Given the author, it's hardly an unlikely conclusion. From the second paragraph of the article:

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and colleagues at the University's Centre for Astrobiology have long argued the case for panspermia - the theory that life began inside comets and then spread to habitable planets across the galaxy.

In fact, he was a student of Hoyle's and worked with Hoyle on the panspermia hypothesis. I'm not surprised he would make sweeping statements about panspermia.

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