Astronomers On E.T.

The bulk of books, articles, documentaries, written and presented on the subject of life in the universe are by professional astronomers. However, much of the subtopics that make up the broad-brush picture have nothing to do with professional astronomy. As such, readers interested in the subject need to be highly critical when astronomers wax lyrical about extraterrestrial life as most what they pontificate about is personal, not professionally based opinion.

When it comes to the subject of extraterrestrial life, exobiology or astrobiology, the profession most oft associated is that of the astronomer*. That should be nonsense as the focus should be on the word “life” or “biology” not on the word “extraterrestrial”, “exo” or “astro”. I’ve often said that when it comes to UFOs, for example, astronomers are out of their league because the subject of UFOs is not a proper astronomical subject for astronomers to professionally study and thus comment upon in a professional capacity. Astronomers, being human and all that entails, do not always draw a line in the sand between what they believe professionally through academic study and research and what they believe personally, without benefit of academic study and research.  

The only astronomer who ended up making a serious professional study of UFOs, in fact employed as a consultant to the USAF on UFOs – astronomical at first, hence all facets – was the late J. Allen Hynek, so he’s qualified to wax lyrical. What’s interesting is he started off sceptical on the bona-fides of the field, but came around to the opinion that UFOs were serious scientific business. 

The turf of astronomers starts at the top of Earth’s atmosphere and goes outward bound from there, although I’d maintain that things like meteorites are the realm of mineralogists; Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) and the ‘Face’ on Mars and other dynamic visible features on planetary and satellite ‘surfaces’ are more the turf of meteorologists, geologists, and maybe even oceanographers (i.e. – Jupiter’s moon, Europa).

WHAT ASTRONOMERS CAN, SHOULD, CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT COMMENT ON REGARDING EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE

Probability of Extraterrestrial Life: Astronomers can tell us roughly how many stars there are per galaxy and what kind of stars they are and how many galaxies there are in the visible universe and roughly what the average solar system might be like, it’s components and constituents, but that’s as far as it goes. When it comes down to whether life arises and evolves on any of these extra-solar planets up through and including intelligence and technologies is an exercise better left to biologists and anthropologists.

Extra-Solar Planets and Planetary Systems: Astronomers are doing an outstanding job in discovering planets orbiting around other stars than just our Sun. They can pretty much estimate, maybe guesstimate, their size and orbital characteristics. They can also determine what the atmospheric constituents are – if any. However, what precisely that composition signifies – constituents perhaps in chemical disequilibrium suggestive of biomarkers – is an analysis best left to chemists and biochemists.

Origin of Life and Panspermia: Astronomers have no academic bona-fides that enables them to wax lyrical on these topics. Maybe terrestrial life originated on Earth; maybe it came via spores (or some such) from outer space (panspermia), but that’s not a subject that’s part and parcel of astronomy, even if extrapolated to abodes somewhere out there.

Transition from Simple (Unicellular) to Complex (Multicellular) Life: Any pontificating on this subject by astronomers is pure and simply their personal opinion. Astronomers would be pissed if evolutionary biologists got press coverage for commenting on the astrophysics of Black Holes, yet astronomers seem to feel capable of practicing biology, as long as it’s called extraterrestrial biology, astrobiology or biology in outer space.

Evolutionary Rise of Intelligence, Technology and the Longevity of Civilizations: Any such speculations are best left to anthropologists as these topic fall way, way, way outside of the realm of academic astronomy.  

Life Not As We Know It: Any speculation on alternative biochemistries (substitute silicon for carbon; ammonia for water; etc.), in fact the entire definition of what life itself is, is best left to biochemists and related disciplines.

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): Professionally, astronomers seek out photons – visible light photons; radio photons, microwave photons, gamma-ray photons, infrared photons, ultraviolet photons, etc. Astronomers have a good handle on what naturally originating photons are like and what they can tell us about astronomical objects. Thus, astronomers should be able to spot anomalous photons – artificially originating photons with the accent on the artificiality. If astronomers spot unnaturally emitted photons then the odds are rather good that they have found an extraterrestrial intelligence, an intelligence that has the ability to emit artificially produced photons – like radio signals, optical (laser) signals, etc. Of course there have been false alarms. Pulsars were first thought to be artificial signals; ditto some quasars; and there were those who thought they had picked up radio broadcasts from Mars in the early years of the 20^th Century. However, once astronomers have detected anomalous photons and unanimously concluded they came from an extraterrestrial technological civilization, then any extrapolation from that is out of their bailiwick and resides more with anthropologists, linguistics experts, and other social science academics. 

