Life on Earth came from other planets. So concludes a new study which will appear in the inaugural issue of the online science journal, Cosmology.com
For thousands of years scientists and theologians have debated the origins of life. So far, the consensus is that abiogenesis, a theory which stipulates that inanimate matter gave rise to the first living organisms, best explains life’s origins.
According to some researchers, however, abiogenesis is highly speculative and unsupported by the available evidence. They claim that conditions on the early earth were too harsh to support any kind of living organism and suggest that life was seeded on earth from other planets.
According to the study’s author, Dr. Rawn Joseph, “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; and this is how life on Earth began."
Joseph further argues that “Given the incredible complexity of a single-celled organism and its DNA, the likelihood that life on Earth was randomly created in an organic soup is the equivalent of discovering a computer on Mars and proclaiming it was randomly assembled in the methane sea."
It is generally acknowledged that the Sun and Earth were created from a nebular cloud and protoplanetary disc, the remnants of an exploding star. According to Dr. Joseph, the planets which orbited the parent star may have harbored microbial life. When the parent star became a red giant, its solar winds blew away planetary atmospheres along with airborne microbes, which were deposited in a growing nebular cloud.
When threatened with death, microbes form spores, and can remain dormant for hundreds of millions of years. The inner layers of a nebular cloud and protoplanetary disk also protect against radiation and extreme cold, enabling spores to survive.
Previous studies have concluded that microbes can survive an interplanetary journey. Many species of microbe have evolved the ability to survive a violent impact and ejection into space; the frigid temperatures and vacuum of an interstellar environment; the UV rays, cosmic rays, gamma rays, and ionizing radiation they would encounter; and the crash landing onto the surface of a planet.
Joseph argues that they would not have evolved these capabilities if their entire ancestral and genetic history had been confined to Earth and the conditions of this world.