PANSPERMIA:NEW VENEREAL DISEASE OR THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE ON EARTH?

or ?

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

Panspermia

• According to the AMA, and good news to men everywhere, panspermia is not a VD

= ?

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

Panspermia

• According to the AMA, and good news to men everywhere, panspermia is not a VD

• Actually, it’s a theory about life’s origin from the cosmos

= ?

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

Panspermia

• According to the AMA, and good news to men everywhere, panspermia is not a VD

• Actually, it’s a theory about life’s origin from the cosmos

• Crazy?

= ?

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

• Hypothesized in 1864 that life must have come from an extraterrestrial source

• ‘There is no known circumstance in which it can be confirmed that microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without parents similar to themselves’

Louis Pasteur

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

The Experiment• Using a sterile glass

flask, he showed that cultures cannot be formed from plain air

• Only after adding germs to the air would this form:

Louis Pasteur

Scientific Gold!

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

• Can bacteria survive the long, harsh journey to Earth?

• Can bacteria then survive entering Earth’s atmosphere?

• Finally, can bacteria survive the impact with Earth and then flourish?

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

• Found in the most

EXTREME-EME-EME-EME conditions on Earth

• Can lie dormant for millions of years

• Able to survive entry into Earth’s Atmosphere

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

Cometic Tragedy• Comets are icy, giving the bacteria nourishment• Cold, which makes them good insulators• They break up in the atmosphere

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

…and then Pasteur said, ‘LET THERE BE PROOF’, and it was done, and Pasteur was

happy

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

• It’s a bird; It’s a plane; It’s…the fossil record?• Life seems to have appeared very rapidly in the

history of the planet

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

• “in a closed system, you can't finish any real physical process with as much useful energy as you had to start with — some is always wasted”

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

Tree of Life• Widely believed that

without new genetic material, the tree of life would be horizontal, not vertical

• New genetic material from space would account for the genetic diversity we see in early life

Eric Mazzone Astro 230

• Panspermia: Were we brought here by comets?• Well that’s up to you to decide