultimately robotic? The ultimate answer: to get someone or something else to do the bloody hard work! If you vacation at a resort, you expect to be waited on hand-and-foot. Well, when Mr. ET arrived on this third rock resort, ET wanted to be waited on hand-and-foot too; and worshiped to boot. You’ll find lots of references to that in various cultural mythologies. So, ET created humans, not from dust or clay or even ribs but from manipulating pre-existing primate stock via their advanced knowledge of artificial selection breeding techniques. Humans too know all about artificial selection – how many unnatural breeds of dogs have we created? Is there a single domesticated plant or animal we haven’t in a sense ‘created’? When you stop and think about it, don’t humans too come in ‘breeds’ (only we call them races). 

THEY WON”T COME IN PEACE: Disagree

Many a scientist has warned that we shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves (that’s already too little and too late a wish) or seek out aliens. We might wish aliens to exist, but we must be careful what we wish for. A lot of that is based on all the examples of terrestrial exploration. The discovered are not usually treated well by the discoverer. Cue case histories of the American Indian, the Aztecs and Incas, the Australian aborigines, and all manner of other invasions perpetrated by one or more nations / cultures / peoples against another. All of our actual exploitation histories are reinforced by hundreds of Sci-Fi films and TV shows that suggest in no uncertain terms that when aliens discover Earth, Earthlings are up shit creek!

Ultimately, these sorts of terrestrial doings and undoings have two basic root causes – resources are one such cause. You need more land because you need expansion room for your ‘fruitful and multiplying’ population, and/or the natural resources found there. Perhaps however, if aliens can again get from there to here, then they already have the resources of the Milky Way Galaxy under their ‘thumbs’ – assuming thumbs of course – or at their fingertips (or should that be tentacle-tips?). Earth has nothing to offer in terms of additional real estate, water, energy, minerals, etc. that can’t be found closer to their home turf.

The second root cause is someone else, some other nation or nations is/are perceived as a threat. The threat(s) you perceive maybe military, maybe political, maybe cultural or maybe religious. If you deem yourself in the stronger position, you may decide to hit first, hit hard and hit often. If your next door neighbor is no threat to you and has nothing of value you want, you’re going to tend to just live and let live. Well as far as any technologically advanced aliens are concerned, this here third rock and inhabitants is no threat to them and has nothing of value they can’t acquire closer to home at vastly less effort and expense.

“Independence Day” and a thousand clones of that plot element are highly improbable in the extreme. Highly improbable is not of course the same as impossible. 

But, and why is there nearly always a but, it’s within the realm of possibility that there might be those aliens who parallel those humans who don’t mind sticking a knife in your back just because they derive great kicks and great pleasure out of doing so. No motive other than sadistic pleasure and a sense of being ‘king of the hill’. But then again, perhaps there’s also an interplanetary extraterrestrial police force to help curb the enthusiasm of such alien backstabbers.

Now what’s never mentioned, but really terrifying, and perhaps more likely and what we may really need to worry about is that they’ll come in peace alright, but as missionaries to spread the word that their version of a supreme being(s) is the only true version of a supreme being(s) and that all of us terrestrial heathen, pagan infidels had better see the error of our untrue faiths and convert to their extraterrestrial theology quick-smart. Although you’d hope that advanced alien beings would have long since out-evolved such religious nonsense, that’s not a given. That missionary scenario is even more frightening than them coming here with their ray guns blasting away. So if those extraterrestrial evangelists come knocking at your door, be afraid, be very afraid!

But ultimately there’s no point in worrying about things that we have no control over, and since we can’t hide Earth (and ourselves) in a technological cloak of invisibility, we’re at the mercy of ET: the good ET, the bad ET and the ugly ET. 

The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Part One

If the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a viable experiment and not a waste of time; if UFOs and ancient astronauts are facets that help document the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, then the very existence of an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence with technology has to be plausible in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s a long hard road to get from inorganic chemistry through to E.T. and there are many possible bottleneck hurdles that have to be overcome before the one evolves into the other. Goldilocks factors – not too this, not too that, but just right – have to be with you every step of the way. IMHO the major bottlenecks are the transition from unicellular to multicellular life and the evolutionary development and use of technology.

It’s been pointed out by others, and based on my readings I tend to have to agree, that astronomers (physical scientists) tend to be much more optimistic and supportive of the notion that advanced life forms in the Universe (extraterrestrial intelligence) are a dime-a-dozen relative to biologists (life scientists), who hedge their bets and who it must be said are presumably better qualified to pass judgments. So, taking things from a more biological perspective, what’s what?

For starters, our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe in that the fundamental laws, relations and principles of physics unite in such a way as to be ultimately bio-friendly. If the Universe wasn’t bio-friendly, we wouldn’t be here to comment on that. That’s not to say however, in relative contrast, that many (most) parts of the Universe aren’t overly bio-friendly. You’d be hard-pressed to survive and thrive in the depths of a stellar core, heading down a Black Hole, vacationing on the surface of a White Dwarf or in the hard vacuum of space itself.  So, overall the physics of the Universe displays the physics of a Goldilocks Universe, but actually very few addresses within an overall Goldilocks Universe are really, by our definition, Goldilocks. However, starting with bio-friendly physics, where do we go from that point? Well, physics begat inorganic chemistry. That’s step number one, and clearly that’s easy because there’s an awful lot of inorganic chemistry in our Universe.

Going from inorganic chemistry to organic chemistry isn’t difficult either. Interstellar space is full of dust and gases made up of organic chemicals; ditto many of the planets and moons within our solar system (i.e. – Titan, a moon of Saturn) have organics being part and parcel of their composition, and comets, asteroids and meteors too can contain organic compounds.

