Episode 585: Can Life Spread From Star to Star? The Theory of Galactic Panspermia

The race is on to find life in other places in the Solar System, from underground reservoirs on Mars to the subsurface oceans on Europa and Enceladus.

If spacecraft, rovers or even astronauts make the momentous discovery of life on another world, that’ll just open up new questions. Did it originate all on its own, completely independently from Earth, or are we somehow related? And if we are related, how long ago did our evolutionary trees branch away from each other.

Even though Mars is millions of kilometers away, it could be possible that we’re still related thanks to the concept of Panspermia; the idea that meteor impacts could transfer rocks and maybe even living creatures from world to world.

But could you go one step further? If we find life on another star system, could we discover that we’re actually related to them too? Is Galactic Panspermia possible?

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Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / [email protected]

Karla Thompson - @karlaii / https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEItkORQYd4Wf0TpgYI_1fw

Chad Weber - [email protected]

References:

https://www.hoyle.org.uk/resources/virusesfromspacecompressed.pdf

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lpi/meteorites/The_Meteorite.shtml

https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/03211549-lpsc-hermean-meteorite.html

https://www.dlr.de/me/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-1752/2384_read-54290/

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Humanoid

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-timescale-evolution-life-earth.html

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.0101.pdf

https://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2013/20130926-gravity-assist.html

https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.0101

https://phys.org/news/2010-11-necropanspermia-seeding-life-earth.html

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/198/3/723/1012846

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.06414.pdf

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-observes-1st-confirmed-interstellar-comet/

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/476/3/3031/4909830

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/hyakutake.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2YkvWdUUNQ

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