Remember when the Moon was just a barren rock floating mysteriously above us, Mars was a place where LGM (Little Green Men) plotted their earth invasion, and most of the news you heard about other galaxies was delivered by Jean Luc Picard? When I was a kid “The Universe” was just a vast unknown place where i could let my vivid but un-informed imagination run free. Man we’ve come a long way. Humanity has confirmed the presence of vast amounts of life-giving water on the Moon and Mars, and are expecting to find water on Saturn’s most famous moon, Titan. Since life seems to develop and thrive in even the most treacherous of Earth’s environments, the presence of water on other planets/moons has the scientific community expecting to find evidence of life on another planet very soon.

These are amazing times!

The idea that life can spawn and evolve on another world is not a new one, but scientists are beginning to look for the answer to new questions: Where does Life come from? Does it form and evolve independently as a unique signature on each planet, or does it travel like celestial spermatozoa finding purchase on planet after planet? Or perhaps a combination of both? Maybe life  originated in unique forms on a number of planets, then through the eventual destruction of those planets the more resilient species traveled to local solar systems to land on hundreds of other planets. And maybe one or 2 of those planets were at the right stage of development to provide the perfect breeding ground for the alien species to thrive.

It may sound like a stretch of imagination, but researchers at the University of Florida think that humanity may have already spread the seed of terrestrial life on another planet: Mars. In a recent dailygalaxy.com article highlighting their research, Jason McManus wrote “Bacteria common to spacecraft may be able to survive the harsh environs of Mars long enough to inadvertently contaminate Mars with terrestrial life … If long-term microbial survival is possible on Mars, then past and future explorations of Mars may provide the microbial inoculum for seeding Mars with terrestrial life”. Even with rigorous sterilization procedures there are always a few superior bacteria that may survive and even thrive in the harsh Martian atmosphere. researchers from the University of Florida there is a very distinct possibility that we have already seeded ( I think “contaminated” is the official term) Mars with bacterial life from Earth. In a few million years, if we haven’t already populated the planet there may be colonies of bacteria flourishing on the planet, perhaps providing the necessary elements to introduce oxygen into the atmosphere.

Since NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope found the partial ingredients for DNA and protein floating around a star a few years ago (link), researchers have been contemplating the genesis of DNA in nebular clouds 13.6 billion years ago. In a recent article Casey Kazan wrote: “Over 13 billion years ago at least one of the domains of life may have begun in nebular clouds. If restricted to the Milky Way, which is 13.6 billion years old, the first chemical combinations would have had billions of years to become a self-replicating organism with a DNA genome long before the existence of Earth”.This kind of thinking flies in the face of creationism/intelligent design. Once of the popular arguments against ambiogenesis is that there wouldn’t be enough time for DNA to randomly coalesce, even within Earth’s 4.5 billion life-span. A 13.6 billion year time frame should be enough time, right Creationists? It may not be enough to pry their minds free from irrationality, but it’s certainly a bold concept!

BoyInfidel