Judging by how quickly organic chemistry turned into biochemistry (the origin of life) on the early Planet Earth, it’s not difficult to generate simple proto-cellular to unicellular life forms if the conditions (adequate energy, temperatures, environments) are Goldilocks conditions.

Yet life, even microbial life, is still very, very complex (try making a microbe from scratch if you doubt it). The fact that life arose from scratch on Earth within a very, very short span of geological time after the planet formed is a bit suspect IMHO. But what if Earth were seeded by microbial life forms already in existence from space (or deliberately seeded by extraterrestrials as the Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has proposed)? Now I realize that just puts off the origin of life question to another time(s) and place(s). However, given the vastness of the cosmos is far greater than that of our finite globe, and given that the cosmos existed for vastly longer periods of time before our sun, solar system and home planet came into existence, such additional time and space easily turns the improbable into a near certainty. And once established somewhere, then life could spread throughout that time and space, until it reached our young planet.

Earth arose billions of years after the universe and our galaxy had evolved, ample time for life to have arisen elsewhere, and seed the early Earth. This is the concept of panspermia. We know that comets, meteors, and the cosmic dust of outer space are chock-o-block full of complex organic molecules. We know that simple terrestrial life can survive the outer space environment if suitably shielded – and it doesn’t take much to do the shielding. We know that surface bits from planets/moons can be ejected into space, carry a cargo of microbes, and land on another planet, even eons later with the microbes still viable. Of course 99.999% of all such microbial life will be doomed to forever wander in space or crash onto a cold, surface of a planet with no atmosphere or water, or plunge into a star, etc. But, sheer numbers will insure that now and again some microbes will land on a hospitable abode and be fruitful and multiple and evolve. The interesting bit is that if then, then now. And thus panspermia will be happening today. Certainly some meteorites which have impacted Earth have inside them ‘organized elements’ suggestive of microbial structures – the Murchison Meteorite from Australia is one such stone. The problem is terrestrial contamination as there are often lengthy time periods between their fall and subsequent discovery. As an aside, if Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe are correct (and I believe they are), microbes (bacteria and viruses) impacting Earth today are largely responsible for some select or various disease epidemics and pandemics, past present, and no doubt future.

On Earth, microbes rule, OK? The biomass of all the bacteria, etc. put together easily equals the biomass of every other multicellular plant and animal added together. And microbes can live in environments where multicellular critters fear to tread and often can’t: from the coldest terrestrial environments, up to the near boiling temperatures, from deep underground to the heights of the atmosphere, from inside water-cooled nuclear reactors and the interior of rocks, to intensely saline, acidic and alkaline environments, to ecosystems where the sun never shines, like the abyssal depths.

They can even survive outer space. Bacteria survived on the surface of the Moon – on Surveyor Three. This was possibly the most significant discovery of the entire Apollo Moon program and it hardly even rated a mention. Astronauts from the Apollo 12 mission brought back to Earth parts of the unmanned Surveyor Three Lunar Lander. Terrestrial bacteria on those parts survived the lunar vacuum, solar radiations (UV, etc.), the massive temperature extremes, and lack of water and nutrients. Experiments since then in low earth orbit have confirmed that given just minimal shielding, bacteria can boldly go!

You’d be aware of how difficult it is to totally sterilize something, be it hospital equipment or a spacecraft bound for a Martian landing. They’re tough – have you ever read about a mass extinction event where a bacterial species, unlike say the multicellular dinosaurs, went poof? Microbes are easy to transport. They can be blasted off the surface of the Earth, shielded from radiation by the debris, and survive to land on another world and be fruitful and multiply. There’s little doubt that somewhere way out there, terrestrial bacteria have hitched a ride to the stars, bolding going where lots of microbes have gone before! Translated, I firmly expect that the universe is teaming with life in all sorts of places. The less than glamorous catch is that LGM is not going to stand for Little Green Men, but Little Green Microbes.

To be continued...

Panspermia: The Seeding of the Cosmos with Life

Scientists are deeply divided about the likelihood of the existence of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations – our peers and betters – in the cosmos. They are much less divided over the likelihood of finding simple unicellular or microbial life which they pretty much agree should be relatively commonplace. The assumption there is that origin of life (pre-biotic) chemistry is pretty easy and straightforward, even though we haven’t yet created life in a test tube. An alternative scenario is that while an origin of life event maybe rare, microbial life can easily spread throughout interstellar space, ultimately in some cases finding suitable abodes to be fruitful and multiply on. That concept is known as Panspermia.

Life on Earth arose very quickly after the planet’s formation. There are two competing theories to explain this. The first is that it’s relatively easy for life to arise naturally, on-site, in short time frames once suitable environmental conditions present themselves. The other explanation, Panspermia, suggests that unicellular life forms present in outer space (in meteors, comets, cosmic dust, etc.) constantly seed planetary environments, and if those environments are environmentally friendly, life flourishes and evolves. Here I suggest that Panspermia is the more probable of origin of life scenarios. It not only allows for a rapid origin of life event on Earth, but for lots of life throughout our own galaxy (perhaps beyond). The evolutionary road to intelligence and technology is another matter. Here I’m just concerned with life – full stop.