First Contact: While there are lots of terrestrial examples of first contact, astronomers aren’t historians, sociologists or anthropologists and thus shouldn’t professionally speculate as being all-knowing on the subject of extraterrestrial first contact.

AREAS WHERE ASTRONOMERS NEED TO REALLY BUTT OUT

Visitors from Outer Space: Astronomers are qualified to tell us about the vastness of the cosmos and the immense distances between stars and our neck of the woods. But, the ability of advanced technological extraterrestrial civilizations to transverse those distances is a matter for engineers not astronomers.

Unidentified Flying Objects: UFO crashes in general and Roswell (July 1947) in particular falls way outside the province of professional astronomy (unless such a ‘crash’ can be positively identified as an impacting meteorite). Yet astronomers feel quite capable to wax lyrical on the subject. However, any opinions expressed by astronomers are really personal, not professional ones, and have no more validity than comments by Joe and Josephine Citizen.

UFO abductions, or abductions by ufonauts (the ‘greys’), fall outside the province of professional astronomy and are more properly the province of mental health professionals.

Government programs associated with investigating UFOs, UFO censorship or cover-ups fall outside the province of professional astronomy. Astronomers aren’t experts in national security matters, defence protocols, political science and other associated areas that deals with intelligence operations.

Close Encounters of any kind including geophysical, physiological, electromagnetic, ground trace cases, fall outside the province of professional astronomy.

Analysis and commentary on UFO films and photographs fall outside the province of professional astronomy.

Analysis of radar returns from UFOs, a rather technical and complex matter, tends to fall outside the province of professional astronomy even though radar has been used to probe some of the planets and satellites of our solar system, and thus their ground topography which puts such data in the realm of the geologist in any event.

Alien motivations (i.e. – why don’t they land on the White House lawn, etc.) fall outside the province of professional astronomy. At best this is a matter for psychologists and anthropologists and sociologists, though when it comes to what motivates an alien or alien culture neither is anyone else really qualified for that matter.

The only intersection between astronomy and UFOs is where assistance is required in ruling in or out astronomical bodies (the moon, planets, stars, meteors, etc.) as the cause or unlikely cause of a UFO sighting event. Or, perhaps where statements by so-called ‘contactees’ contradict known astronomical data. Otherwise, UFOs are the province of meteorologists, experts in optics and atmospheric optical phenomena, psychologists, etc.  Yet astronomers wax lyrical on all facets of the UFO phenomena as if all things UFO were exclusively part and parcel of their turf.

So 99% of what astronomers do (like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Seth Shostak, and Donald Menzel) when pontificating about UFOs, are in reality spouting off personal opinions, not professional or professionally related (i.e. – astronomical related) factual knowledge.

Ancient Astronauts: Astronomers are not archaeologists, anthropologists, historians or usually conversant with mythologies, and thus should steer clear of anything to do with the subject of “ancient astronauts”.

Associated Facets:

Crop circles fall outside the province of professional astronomy, even though IMHO crop circles have probably nothing to do with ETI.

The animal (wildlife and livestock) mutilation phenomena fall outside the province of professional astronomy.

Ball lightning and other associated anomalous lights (like the Australian Min-Min Lights) fall outside the province of professional astronomy or astronomers who are not geophysicists.

Again, any commentaries by astronomers on these issues quasi-associated with ETI are, when all is said and done, when crunch comes crunch, are personal, not professional commentaries.

* And if not the astronomer then physicists. In fact the bulk of material dealing with life in the universe is penned by physical scientists, not biological or life scientists or naturalists. When I did a course in the subject of life in the universe, SUNY @ Stony Brook, it was of course taught by an astronomer, Tobias C. Owen, who has since co-authored along with Donald Goldsmith an entire textbook on the subject “The Search for Life in the Universe” (third edition - 2001).



