Did Life Begin In Space? New Evidence From Comets

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Yes. This is true. Life did begin in space. Since Earth is in space, therefore, life began in space whether or not the article is correct.

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I've been thinking about panspermia recently. If life originated in comets, and life turned up on Earth very soon after conditions allowed it, that would suggest a planet being struck by a life-bearing comet is not nessecarily a rare event.

So wouldn't we expect to find traces of life pretty much everywhere in the solar system that can or at some point in history could support it? Both Mars and Venus apparantly used to have liquid water on their surfaces, so if life-bearing comets are quite common there ought to be fossilised microbes on the surface of both planets, yes?

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

One would think so, yes.

After all, it wasn't so long ago scientists find evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars or that a life zone on Venus (is) possible.

So fossils on one hand and actual microbes on the other.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

The materials life is formed from are not, by themselves, life.

From the article:Overwhelmingly Likely? That sounds like a specious conclusion, there is still no evidence whatsoever that life began in comets, only that (as has already been known for some time) that comets contain organic molecules. Which seem to be virtually unavoidable in our neck of the universe. But life? How would the conditions needed for life possibly exist in a comet? The energy needed just isn't there. Only a small number of comets approach the inner Solar System closely enough to warm them sufficiently for complex chemical reactions, and then only for brief periods, and most of that heat gets blasted back into space with the surface ablation. Doesn't wash.

Now, if the article had said that the materials needed for life came from comets, that would seem far more feasible. Earth was formed out of the same basic solar debris, after all. But life? In comets? It's sloppy journalism at best, bad science at worst.

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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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Wickramasinghe contends that radioactive elements inside comets are energetic enough to rovide a fluid interior in some, or many comets. I doubt he is right, but without more evidence I don't know if this possibility can be ruled out. However I am not aware that any of the results from cometary probes so far obtained have given any support to this contention.

On the other hand clay-like minerals are an interesting find in these objects.

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"The 2005 Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1 discovered a mixture of organic and clay particles inside the comet. One theory for the origins of life proposes that clay particles acted as a catalyst, converting simple organic molecules into more complex structures. The 2004 Stardust Mission to Comet Wild 2 found a range of complex hydrocarbon molecules - potential building blocks for life.
...

Professor Wickramasinghe said: “The findings of the comet missions, which surprised many, strengthen the argument for panspermia. We now have a mechanism for how it could have happened. All the necessary elements - clay, organic molecules and water - are there. The longer time scale and the greater mass of comets make it overwhelmingly more likely that life began in space than on earth.”


Regardless of what we think, whether it's "sloppy journalism, bad science," unsurprising by association, or doubtful for lack of more evidence, the paper appears to have been accepted for publication in a peer reviewed journal.

Which begs the question: If such skeptical reviews were of any weight, is the international peer review process flawed?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Peer review is opinion; educated opinion, yes, but still hardly infallible. That's why one never relies on only one, or even a few, papers, tests, or experiments; it's the total weight of evidence that matters in the end.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

As I was speculating in my ATM thread on Darwin, perhaps a very large comet may have hit Earth when it was still a hot ball of fire and the cooling off created the atmosphere for life? Recent findings in Ocean Vents show that life can form with just water and energy? I dont know if its possible, but a comet may have been a carrier?

I agree, but no one suggested infallability.
More often than not skeptics of an idea call for peer reviewed evidence, but here it seems you, among others, might simply dismiss the claim that this supports panspermia.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

When the planet is forming, there is normally a lot of water and gas from the material from what the planet formed and it is vented outside by early volcanos, thus producing the primordeal atmosphere that contains a lot of water.

But, yes, there would be less water if Earth's water was all from volcanic outgassing.
Many comets were strucking Earth when it was formed and that water remained.

As I've mentioned before, if and when somebody finds earthlike life on/in Mars, comets or whatever, then I'd get interested in the panspermia hypothesis. Obviously, experimental contamination would need to be ruled out, and there would need to be pretty solid verification of not just life (bacteria, for example) but that the life was recognizably similar to Earth life (similar DNA, and so forth).

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

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But of course....that would be evidence. Right now, there is no evidence for panspermia.

Why is it so hard for people to understand the need for actual evidence.???


Oh...and happy birthday, A.DIM.

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Even so, all that would prove is that there is/was life on Mars. It wouldn't necesssarily have anything to do with Earth.

Edited to add: didn't see the "earthlike" in Van Rijn's post