When it comes to explaining the quick-smart origin of terrestrial life, I am quite partial to the Panspermia hypothesis. So, my take on the extraordinary early genesis of life on Earth is something supportive of an idea that we were ‘seeded’ by primitive microorganisms, viruses, or spores that pervade outer space. Put another way, the on-site purely terrestrial origin of life is such an improbable event (IMHO) that it’s unreasonable to expect it to have happened very rapidly (there needs to be lots, and lots, and lots of Goldilocks factors that come together just-so). I suggest that the origin of life, from scratch, on-site, is not very easy. If a non-intelligent Mother Nature could create life that easily, from scratch, on-site, in relatively short time frames, then you’d think that hundreds, if not thousands of highly intellectual scientists (biochemists, organic chemists, biophysicists, etc.) would have created a proto-cell in a test tube by now. They haven’t. So, it’s hard. Now the unstated assumption here is that there’s pretty much just one pathway to life (as we know it) – terrestrial life – and like a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle, but with 50,000 potential pieces, of which 45,000 are false leads or dead ends, it’s difficult. If however there are 50,000 pathways, or ways of assembling that 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle, any one of which terminates in life, then that’s a horse of another color. Even if all 50,000 pathways are hard, the probability has increased remarkably in favor of one of those 50,000 pathways occurring.

Of course the Panspermia hypothesis just puts off the ultimate origin(s) of life event(s) to another elsewhere and else-when, albeit a vastly, many orders of magnitude more vastly, elsewhere and else-when.

As time goes on, the probability of a complex (and the origin of life is hard and complex) or improbable event increases. For example, if you wait long enough, it’s close to certainty that you’ll be dealt a royal flush, or if you shuffle a randomly organized deck of cards long enough, you’ll get an organized arrangement of suits and runs within suits the same as existed as when the deck was new and sealed in its box. But, if that royal flush happened first deal, or the newly organized deck of cards emerged first shuffle, you’d be very surprised and probably suspect some other force at work – sleight of hand hanky-panky magic most likely being afoot. Well, Panspermia is the sleight of hand magic trick in this case. 

My simplistic reasoning is to examine the odds of independent individual biogenesis on suitable terrestrial planets vis-à-vis seeding those same terrestrial planets via Panspermia. I would think that it’s more likely to have origin of life success if you plant an existing ‘seed’ in a suitable environment, relative to having independent long cause and effect chain of events leading to a biogenesis.  In other words, is it more likely to have one (or a very few) origin of life events that ultimately seed lots of planets, or hundreds to thousands of totally independent origins of life?

Let’s suppose that there’s, say, 1000 relatively new Earth-like planetary environments in our galaxy’s habitable zone that have formed in, say, the past million years or so. What odds these abodes will have life on them in say roughly the same time frame as our own Earth did?

If there are only independent on-site origins of life events that each rely of a chain of involved or complicated Goldilocks required cause and effect events that are necessary for that proto-cell to come into being, then perhaps (guesstimate) only, say, 300 of these  planets will become fruitful. It certainly wouldn’t be near to 100%. Now I have to guesstimate as a search of the literature for on-site origin of life probabilities is a worthless exercise. Everyone else’s guesstimates are all over the map! So I guess my guesstimate is as valid as any other! Why 300 out of a 1000? Well, I’m taking the approximately middle ground between the two extremes of near zero percent probability, and near 100% certainty, then erring down toward a more conservative side of that.

Now if Panspermia is operating, (I assume that the Panspermic spore cloud has spread equally throughout the galactic habitable zone over billions of years), and viable seeds from space are sown on our 1000 planets, then one would expect a higher percentage, say 800 planets (guesstimate) to become fruitful. It still wouldn’t be 100% - there are just too many random factors at work – but getting closer to 100%.

Of course if there’s a cosmic Johnny Appleseed* around, then your percentage could easily rise to allow say 990 planets out of 1000 to bear fruit.

What’s a cosmic Johnny Appleseed you ask? Well, here I rely on the thoughts of Francis Crick**. While not the only scientist to ever propose this, he throws a real monkey-wrench into the works in that he has proposed that extraterrestrial intelligence(s) has deliberately seeded suitable planets – “Directed Panspermia” – including us presumably If Crick is right, that really throws calculations for the probability of how prevalent life is in the universe totally out of whack!

The Appleseed idea is akin to the idea that if there is no Mother Nature and you have barren ground then you’d better be prepared to wait a LONG time for something to happen. If there is a Mother Nature, she can seed barren ground in her higgledy-piggledy fashion, and maybe relatively little happens – a few tuffs of grass here and there. But if man (Appleseed) seeds that same ground, you can be assured to a higher degree of confidence that results (a lush lawn) are more likely as not ensured. 

It’s a concept hinted at in “Star Trek” to explain why there are so many hominoid races at roughly the exact same level of technology, out of all reasonable probability. [Of course we know the reason why – Captain Kirk meets and squares off against a typical 6 cm trilobite isn’t very riveting TV, and even a T-Rex isn’t a match for a phaser!]

It also reminds me that as a child I tried to write a very amateurish short story about this family of aliens that had a picnic on Earth several billions of years ago. They left their rubbish behind, which of course was ultimately the cause of our biogenesis event! Now that’s such an obvious plot scenario that it has been independently invented dozens (if not hundreds) of times over. Regardless of how many times it’s been thought of, the idea is entirely possible. There’s no violation of any of the laws of physics anywhere in the scenario. No violations remind me that I recall reading various variations of the following theme in quantum physics – ‘anything not forbidden is compulsory’, or, ‘anything that can happen, will happen’ (at least in the Many Worlds scenario of quantum physics).