Extraterrestrialism: Our Out-Of-This-World Inheritance: Part One

If asked the question about your ultimate origins, you might reply that you were of this or that nationality, perhaps with ancestry from this or that other place. Perhaps if you’re a bit more clued you’d say “Africa” as the birthplace of the human race. If you’re really cluey, you might say the oceans, the undoubted place where life itself got its start. But no doubt, no matter what, you’d say you were “terrestrial” – of this Planet Earth. Alas, you’re still not cluey enough. You’re extraterrestrial. We are the aliens, directly and indirectly.

Origin of the Universe

* Once upon a time there was this Big Bang.

* Since we are a part of the Universe, and since the Universe had an origin (the accepted standard model being the Big Bang event some 13.7 billion years ago), that alone of necessity means we have an extraterrestrial legacy since everything that makes you, you was born in that event, thereby in a manner of speaking making you 13.7 billion years old!

Origin of Our Stellar Solar System & Earth

* As it was in the beginning, well so too did our Sun and Planet Earth have a beginning.

* We are Star Stuff. Our solar system, our Sun, the planets, including Earth, were all formed out of the remains of extraterrestrial gas, dust and debris from older stellar systems, scattered to the four interstellar winds by supernovae explosions, over four and a half billion years ago. Thus, that too alone, no matter which way you slice it, means we (as beings part and parcel of our stellar system) are extraterrestrial in origin.

Origin of Life

* The terrestrial origin of life may have happened within that petrii dish/test tube called Planet Earth - Or maybe not. IMHO it happened way too quickly and way too soon post Earth’s formation to probably have been a solely terrestrial happening. There’s an alternative called panspermia which expands both the time and space available for life’s origin by many order of magnitudes.

* Panspermia is the idea that Earth was seeded by cosmic spores or microbes that were expelled from some other planetary abode in some other stellar system and drifted across the gulf of space. An incredibly tiny fraction of these cosmic spores lands on suitable planetary environments, where they survive and thrive and evolve. Our Earth was one such place for their lucky landing. It’s akin to a plant producing millions of spores – 99.999% of which fail to land on fertile ground; but that tiny fraction that does is all it takes to keep the species keeping on keeping on. 

* Balistic panspermia is a slight variation on traditional panspermia in that the microbes or spores are inside the protective covering of a solid object – dust or tiny rocks, even massive rocks. These, alone with their microbial passengers get blasted off home turf by incoming ballistic objects (impacting meteors), escape their home planet and a few eventually, by chance land on another suitable abode. That Mars rock, ALH84001 that caused such a stir several years back is one such example of a potential case history of ballistic panspermia.

* Directed panspermia is yet another variation on the theme, only in this case there’s intelligence behind the scenes, either sending out canisters of microbes willy-nilly in a shotgun manner, and/or directing that canister specifically at a chosen target.

* The upshot is if terrestrial life’s origin was via a form of panspermia, then we humans, being a species of terrestrial life, ultimately had an extraterrestrial origin. If a Mars rock full of microbes impacted Earth billions of years ago, well, we might be the Martians transplanted from the fourth rock to the third rock from the Sun. Perhaps our origins were even farther a-field. Perhaps some cosmic gardener planted life here billions of years ago, maybe even stuck around to fertilize, cultivate, prune, and weed that garden. 

Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, Civilization and Technology: The Fermi Paradox

* The Fermi Paradox can be summed up simply enough by pointing out that as long as you assume the existence of at least one other technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization with the same sorts of ‘boldly going’ drives as we humans have (i.e. – plain old curiosity, the what’s on the other side of the hill, if nothing else, then just as humans explored and colonized Planet Earth in a tiny fraction of the Earth’s existence, technologically capable extraterrestrials would have explored and colonized the Milky Way Galaxy in a tiny fraction of its existence. In the case of humans, we don’t need to ask “where is everybody?” We’re everywhere. In the case of ET, we do ask “where is everybody?” They should be here. Scientists say they’re not, never have been, and thus have to explain the paradox. On the other side of the fence, those who see evidence in those ‘ancient astronauts’ and in UFOs have no paradox with which to have to come to terms with.

