Panspermia Backers Find New Evidence and Possibilities

September 18th, 2008

Panspermia is a simple concept on its face. It says that some, or even all of life on Earth may have come from somewhere else. Particles traveling on rogue meteors, or anything that happened to fall into the atmosphere. So…once it got here, Earth provided the necessary tool to life needed to help these things evolve into what we have today.

A recent study that was discussed this week was that tiny eight-legged animals survived exposure to the harsh environment of space on an Earth-orbiting mission is further support for the idea that simple life forms could travel between planets.

“It is an exciting result that seems to support the idea that life forms could be exchanged between planets such as Earth and Mars,” said David Morrison, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

“Now we know that species from three very different organism groups â€” bacteria, lichens and invertebrate animals â€” are able to survive at least short periods under space vacuum and also under some restricted conditions of solar radiation,” said K. Ingemar Jonsson, who led the tardigrade study out of Kristianstad University in Sweden. “And if protected from sunlight, all these groups could probably survive for several months, perhaps years, in space.”

Certainly with the proper diet pills these organism could survive out in space for a very long time and perhaps on another planet. Take a look at some of the ideas that scientists have about life originating on Mars and ending up on Earth.