Quote:
Originally Posted by transreality
Put some numbers into lithospermia theory and you end up with figures that make Drake equation scenarios seem very plausable by comparison.
|
Between stars at normal interstellar distances, that's right. But between very young stars inside clusters the numbers are slightly more favorable.
This paper about lithopanspermia in clusters is one of the sources I should have provided
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0504648
(perhaps I will now)
from that paper
Quote:
|
For typical birth environments, the capture of life bearing rocks is expected to occur 10 -- 16,000 times per cluster (under favorable conditions), depending on the ejection speeds. Only a small fraction of the captured rocks impact the surfaces of terrestrial planets, so that only a few lithopanspermia events are expected (per cluster).
|
So if anything I erred on the side of caution.