* The ‘Gods’ arrive. Very few people today would try to defend the position what in the vastness of the cosmos we, human beings, are the proverbial intelligent ‘IT’ within that cosmos. Since we are the new boys on the block, having only existed as a unique species several hundreds of thousands of years at best in a Universe that’s 13.7 billion years old, the odds are pretty good that our intellectually cosmic superiors are out there. Now on the likelihood that at least one such superior extraterrestrial intelligence will boldly go and explore the cosmos, let’s define ‘cosmos’ and restrict that term to our ten billion years old Milky Way Galaxy, the time it would take that extraterrestrial intelligence to explore every nook and cranny of our Milky Way Galaxy is but a tiny fraction of the age of our galaxy. By analogy, Planet Earth has existed four and a half billion years; yet as noted above our 100,000 plus year old species crawled all over it in real quick-smart fashion, as did the bacteria, plants, insects, and other life forms as well. Translated, since there’s nowhere to hide Planet Earth from the ‘I spy with my little eye’ aliens, we’ve been found! The extraterrestrials have arrived, not yesterday but millions of yesterdays ago. And since Planet Earth is a hospitable bio-friendly place, one with a pretty unique property – a biosphere – they decided to stick around and set up camp. Because these beings are high-tech, and because any sufficiently advanced technology is something supernatural to any sufficiently lower technological civilization (like us), that supernatural quality gets interpreted as beings who ARE supernatural – deities or ‘gods’ – not interpreted by the great unwashed primitives as flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials. Our cultural mythologies, worldwide, are full of references to ‘star beings’; ‘guardians of the skies’; ‘sky gods’; ‘gods in the heavens’ and gods who come from the stars or who are associated with specific stars and constellations, most notably Cygnus, Sirius and Orion.

Origin of Humanity

* Just about every religious mythology, and every culture has one, well you’ll find something along the line that the gods (or God) created human beings. Let’s take that at face value. Now ‘created’ doesn’t mean creating something from scratch. If you ‘create’ a plank of wood, you create it from an existing tree or log, not from your home chemistry set (though in theory you could do so since ultimately chemicals make up wood). You probably ‘create’ your meals from ingredients you got from the supermarket. Again, your home chemistry set had nothing to do with it, and even if you did grow your own vegetables and herbs and raise your own chickens and pigs, you still started from existing ingredients – seeds and other advanced biological products like eggs and baby pigs. That analogy equally applies to the case of the ‘gods’ creating humans. They didn’t start from clay and dust and the gods’ equivalent of a home chemistry set. They started work on pre-existing advanced ingredients.

* At this point of course, based on previous remarks, you realise that there are no gods. The ‘gods’ are of course just technologically advanced extraterrestrials with intellectual powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal humans.

To be continued…

Orphaned Rogue Interstellar Planets

Lots of effort has been put into discovering the existence of extra-solar planets and thus confirming that our own solar system isn’t some sort of anomaly. Hundreds of extra-solar planets have now been found and in the databanks, with more being found every week.  Meantime, there’s a whole other set of extra-solar planetary objects or abodes, probably undetectable with even foreseeable technology. These extra-solar abodes are the sunless orphans (technically termed ‘rogue planets’ or maybe ‘interstellar planets’) that exist in deep interstellar (perhaps even intergalactic) space itself. The number of orphaned interstellar planets could easily equal, or even vastly exceed, all the planets in all the solar systems in the Milky Way Galaxy combined. Could such orphans expand the range of abodes for life in the cosmos? There is a real possibility that orphan planets could host viable communities (ecosystems) of microbes based on chemosynthesis.

Our solar system today probably seems like a pretty well ordered place – it runs like clockwork, is predictable, and it’s pretty benign on the whole. But, it was not always so, and may not always remain that way in the future. In those early chaotic when the proto-sun and the proto-planets were forming, the orbital dynamics were anything but well ordered. Collisions and close encounters between these proto-objects, and associated interacting gravitational forces at play meant that some bodies spiraled into the proto-sun; others in their gravitational dances were ejected, in a slingshot sort of way, from the proto-solar system altogether. 

In the future, as our sun and solar system along with hundreds of thousands of other ‘nearby’ suns (stars) orbit the galactic center, distances between stars vary, sometime coming close enough for their respective gravitational forces to cause another dance and throw monkey wrenches into the peace and tranquility and well-ordered-ness of the respective stellar systems and debris (like planets orbiting their parent suns). As before, some objects could be perturbed and dislodged and fall into their sun, or be ejected from the gravitational control of that sun altogether and head out into space and a lonely, endless night, existence.  Also, the ejection process will be alive and well in binary (tug of war) star systems (and there are an awful lot of them about).

