PANSPERMIA 1

Roberto Bartali

Life is on my opinion something common in

the universe and not only it is common, but
it is almost of the same kind, carbon based.
Every star, no matter of its mass, produce
the basic chemical elements for life: C,N,O,
these, combined with the Hydrogen, that is
the most abundant element in the Universe,
make possible the complex molecule that
sustain life. If the star is more massive than
the Sun, it can produce much more elements
during its life on the Main Sequence,
normally the first 26. If the star is even more
An artist representation of panspermia.
From:
massive, when explodes as a supernova,
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/pan produce all other elements.
spermia.html This way the Universe is filled with the
basic elements for the life generation and
sustaining.
As Carl Sagan said in his Cosmos series “we are all made of stardust” and “all living things
(plants, animals and humans) are all cousins”. I agree with him.
All living creatures have a common ancestor and this ancestor came from somewhere in
space.
It is simply unbelievable, for me, to think that
we are alone, as a class mate of mine said:
“…The very essence of the universe should be to
produce not just living organisms but conscious
life forms (of which we are one example) to admire
its beauty and design…The universe needs
conscious receptors just as these need the
universe for their very own existence and
thriving…”. I think he was right, the Universe
is filled of life and there is no sense for just
one planet filled with living species.
It is simply absurd and I do not know why
most people are so arrogant to believe in
The Green Bank Radiotelescope inWest Virginia, USA. the human being as the best and the
From: http://www.gb.nrao.edu/
unique form of civilized life in the
immensity of the Universe.
When we search for ET (Extra Terrestrial) life we have to take two ways:
1 search for intelligent and technological life,
2 search for life in general.
Each way has some drawbacks.
For the first, we have to receive some kind of signals with logical contents, or receive an
answer for some message we are sending out.

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For the second, it is more difficult, because we have to send space probes to planets,
satellites or comets (like the Nasa Stardust mission) and check for micro organism.
But life can be in a stage of evolution very different
from place to place. Also it can be completely destroyed
and all we can find are fossils. This is not as difficult as
appears, because an impact of a sufficient massive
object like a comet or a little asteroid, may borrow any
form of life on a planet. We have various examples here
on the Earth (220 and 65 million years ago, an impact
ended most of the life, I am speaking about the
Australian and Mexican impacts respectively).
But the principal problem is: if life is common, from
where it came from? Well, I think, but I can not offer
any proof for that, the molecular clouds that are capable
to form a star and its planetary system,
Composite image of the Comet Wild 2, made contains all the necessary elements to form
by the Stardust NASA mission. The aim of the
mission was to collect and return to Earth amino acids and other molecule capable to
some particles of the comet tail. start some kind of living cell.
From: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov Which way living organism can travel from a
planetary system to another or simply from
some place to another in the same system?
The answer is, for me, simple: Comets, but, again I can not offer any proof.
Which way the living organisms survive during the
long journey from a remote place in the planetary
system and colonize other planets?
The temperature and the condition when the comet is
far from the central star are very extreme, (very low
temperature), also they are extreme in the opposite
way when the comet reach the inner part of its orbit
(perihelion), because the temperature and the
radiation are both very intense. The comet is just a
little piece of rock covered by ice (almost water ice),
when it reach a distance of 300 million km or more,
from the star, in the Solar System case the orbit of
Mars and the main asteroid belt, it starts to evaporate
the surface ice and the solar wind blow it away. If the
living organisms are occulted in the interior of the
comet, they are safe from the low temperature and
they may be in a kind of hibernation stage, (we see
many animals that slow down their metabolic
functions during winter, because it is difficult to find
Comet Hale Bopp foods, and, they wake up every spring).
From:
http://www.usr.toscana.it/WS_FIT
So, when the temperature condition is favorable, they
F015006/studenti/altrimondi/vita/or wake up and they are ejected from the comet and uses
igini5.htm the dust particle as a space ship, eventually they land on
some planet, satellite or asteroid.

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If the conditions, in the new place, are favorable, they can multiply and evolve.
But if the planet contains living bodies there are two possibilities:
1 there are a massive destruction of life
2 there are an interaction with the inhabitants.
The first case occurs because the immunological system of the inhabitants is not able to
decipher the genetic code of the invading cell and die rapidly.
The second case is when the interaction is capable of generating a mutation, so a new
specie can appears.
After many million years of evolution, we can see the development of tools and rapidly the
beginning of the technological age.
Again, we know now many extremophylies, they are microbes who love to live in
condition of temperature, radiation, atmosphere, where a “normal” plant or animal may die
in few minutes.
We are looking for extraterrestrial life in nearest planets and satellites and we expect to find
micro organism, but maybe we can not find any, because the environment, there, is, today,
not able to sustain life. Mars was a place plenty of water, but now it is a big desert, If we do
not take care of our environment, in a few
thousands of years, we destroy all the possibility
of life on our planet and the Earth may ends as a
big desert too.
At the time when Frank Drake, formulated his
equation, nobody knows any exoplanet, today
we know many of them, and haw many planets
are hidden? Infra-Red (IR) terrestrial and space
telescopes can now show us a lot of small cold
stars (like brown dwarfs), we actually knows
just a little number of objects outside our planet,
we are just discovering objects outside Pluto
orbit, so I think that the 90% (in number of
objects, not their mass) of the Galaxy is
invisible to us due to the low technological skills
of the human kind.
False color image of the rock named “Earart Rock” by the
Opprtunity robot on the surface of the planet Mars. The Red
Now in conclusion (in my own
Planet was once covered of water, so, sometimes we will find
fossilized rest of life. opinion), life is present in a very
From: great number of places.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/200410
07a.html Here, on Earth, the technology to
make space ships to travel to other
planets and build giant radiotelescopes for interplanetary communications is only 50 years
old.
But: life is present on this planet from at least 3500 millions years ago, so the last 50 years
are only the 0.00000143% of the total life time.
Also, only a few countries (less than 20) in the world may send satellites to outer planets
(not very efficiently yet because many of them get lost), they represent a very few percent
of the total, +/- 10%; speaking in terms of number of people, they represent a much less
quantity.

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So, finding life in general and, intelligent life in particular, is just matter of time because if
life starts at the same time everywhere, the evolution needs 3500 million years to reach our
present state of knowledge. But waiting for 100 or 500 years are nothing compared to the
whole time of the life history, so we have to search and wait an enormous quantity of time
(compared to our living time) but one instant compared to the age of the life on the Earth.