 

The Appleseed concept isn’t quite as strange as it might first appear. Haven’t we deposited microorganisms on the Moon; maybe even on Mars (God forbid) if there’s been any slipups in the sterilization of any of the probes that have landed or crashed on the Martian surface. Given that sterilization, aren’t we worried about our biological contamination of pristine environmental friendly abodes of exobiological significance; didn’t we deliberately plunge the main Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter’s atmosphere rather than risk any possibility of it impacting and contaminating Jupiter’s moon Europa? (That might not have been foolproof as parts of the Jovian atmosphere could in itself be environmentally friendly!)  Then too, even Carl Sagan once suggested seeding the atmosphere of Venus with photosynthetic microorganisms with a long term view to terra-forming that planet. If it ends up that the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy is one – terrestrial humanity, it might be the case that we seed the cosmos with life, boldly spreading our germs where no germs have gone before!

It might however have been difficult to have had a cosmic Appleseed 4.5 billion years ago (i.e. – seeding our Earth) in that that might not have been quite enough time for the universe to have evolved a technological civilization capable of doing any seeding – the universe only being some nine billion years old thereabouts and keeping in mind that it takes a while for the cosmos to create the sorts of atoms that are necessary for life. However, that’s no longer the case – a cosmic Appleseed(s) could well exist in the here and now.

Why become a cosmic Appleseed? If you were an extraterrestrial civilization who thought that your planet was the proverbial IT as far as life in the cosmos goes, then you might want to seed suitable sites in the cosmos and spread your collective planet’s genes around. Spreading your genes ain’t much use, but your planet’s microbes, from which you may have evolved, are a suitable substitute. Your planet’s life spreads throughout the cosmos aided by your civilization; it survives, to evolve another day.

Anyway, Appleseed or no Appleseed, I suggest that if you take the concept of just plain Panspermia into account, you can have both a very early genesis of life on Earth, and lots of life within the cosmos. Actually, I’ll propose John’s ‘law’ – the longer it takes for an origin of life event to occur, the more probable that it’s an on-site event. The shorter the time frame, the higher the probability that it’s a Panspermic event. So, if life first arose on Earth say 2 to 3 billion years after formation, then I’d say it was an on-site and purely native event. Alas, since it happened within 500 million years of that formation, I have to cast my vote for a Panspermic seeding from outer space.

Further, Panspermia easily explains a re-origin of life or a re-re-origin of life event on an early Earth following any heavy bombardment wipeout(s). That is to say, at the time of the formation of our solar system and Planet Earth, there was a heck of a lot of rubble floating around the neighborhood: rubble way bigger than the asteroid which KO-ed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Visible signs of that are visible today on our Moon as large craters, craters which nearly saturate some parts of the lunar surface. Such large chunks of rubble would have impacted our young Earth again and again and again before ultimately most of the rubble was consumed by the various planetary bodies. Any origin of life event would have gone for naught if a hunk of rubble blasted it away. But, given Panspermia, you’d get an immediate re-seeding, and again, and again, until finally relative peace reigned and life took hold for good.

Finally, there’s one other variation to the Panspermia theme – Bullet Panspermia. The idea here is the exchange of materials between various planetary objects in our solar system. Large impacts (asteroids, comets, etc.) on abodes can knock out small rock-sized chunks of material which can later impact in turn onto other abodes. This works especially well for low gravity, less dense atmosphere abodes. For example, we have lunar and Martian meteorites on Earth. No doubt some terrestrial materials have made the return journey. No doubt Martian material has probably made it to Venus and to the Jovian satellites. The Jovian moons have probably exchanged materials among themselves and some has probably made it to Mars and Earth itself. And while terrestrial or lunar or Martian, etc. rocks can probably make it to Jupiter and Saturn, the reverse isn’t likely. Now, what if some of those rocks happen to have microbial hitchhikers?

Then too, some of those Bullet Panspermic rocks just might escape our solar system entirely. A tiny fraction might eventually drift into neighboring solar systems, and perhaps a fraction of those will seed suitable planetary environments in those systems. Of course the reverse also applies!

Conclusions: The entire business of the origin of life and how common life is (or is not) in the universe is complicated. When it comes to life in the universe, its origin(s) are probably not either/or scenarios. There’s no doubt there’s been at least one on-site origin of life, and probably many. There’s no doubt (in my mind) that Panspermia contributes, to a greater or lesser degree, to populating the cosmos with life, however simple. Finally, there could be a cosmic Johnny Appleseed or two around as well.

*Johnny Appleseed (born John Chapman) was a pioneering American nurseryman who planted lots of apple trees in Ohio, Illinois and Indiana in the early 1800’s becoming a legend in his own time

**Yes, THAT Francis Crick, of DNA/Nobel Prize fame.

E.T.’s Head Start

Planet Earth has been a pretty dynamic place regarding human’s (in “Star Trek” lingo) boldly going activities, movements and migrations; comings and goings; some major and some minor. As a parallel, I’d like to think of our Milky Way Galaxy as an equally dynamic place but with, obviously, alien’s boldly going activities; their movements and migrations; comings and goings; some major and some minor. The logical supposition that aliens are part of our dynamic galaxy, while humans are still relatively confined to boldly going on one small abode within that galaxy suggests that E.T. has had a head start on us when it comes to boldly going.

 

Planet Earth is roughly some 4.5 billion years old. Microbial life forms first appeared roughly 500 million years after Earth (and the Sun and accompanying solar system) formed from interstellar gas, dust and debris. So it’s taken about four billion years for us to get from primordial pond scum to where our civilization is today.  We’ve come a long way baby – unfortunately the accent is still on the word “baby”.