While there’s nothing to be said for those unfortunate bodies (and life forms – if any) that get cataclysmically into their parent suns, it’s not quite ‘The End’ for those now sunless orphans. There could be multi-thousands (or more) of orphaned planets (of all sizes and makeup) in deep space beyond the bright light and solar energy of a sun. There could be an orphan planet within a light year of us and we’d never know or suspect.

Could orphan planets form all by themselves in the depths of lonely space? Well, if a large interstellar dust and gas cloud can gravitationally collapse to form a star(s) and associated stellar (solar) system, I fail to see why a smaller interstellar dust and gas cloud couldn’t collapse to form a planet sized object, probably a ‘failed star’ like a Jupiter, maybe with moons. From that of course it is easy to extrapolate and suggest such a Jovian ‘failed star’ might have smaller abodes (planets) form and orbit same – a nearly invisible solar system. Or perhaps it’s just an orphan planet with associated moons. Either definition amounts to the same thing – a rose by any other name applies.

Regardless of initial origin, conventional wisdom would suggest that these orphans must be lifeless, even if before the event they had life.

When I was a high school biology student (1962-63), it was absolutely gospel (and no correspondence would be entered into contrary) that our sun was the be all and end all of the existence of terrestrial life. No sun; no life. All life ultimately depended on photosynthetic plants which in turn couldn’t exist without sunlight. Even then however I seem to recall speculation about the possibility of a non-photosynthetic based ecology in the atmosphere of Jupiter which gladdened my heart no end - however, it wasn‘t Jupiter that broke the photosynthetic mold, but good old Mother Earth herself. So gospel ain’t gospel any longer! Today we know about chemosynthesis (organisms that can produce organics from inorganic substances and derive energy from the process.)

A well known, if little understood example of chemosynthesis are the colonies of microbes (dubbed ‘rusticles’) that are eating the iron structure of the RMS Titanic, resting some four kilometers below the surface of the North Atlantic. Within another generation or two, the famous shipwreck will have been basically consumed by microbes, without any benefit bestowed by our sun.

But, an orphaned planet has severe problems quite apart from a lack of solar energy. What about heat? Sources of heat (apart from a parent sun) include gravitational contraction, radioactivity, chemical activity, friction, etc. So heat shouldn’t be too much of a problem for some planetary abodes. Rocky planets like Earth have radioactive elements that partly comprise their crusts and interiors, and radioactive decay gives off heat, and rock is a good insulator. I doubt if chemical activity or friction will contribute much, but for Jupiter-sized planets, gravitational contraction means that these types of planets (like Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune) give off more heat energy than they receive from the sun.

Of course friction could be a source of heat in some rare cases. One other heating scenario is plausible if an orphan planet had a satellite(s) of the right composition. The satellite(s) might be warmed by tidal frictional forces courtesy of their parent orphaned planet akin to what we observe on Io and Europa. These satellites are heated by the effects of Jupiter’s tidal attractions on the interiors of these moons which get flexed and stretched and compressed, ever alternating between extremes. The resulting friction results in heating. An alternative version could be two orphaned planets of roughly the same size, orbiting each other in relatively close proximity. Each would mutually tidally heat the other, but only for a while. You can’t produce heat energy out of nothing, and the price paid would be their orbital separation increasing until the gravitational bonds weaken so much that you’d have – for all intents and purposes – two separate orphaned planets. This is akin to our own Moon which is retreating from Mother Earth, albeit ever so slowly, over time.

But heat tends to be the final end waste product in any energy chain of events. Heat itself is not useful as an energy source for living things; albeit quite useful in contributing to the environmental friendliness in which organisms thrive, like keeping temperatures suitable for liquid water or for biochemical reactions. I mean an infrared lamp may feel real good, but it’s not providing you with any calories!

Could one have an origin of life (biogenesis) event on an orphaned planet? Why not, providing you had the appropriate chemicals, all mixing it up in an appropriate liquid medium (water most likely), and an energy source(s), and lots of time.

So, an orphan planet could have had a biogenesis event, coupled with suitable chemicals for chemosynthesis and heat. What more do you want! Well, are there any positives to be had?

