BY HAFTU GEBREZGABIHER
Habitable planets which are expelled and shattered might continue to harbor life. Communities of hyperthermophiles have been recovered from geothermally heated rocks 2,500 to 3,500 meters beneath the surface of the Earth and aside 400 C rock chimneys at depths of 4000 meters (Setter 2002), at the bottom of the ocean where pressures are 9,000 pounds per square inch.
Baccilus infernus thrives at depths of 2,700 meters where the weight and pressure is 300 x that of the surface and where temperatures may exceed 117 C.
Hyperthermophiles continue growing even in 100 C boiling water and they can survive without oxygen (Setter 2002), liberating chemicals and minerals for energy. Microorganisms have also been recovered from cores 400 meters deep in the Canadian arctic.
Viable cells dated to 3 million years have been recovered in northeast Siberia. According to Gilinchinsky (2002), the permafrost can maintain life incomparably longer than any other known habitats” and “contain a total microbial biomass many times higher than that of the soil.”
“The permafrost community have overcome the combined action of extremely cold temperature, desiccation, and starvation” and “life might be preserved in permafrost conditions for billions of years.” It can be predicted that a substantial number of microbes such as those normally dwelling deep beneath the surface, near volcanic substrates, or frozen within the ice, could easily survive if the host planet were shattered or ejected from the solar system, and would do so under localized conditions little different from those prior to a supernova.
If life were to suddenly appear on a desert island, we wouldn’t claim it was randomly assembled in an organic soup or created by the hand of God; we’d conclude it washed to shore or fell from the sky. The Earth too, is an island, orbiting in a sea of space, and living creatures and their DNA have been washing to shore and falling from the sky since our planet’s creation.
Evidence for biological activity appears in the oldest rocks on Earth, during a period of heavy bombardment while this planet was forming. Biological activity in a meteor from Mars dates from the same period. Microfossils have been detected in fifteen carbonaceous chondrites, almost all of which have been impacted by supernovae, and several of which may have originated on planets that predated the origin of this solar system.
Our sun and solar system were created from the nebular debris spawned by a red giant which exploded in a supernova, nearly 5 billion years ago. The sun and our solar system may have been created within 100 million years of this explosion. Planets, such as Earth, may have originated in the star system which gave birth to our own, and then grew by accretion after becoming captured by the new proto-star which would become the sun. Spores can survive from 250 to 600 million years; which is more than enough time to take up residence on planets made up of the debris which pounded the new Earth.
Bacteria are perfectly adapted for surviving the hazards of space, and could not have acquired these abilities if their ancestral experience had been confined to Earth. Life on Earth appeared while this planet was still growing by accretion.
There is no proof life can be created from non-life. Certainly, it is possible life may have first been generated on an ancient world or in an environment with a chemistry completely unlike the Earth. Nebular clouds are excellent candidates. If the analysis of increasing genetic complexity provided by Sharov is verified by others and our genetic ancestry does lead to a life form which first achieved life 10 billion years ago, then it also seems reasonable to assume that the nature of the Milky Way galaxy at that time provided the conditions necessary for the establishment of life; i.e., nebular clouds.
If correct, then the sequence of stellar events described in this paper could also be applied to the descendants of that first life form, such that over the ensuing 10 billion years this galaxy was seeded with life which originated in a nebular cloud. The theory proposed in this paper also lends direct support to the “life cloud” speculations of Sir Fred Hoyle (1957) and the impressive body of evidence Hoyle have marshaled for comets as celestial mechanisms which seed planets with life. However, the fact remains there is no evidence life on our planet began in an organic soup via abiogenesis.
As only life can produce life, only panspermia is a viable scientific explanation as to the origin of Earthly life. The first life forms to appear on Earth were produced by other living creatures who were likely encased in debris from the shattered remnants of those planets that circled the parent star nearly 5 billion years ago.
Critics commonly dismiss all evidence of microfossils in meteors by claiming contamination. Likewise, evidence for the presence of life during the Hadean eon has also been attacked as due to contamination.
However, claims of contamination are not proof of contamination. No one has ever conclusively demonstrated this overwhelming body of evidence, from numerous independent investigators, is in fact due to contamination.
If these findings of microfossils are due to “contamination” then we must ask: why does this “contamination” only occur in stony meteorites? As reported by Hoover (2006), ten non-carbonaceous meteorites were studied including iron meteorites. Not one was found to contain microfossils or evidence of life. Innumerable Earthly microbes feast on metals.
It is not likely that microbes from Earth would leave their fossilized signatures deep within stony meteors, but avoid those consisting of silicates, irons and other metals. Iron meteorites are believed to have originated in the molten core of a much larger body, and thus would never have been expected to harbor life.
By contrast, many chondrites, although linked to comets, likely originated as part of the deep surface layers of a planet or planetesimal (Ehrenfreund et al. 2001) and are similar to rocks found on the surface of the Earth. As such chondrites and not iron meteors would be expected to harbor life prior to crashing to Earth.
(Source: Researchgate.net)
The Ethiopian Herald July 3/2021