Our Universe is 13.7 billion years old – at least that’s when the origin of our Universe happened – the Big Bang event of 13.7 billion years ago. However, it took a while before any life could appear in that newly formed Universe. The Big Bang event only formed hydrogen and helium, and you can’t make life from just that. The heavier elements from which life is made up had to be cooked up in the hearts of massive stars first. Fortunately, really massive stars have very short life spans (as stars go) and they end in a bang, not with a whimper – they result in a supernovae – blowing up and scattering those heavy elements far and wide to become part of the gas, dust and debris that ultimately forms new stars and solar systems – stars like our Sun; solar systems with planets, like our Earth. 

Some 3.7 billion years post Big Bang; our own Milky Way Galaxy took shape, ultimately composed of billions and billions of stars, some of which were (and are) those massive stellar, come supernovae objects. It didn’t take too awfully long before our galaxy had enough heavy elements now incorporated into planetary systems that chemical evolution could now do its cosmic thing; morphing into biological evolution. That was more likely as not the case some two billion years after our galaxy formed. That means that life could have been getting its start elsewhere within the galaxy some 3.5 billion years before our Planet Earth formed (which was some 5.5 billion years after the galaxy took shape).

Translated, an E.T. could have had a 3.5 billion year head start on us – though there wasn’t of course any ‘us’ then. By the time Planet Earth was just a billion years old and terrestrial pond scum 500 million years old, one or more E.T.’s had not only reached the same theatrical stage that humans now find themselves on but had further advanced to achieve interstellar space travel, to pack up and boldly go, and explore the cosmos, up close and personal. Consider it only takes roughly ten million years (at a conservative estimate) to have had the time to have boldly gone everywhere within our galaxy, well one has to just accept the probability that here, Planet Earth, being part of everywhere, has been discovered, explored, maybe colonized by E.T. 

Now all this is based on the assumption that standard Darwinian evolution can go from microbial pond scum to intelligence within four billion years (example: Earth and humans) and that that would be the case elsewhere. It’s the only reasonable assumption we can make extrapolating from a statistical sample of one. However, once intelligence is reached, coupled with the ability to apply and manipulate technology, natural Darwinian evolution, and rates of evolutionary change, they no longer apply to that intelligence. Further evolutionary advancement, artificial selection, genetic engineering, bioengineering, will proceed at whatever pace the intelligence wants, restrained only and ultimately only by the physical laws, relationships and principles of physics that rule the cosmos. Even if some intelligences minimise their artificial selection for various ethical reasons (say designer babies) or on environmental grounds (genetically designed crops), that can’t be expected of each and every such intelligence. For some, it’s going to be open slather and anything goes. Whatever it takes to boldly go might take on special significance if your parent star was about to go poof or some other natural calamity was about due to wipe out your race and you need to get out of town quick-smart. 

Some intelligences will alter whatever needs to be altered (if anything) to enable them to boldly go and head out into the wider cosmos. Even if such an intelligence were situated 

right on the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy, and even if they only achieve a maximum of 1% light speed (think conservative), they still reach the opposite side of our galaxy within ten million years (a mere drop in the cosmic bucket of time), reaching all points in-between in lesser time frames. Like a ripple spreading out in a shallow pond, no part of the pond gets missed.

Between three and a half billion years ago and today, assuming at least one E.T. goes exploring, we have the ripple in the pond. We (Planet Earth) get at least one visit. But say there are many independent E.T. civilizations that boldly go – say one starts to boldly go every ten million years, though it’s probably way more frequently than that, but let’s err on the side of extreme conservatism. The pond (our galaxy) gets ripple after ripple and ripple, or wave after wave of those boldly going. That translates into a very conservative 300 ripples that’s washed across the shores of Planet Earth over the last three and a half billion years.

But, even if we have one and only one parent E.T. boldly going three and a half billion years ago, that doesn’t translate of necessity into just one ripple. Assume E.T. explores the galaxy – does E.T. collectively then return to home base (that’s two ripples) – mission accomplished? That makes little sense. Humans didn’t explore out of Africa, explore all of Planet Earth, and then collectively return to inhabit Africa and only Africa. No, we need to assume our lone E.T. stops off at interesting and suitable abodes on the way and settles down. It’s not just exploration but colonization – you gotta stop now and again and rest your boots! Some of those colonies will themselves resume exploration and some colonization. The process repeats until the galaxy is not only explored, but settled. There’s been way more than ample time for that to have occurred – many times over in fact.

Think of the human parallel. Some humans migrated out of Africa and settled in Europe. Some Europeans migrated out of Europe and settled in the Americas and Australia and some went back to Africa - Lots of ripples. Lots of peoples explored and colonized lots of areas; some making the return journey; some not. Moving on to more modern times, things haven’t changed, except exploration/colonization is now on a much smaller scale.

Though exploration and colonization have mainly ceased now because our globe is finite, regions still experience pond ripples – exploration and migration on a small scale – even tourists’ count in the ripple effect. New York didn’t become colonised and established then left to stagnate – no one ever moving in or out – existing in isolation. People from New York visit other places (ripples); some New Yorkers migrate elsewhere (more ripples); people visit and migrate to New York (ripples and more ripples).

Now in this analogy, Planet Earth represents the Milky Way Galaxy; New York represents Planet Earth. Various aliens within the Milky Way Galaxy ripple their way past (or stop off on) Planet Earth like some people on Earth ripple past (or stop off in) New York.  