Are there any obvious advantages to being a life form on an orphan planet? I think so. What if your initial parent star were a variable star, or a very massive star that’s going to have a very short lifespan, maybe terminate in a supernova - advantage orphan. Maybe your initial orbit was so lopsided (elliptical) that you alternatively froze and fried – advantage orphan. Gravitational (tidal) locking – keeping one hemisphere always turned toward one point, say the surface of your parent star – causing temperature extremes, is now irrelevant. The tilt of your axis (which can also cause extremes in heating/cooling is now also irrelevant. Your weather, such as it is, would be relatively gentle without solar energy driving it. Then too, inhabiting deep space via-a-visa crowded debris filled solar system reduces drastically those nasty collision impacts. A thick Jovian (Jupiter) type atmosphere or thick ice cap is probably good shielding from radiation, though even a nearby supernova might be bad news. You’re also insulated from all those nasty bug-eyed-monster alien types. They can easily find solar systems, but not orphans. In any event, your orphan planet isn’t very desirable real estate to alien invaders!

One day, in the not too distant future, it will be a fairly straight forward exercise to compare solar systems – what’s a typical solar system; what’s an atypical solar system. However, questions central to what a typical planet and an abode for life is  will still be difficult to answer, as that population of orphan planets (and ages of same) will take a long time yet to resolve itself. 

Further Readings:

Stevenson, David J.; Life-sustaining planets in interstellar space? (in) Nature, 1 July 1999; p.32:

De La Fuente, M.C. & De La Fuente, M.R.; Runaway planets (in) New Astronomy, Volume 4, #1, February 1999; p.21-32:

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.

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: The Origin(s) of Life on Earth

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 to ponder the origin of life, and the only origin we’re certain of was the origin of terrestrial life. The origin of life happened naturally at least once and probably many times in diverse locations.

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.

The major reason for that is that in the early days of the formation of our solar system and of course Planet Earth, there was a lot of loose debris around flying around in all sorts of orbits. These bits and pieces would sooner or later impact one of the larger (planetary) bodies still forming and growing by the means of those very impacts. The orbiting large planetary objects would sweep up a lot of the rubble. Over time, the density of the rubble decreased, but to this very day there are still bits and pieces yet to make impact and call a planet home. We often see tiny bits of this left over rubble as ‘shooting stars’ in the night sky, but now and again a really large chunk can strike home, as the dinosaurs found out the hard way.

.

Anyone who doubts that there was a massive bombardment of the planets by large chunks of rubble need only look at the saturation of craters on the Moon or the planet Mercury or even Mars and many of the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Heavily cratered objects have one thing in common – little or no atmospheres and active geology to erode and erase the remains of these impacts from multi-billions of years ago. Earth has an active geology and an atmosphere and lots of erosion so we find relatively little trace of that early intense bombardment locally. But, were it not for those processes, Planet Earth would resemble the cratered Moon.

Now, what’s the fate of early life forms when large chunks of rubble after rubble after rubble slam into their environmental abode? Poof – that’s what. Given that the origin of life isn’t easy (otherwise our biologists and biochemists would have created life in a test tube from scratch by now), it’s unlikely that life arose locally on Earth – went poof because of impacting rubble – arose again locally and naturally – went poof again – arose – poof – arose – poof, etc. So, is there another possibility?

What if Earth were seeded by microbial life forms already in existence from space (or deliberately seeded by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization 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 (Planet Earth), 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 us.

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 microbial 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 from space; another was the famous 'rock from Mars' [known as ALH84001]. On the sceptical side, the problem is that such ‘organised elements’ could be just terrestrial contamination as there are often lengthy time periods between fall, discovery and analysis. As an aside, if Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe are correct (and I believe they are), microbes (bacteria/viruses) impacting Earth today are largely responsible for some select/various disease epidemics/pandemics, past present, and no doubt future.

UFOs: Bits and Pieces: Germs from Space: The Fred Hoyle Scenario

With both the existence of pure theory and applied evidence supporting the plausibility of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) – where the UFO remains a UFO after appropriate expert analysis has failed to find a more terrestrial explanation – lets look at a few snippets of the phenomena, though this time it’s not really about UFOs, the bringers of alien germs, but something more natural as a bringer of germs – panspermia – especially as championed by the scientist, Fred Hoyle.  

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.

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).

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, New South Wales: 1991: