A new genesis of life throughout the cosmos is now proposed, and it is just mind-boggling. It postulates that life in other parts of the cosmos was caused by a near collision of a proto-earth, with a comet. This giant comet carried away remnants of microbes that hitched and seeded part of the cosmos.
This process can be called "interstellar panspermia", to seed the stars with Terran lifeforms.
It seems that life did persist on the asteroid surface as the comet flew through space, these space bugs evolving into more robust life forms. Waiting for the chance to be released in a suitable world, similar to proto-earth. This galactic Noah's ark must have carried quite a variety of lifeforms, until entering its last journey and depositing its live cargo. These creatures might be out there, earth-born but different.
A study that proposes, one of the most eccentric ideas regarding life in the universe, is by Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb, both astrophysicists at Harvard University. Digressing on the major ideas that their paper suggests is very dramatic and chaotic compared to other ideas. In contrast to the idea that earth cannot have seeded life, because collisions with comets are sparse or were not as frequent.
When and what specific epochs in the earth need to be cleared up, and to prove this theory. The earth is old and proving scrapes with comets is a tall order. The proof has been known to show up in unexpected places too.
Proving the comet hitching microbes is not far from other concepts thought to be false. Notions are always challenged, and it is up to the scientist to provide proof for his theory. A sun-centered solar system was once, very "earth-centric", quantum physic was not valid according to Newtonian models, or bacterium on a wild stellar-joyride that crashes and seeds a compatible world. Most are accepted except the microbes on a stellar joyride, it can be proven according to prior human history.
All these ideas have a basis and not all pure guesswork, when small rockets in the 70s encountered bacteria in the higher atmosphere, in colonies. If comets that invade the orbits of planets, then impacts are possible but not impossible to happen. Comets are porous and might shelter microbes from radiation and ill effects of living in outer space, before crashing.
It might not be the most acceptable explanation, but the survival of bacteria in xeno-worlds is a worthy field of study for xeno-biologists. This portent to be another field of application for scientists to investigate.
Not all scientists agree, and Stephen Kane from the University of California was not convinced that earth-born life was ever exported to the stars. It would be stacked against phenomenal odds to survive as well.
Siraj and Loeb's propositions have to be proven on several points, which leads to everything stacked against it as acceptable truth.
a. When the comet collided with the atmosphere, how did the bacteria stay on despite the incredible velocity?
b. Is the way bacteria attach to comets explainable?
c. How were bacteria able to reach under the surface?
d. Is it even possible to survive the radioactivity of the comet?
e. These rockets experiments are sitting on the loose ground not very plausible.
There is no sure outcome for the problem, and if a giant comet did take along microbes, these then seeded somewhere out there. We will never know, but it might just happen.
