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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I have this vision of dinosaur astronauts, clinging to the rock that has been ejected into space, on their way to Mars to establish a new life there.

I have always found the pan-spermia theories interesting. It still doesn't answer the 'where first' question but it allows for many places to share similar lifeforms without requiring a recreation of an improbable event in all of them. Of course it would be really weird if the universe was populated in this way with humanoids, and the original Star Trek was closer to the truth than not :-)

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  ... without requiring a recreation of an improbable event in all of them

Just to add to your post: the probability of such a spontaneous event (life emerging from a cocktail) increases as you're no longer looking at a restricted area. If panspermia is the mechanism then you don't require life to originate on a suitable planet in a Goldilocks zone. Every square mm of (often porous) rock flying around is a potential point of origin, carrier or seeding station.

Given the right similar starting conditions in the DNA... It could be interesting.

What surprises me is that life can survive these trips. A rock ejected from the Earth would have to have tremendous heat during the escape velocity. Science is fascinating.

That's what I was thinking. That piece of rock must be very hot as it's flying out into space from a violent explosion. At least, that's how I picture it. It seems odd that the article was concerned about the danger of space itself, but never mentioned the exit from earth.

Science is very fascinating, but this phenomenon of life successfully leaving earth and arriving on other planets has never been demonstrated, so it's more idle speculation than science.

I think they've at least seen them survive in space. I recall reading stories of microbes surviving near absolute zero. Bacteria and spores could survive a lot, but I would think they would have to be inside a mighty big rock to survive the heat.

Some microscopic organisms are said to have survived exposure to space. But just because some of the pieces have been shown to be plausible, doesn't justify accepting the entire scenario.

I agree with you.

I think this is a good statistics exercise too. What's more likely? That life emerges spontaneously in multiple spots of space, or that life survives inter-planetary (and perhaps inter-solar system) journeys?

You couldn't possibly answer that.

Panspermia only interests me in an intra-solar system context. I imagine the probability of ejected rocks from an asteroid impact in one solar system reaching a body in another solar system is significantly lower.

And I doubt the math would allow them to span galaxies.

So kind of like the stargate SG1 plot line where instead of the ancients spreading life across the universe using stargates you have meteros doing the work

I guess that would make planets meteorsexuals.

(sorry I couldn't resist)

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