Okay, advanced aliens have been, probably still are rippling around us. If we extrapolate modern human civilization some 3.5 billion years into the future – an impossible task I might add that’s well beyond human imagination* – well that’s the level where some E.T.’s might be in the here and now. Let’s just say in Superman lingo, they would have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men – they would be for all practical purposes – ‘gods’. 

My Projected Timeline:

13.7 Billion Years Ago: Birth of our Universe via the Big Bang event.

10 Billion Years Ago: Formation of our Milky Way Galaxy.

8 Billion Years Ago: First life forms (E.T. ‘pond scum’) appear.

4.5 Billion Years Ago: The Sun, solar system, and Planet Earth form.

4 Billion Years Ago: Terrestrial ‘pond scum’ is now on the scene.

4 Billion Years Ago: First E.T. intelligence(s) should have evolved.

3.5 Billion Years Ago: One or more E.T. intelligence should have explored and colonised the Milky Way Galaxy.

10 Million Years Ago: The first evolutionary stirrings of what leads to us, our civilization and technology.

Ancient Times: The mythological ‘God’ and ‘gods’ (ancient astronauts) bear witness to E.T.’s ‘boldly going’.

Modern Times: UFOs bear witness to E.T.’s ‘boldly going’.

*We have great difficulty in forecasting the weather a week in advance (often less) even though meteorology is all grounded in known natural physical laws, relationships and principles. Human activity is based on anything but. If the weather is chaos, humans are chaos cubed.

Exobiology: Bibliography: Part One

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe one needs a solid grounding in the relevant literature. A comprehensive relevant bibliography would run to many thousands of pages and be rather off-putting. So, perhaps something on a slightly smaller scale might be more in order to help the novice get started. 

For something that doesn’t yet exist, extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise, has hatched a massive amount of literature, both technical and popular, in English and otherwise. There are speculative books, articles, documentaries, etc. that number in the tens of thousands. Add the sci-fi contributions into the mix, and you have tens of thousands more entries. Here are just samplings of some of the non-fictional monographs that have touched on some of the topics raised so far.

Further Readings: Exobiology/Astrobiology in General

Aczel, Amir D.; Probability 1: The Book That Proves There Is Life In Outer Space; Harcourt, Inc., San Diego, California; 1998:

Barnett, Alex & Shostak, Seth; Cosmic Company: The Search for Life in the Universe; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2003:  

Baross, John A. & Sullivan, Woodruff T. (Editors); Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2007:

Basalla, George; Civilized Life in the Universe: Scientists on Intelligent Extraterrestrials; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2006:

Bova, Ben; Faint Echoes, Distant Stars: The Science and Politics of Finding Life Beyond Earth; Perennial, New York; 2005:

Clark, Andrew J.H. & Clark, David H.; Aliens: Can We Make Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence?; Fromm International, New York; 2000: 

Cohen, Jack & Stewart, Ian; Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life; Ebury Press, London; 2002: 

Darling, David; Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology; Basic Books, New York; 2001:  

Genta, Giancarlo; Lonely Minds in the Universe: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence; Copernicus Books, New York; 2007:

Heidmann, Jean; Extraterrestrial Intelligence; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 1995: 

Impey, Chris; The Living Cosmos: Our Search for Life in the Universe; Random House, New York; 2007:

Impey, Chris (Editor); Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2010:

Jakosky, Bruce; The Search for Life on Other Planets; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 1998: 

Kasting, James; How to Find A Habitable Planet; Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey; 2010:

Koerner, David & LeVay, Simon; Here Be Dragons: The Scientific Quest for Extraterrestrial Life; Oxford University Press, New York; 2000:

Michaud, Michael A.G.; Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials; Copernicus Books, New York; 2007:

Parker, Barry; Alien Life: The Search for Extraterrestrials and Beyond; Plenum Trade, New York; 1998:

Pickover, Clifford; The Science of Aliens; Basic Books, New York; 1998: 

Shapiro, Robert; Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life Beyond Earth; John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York; 1999:

Shostak, Seth; Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life; Berkeley Hills Books, Berkeley, California; 1998: 

Sullivan, Walter; We Are Not Alone: The Continuing Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence; Dutton Books, New York; 2^nd Edition; 1993:

Verma, Surendra; Why Aren’t They Here? The Question of Life on Other Worlds; Icon Books, Cambridge; 2007:

Further Readings: Life Not As We Know It

Ward, Peter; Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life; Penguin Books, New York; 2005:

Further Readings: The Origin and Evolution of Our Universe: Cosmology

Burbidge, Geoffrey & Narlikar, Jayant V.; Facts and Speculations in Cosmology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2008:

Carr, Bernard (Editor); Universe or Multiverse?; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2007:

Chown, Marcus; Afterglow of Creation: Decoding the Message from the Beginning of Time; Faber and Faber, London; Revised Edition; 2010:

Chown, Marcus; The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead: Dispatches from the Frontline of Science; Faber and Faber, London; 2007:

Clegg, Brian; Before the Big Bang: The Prehistory of Our Universe; St. Martin’s Press, N.Y.; 2009:

Davies, Paul; The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?;

Allen Lane, London

; 2006:

Gates, Evalyn; Einstein’s Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe; W.W. Norton & Co., New York; 2009:

Gilmore, Robert; Once Upon A Universe: Not-So-Grimm Tales of Cosmology; Copernicus Books, New York; 2003:

Gleiser, Marcelo; Imperfect Creation: Cosmos, Life and Nature’s Hidden Code; Black, Inc.; Melbourne, Victoria; 2010:

Goldsmith, Donald; The Runaway Universe: The Race to Find the Future of the Cosmos; Basic Books, New York; 2000:

Gribbin, John; In Search of the Multiverse;

Allen Lane, London

; 2009:

Guth, Alan H.; The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for A New Theory of Cosmic Origins; Vintage, London; 1998:

Hawking, Stephen; A Brief History of Time; Bantam Books, New York; 2^nd Edition; 1996:

Hawking, Stephen & Mlodinow, Leonard; A Briefer History of Time; Bantam Press, London; 2005:

Hawking, Stephen & Mlodinow, Leonard; The Grand Design; Bantam Press, London; 2010:

Hooper, Dan; Dark Cosmos: In Search of Our Universe’s Missing Mass and Energy; Smithsonian Books, New York; 2006:

Kaku, Michio; Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos; Penguin Books, London; 2005:

Moring, Gary F.; The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Theories of the Universe; Alpha Books, New York; 2002:

Rees, Martin; Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others; Free Press, London; 2002:

Silk, Joseph; On the Shores of the Unknown: A Short History of the Universe; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2005:

Silk, Joseph; The Infinite Cosmos: Questions from the Frontiers of Cosmology; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2006:

Singh, Simon; Big Bang: The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You Need to Know About It; Harper Perennial, London; 2005:

Vilenkin, Alex; Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes; Hill & Wang, New York; 2006:

Further Readings: The Origin of Life and Panspermia

Crick, Francis; Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature; Simon and Schuster, New York; 1981: 

Davies, Paul; The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life;

Allen Lane, Ringwood, Victoria

; 1998:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1978:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Diseases from Space; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1979

Ponnamperuma, Cyril (Editor); Comets and the Origin of Life; D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland; 1981:

Seargent, David A. J.; Genesis Stone? The Murchison Meteorite and the Beginnings of Life; Karagi Publications, The Entrance, NSW: 1991:

Further Readings: Microbes

Cockell, Charles S.; Impossible Extinction: Natural catastrophes and the Supremacy of the Microbial World; Cambridge University Press, Canbridge; 2003:

Friend, Tim; The Third Domain: The Untold Story of Archaea and the Future of Biotechnology; Joseph Henry Press, Washington, D.C.; 2007:

Gold, Thomas; The Deep, Hot Biosphere; Springer-Verlag: 1999:  

Taylor, Michael Ray; Dark Life: Martian Nanobacteria, Rock-Eating Cave Bugs, and Other Extreme Organisms of Inner Earth and Outer Space; Scribner, New York, 1999:

Wharton, David A.; Life at the Limits: Organisms in Extreme Environments; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2002:

Exobiology: Germs from Space: Part Two

So what to make of the late Sir Fred Hoyle’s et al. claims or ideas that some of our terrestrial disease outbreaks originated from outer space? It’s a variation on the panspermia idea – life on Earth originated from extraterrestrial microbiological life forms seeding our planet.

The Fred Hoyle Scenario:

It’s well established that interstellar space is full of gas and dust. What came as a surprise was the unexpected discovery that many of those interstellar regions are also rich in organic molecules. Organic means that the compounds contain carbon, one of the elemental building blocks central to biology – along with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, also well represented in interstellar gas and dust clouds. Many dozens of organic compounds have now been verified in the reaches of outer space, more than a few highly complex organic molecules, many associated in one way or another with life and biological processes.

Also verified has been the discovery that actual life forms, albeit simple microbial ones like bacteria, can, if not thrive, at least survive the rigors of outer space with minor shielding (say dust particles) to protect again harmful radiation. Terrestrial bacteria have survived three years on the Moon as demonstrated when the Apollo 12 astronauts brought back from the Moon pieces of the Surveyor III Lunar Lander, which had landed on the lunar surface three years prior. Experiments in Earth orbit have confirmed that some terrestrial microbes can boldly go in the cold and vacuum of space. 

Not so verified, but highly plausible, is the idea that simple life forms can be transported throughout the galaxy, hitching rides on dust particles, even larger objects like small hunks of rock that were ejected from their home planet. Recall the Martian meteorite (ALH84001) found in Antarctica which showed various lines of evidence that it was home to ancient fossilized Martian microbes. The controversy over that still hasn’t been resolved to the satisfaction of all.

Comets are known to be rich in organics, ditto some asteroids, and some have claimed that debris, say chips of an asteroid that have impacted and landed on Earth as a meteorite have ‘organised elements’ inside them suggestive of unicellular life forms. The possibility of course exists that those ‘organised elements’ were terrestrial contamination, since it can often be a long time between the fall of a meteor, and the discovery and analysis of the meteorite it became.   

The late Sir Fred Hoyle, along with several colleagues, most notable of which was Chandra Wickramasinghe, went a few steps further. Not only were there simple life forms in the depths of outer space, not only could they have seeded suitable planets with life – like Earth – but they to this very day rain down upon us. Further, they provide a far more logical explanation for various epidemics, maybe pandemics, experienced here on Earth. Why should some of these extraterrestrial bacteria be potentially infectious to us?  Well, if these microbes are the same sorts of microbes as seeded Earth ‘in the beginning’, that is were responsible for kick-starting life on Earth; providing the origin or life on Earth, then we share a common ancestry with them. We evolved from them over all those billions of years. Looking at it another way, we, in fact all life on Earth, really isn’t terrestrial life, but extraterrestrial life. We are the aliens!

Anyway, how does it happen? Specifically that is, or at least one mechanism, Earth’s orbit intersects now and again a stream of bacteria-laden cometary dust and debris – germs from outer space – that impact Earth’s atmosphere and ultimately filter down (perhaps incorporated in rain drops) to ground level and do their infectious thing.

However, to be fair, to state that their ideas are controversial is very definitely an understatement. For their side of the story, you’ll need to examine the evidence they present in there books (see further readings).

So, is there a conflict with extraterrestrial bacteria escaping out of a UFO and having no impact on the terrestrial biosphere and extraterrestrial bacteria arriving from interstellar gas and dust clouds, or cometary and/or asteroid debris? Well, there’s no conflict IMHO. The two sources of alien microbes are just that – two independent extraterrestrial sources that have no connection with each other. Of course relatively few experts in infectious diseases give any credibility to Hoyle’s theory so that might eliminate that. Then too many scientists don’t give any credibility to the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), hence to alien microbes originating from that source. However, whether none, one or both ideas have or lack credibility doesn’t result in any ultimate contradictions.

Further readings:

Hoyle, Fred; Evolution from Space: The Omni Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution, London on 12 January 1982; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1982:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Cosmic Life-Force; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1988: 

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Diseases from Space; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1979:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Evolution from Space; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1981:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; From Grains to Bacteria; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1984:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Life on Mars? The Case for A Cosmic Heritage; Clinical Press Limited, Bristol; 1997: [Note: This title is very misleading. It has nearly bugger-all to do with Mars but everything to do with panspermia.]

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1978:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Living Comets; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1985:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Our Place in the Cosmos: The Unfinished Revolution; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1993:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Proofs That Life Is Cosmic; Memoirs of the Institute of Fundamental Studies, Sri Lanka; December 1982:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Space Travellers: The Bringers of Life; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1981:

Hoyle, Fred, Wickramasinghe, Chandra & Watkins, John; Viruses from Space; University College Cardiff Press, Cardiff; 1986:

Ponnamperuma, Cyril (Editor); Comets and the Origin of Life; D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland; 1981:

Seargent, David A.J.; Genesis Stone? The Murchison Meteorite and the Beginnings of Life; Karagi Publications, The Entrance, NSW: 1991:

Exobiology: Germs from Space: Part One

In the original “War of the Worlds” novel, our Martian invaders where thwarted not by us high and mighty humans, but by humble terrestrial bacteria who just ate them up! The question therefore is would extraterrestrial ‘bacteria’ find us (terrestrial life) a nice snack? The answers could be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

The War of the Worlds Scenario:

No, I don’t mean by this that there is any analogy between the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) and alien invasion, a typical example being the “War of the Worlds” (be it the original novel, the movies, the TV series, the musical, etc.). I refer here to the ultimate resolution of that alien war scenario – that ultimately what defeated the Martians were terrestrial microbes – bacteria to which the alien invaders had no resistance. That was a really excellent plot device – it was also lousy science! If there is one truism in biology, it is that cross-species infection is rare. There are of course a few exceptions to the cross-species infection rule, but they remain by far a minor, minor, minority. Micro-organisms tend to be species specific in terms of their nastiness. Thus, if I sneeze, my cats aren’t in any danger of catching my cold – and vice versa. I’m not about to infect any of my garden plants by touching them with my dirty soiled hands – I’m not likely to become infected with a deadly disease from a maple tree. If a wild bird has beak and feather disease and my cats should happen to catch and eat it – well, the bird was doomed anyway, and I’m not going to have to rush the feline predator off to the vet for shots! So, if it is relatively unlikely for one terrestrial species to be a contagion towards another terrestrial species (unless they are very closely related – evolutionary speaking), then what odds a terrestrial species will be deadly to an extraterrestrial species – and vice versa.

What’s the point of all this? Well, if UFOs can be explained by the ETH, then it is unlikely in the extreme that the ETH exists in a species vacuum. That is, ‘ufonauts’ (for lack of a better term), more commonly known as ‘the greys’, will be associated with their extraterrestrial micro-organisms (maybe ever their extraterrestrial equivalents of head lice, mites, bedbugs, cockroaches and rats depending on how hygienic they are). We do not exist in a bacteria free environment, nor could we even if we wanted to. ‘Ufonaut’ bodies and their UFOs will be as ‘bacteria-ridden’ as our bodies, our homes, automobiles, and in fact any and all other bits and pieces of our environment. We haven’t endured or experienced any pandemic or epidemic due to micro-organisms associated with ‘ufonauts’, and presumably ‘ufonauts’ haven’t caught cold or smallpox or the measles from microbes associated with us, our cats, birds, or any other terrestrial life forms.

So, UFO sceptics can’t invoke the “War of the Worlds” resolution as an argument that the UFO ETH is an invalid one. So, by all means, shake hands with an extraterrestrial (ET - if you meet him/her/it) and don’t worry about any resulting medical bill – it ain’t gonna happen.

However, this does open up an interesting research area – one I’ve never, ever, seen mentioned in the UFO literature. That is, extraterrestrial microbiology. If UFOs are piloted by alien beings, biological beings that must be associated with extraterrestrial micro-organisms, then presumably said ET microbes have entered into our terrestrial biosphere. Presumably, said ET microbes would be so biochemically distinct or unique that any microbiologist examining same would immediately note that something was afoot! Of course, if you’re not looking out for it, you’re unlikely to find it or get that ‘eureka’ moment even if you do find it. Perhaps UFO abductees or UFO landing sites should be examined for the presence of extraterrestrial microbes.

So what then to make of the late Sir Fred Hoyle’s et al. claims or ideas that some of our terrestrial disease outbreaks originated from outer space? It’s a variation on the panspermia idea – life on Earth originated from extraterrestrial microbiological life forms seeding our planet.

To be continued...