BrainStuff Classics: Is Life on Earth of Alien Origin?

The idea that life on Earth was seeded from outer space is called Panspermia, and some researchers are looking into how (and when) it could've happened. Learn more in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/did-alien-seeds-cause-explosion-life-earth.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogel Bom and today's episode as
a classic from the archives. Some of our episodes deal
with incredibly mundane topics, how everyday objects are made, or
the history behind some specific law or tradition, and I
like those, but I also like this one because the

(00:23):
question asks is a little bit better. How did life
on Earth begin? Could it have come from beyond the stars?
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogel bomb Here, imagine a comet
hurtling through the nothingness of space. It smashes into a planet,
causing destruction, but also bringing life. That's because hitching a

(00:45):
ride on the surface of the comet were tiny traces
of organic material or even alien eggs, explaining how life
could spread across the cosmos and derive on our planet.
Pants Bermia, meaning seeds Everywhere, is the name of the
theory that life on Earth may have of cosmic origins,
and it's been both debated by scientists and featured in
works of science fiction. Now, a group of nearly three

(01:07):
dozen scientists from around the world are putting a tweak
in the theory, suggesting not that Earth's earliest life had
outer space origins, but that pan spermia may be responsible
for the Cambrian explosion. That's a point in Earth's history,
approximately four hundred and fifty one million years ago when
most major animal groups appear in the fossil record. In

(01:28):
their article cause of Cambrian Explosion Terrestrial or Cosmic, published
in eighteen issue of the journal Progress in Biophysics and
Molecular Biology, thirty three scientists tie the rise of unique
animals tartegrades, octopuses, and the bevy of other odd and
unique animals that flourished at that time to pan spermia,
suggesting that many of these relatively bizarre and never before

(01:50):
seeing creatures descend from organic alien material. The author's right,
it takes little imagination to consider that the Precambrian Massi
state auction event was correlated with the impact of a
giant lifebearing comet and the subsequent seating of Earth with
new cosmic derived cellular organisms and viral genes. But we
haven't cracked the mystery of life's origins just yet. This

(02:14):
new paper isn't built on any new discoveries or research.
It's a literature review that, for the most part, references
the author's own existing work, but that's by design. The
authors acknowledge. They write, we are acutely aware that mainstream
thinking on the origin and further evolution of life on
Earth is anchored firmly in the terrestrial paradigm. Our aim
here is to facilitate further discussion in the biophysical, biomedical,

(02:37):
and evolutionary science communities. Panspermia is at this point only
a concept, but it dates back well before the last
hundred years or so of modern science fiction. Way back
at the turn of the eighteenth century, French diplomat and
natural historian Benois de May proposed that life across the
cosmos could have been seated from space, and a few
scholars even interpret ancient Greek philosopher and Xagorus of Clazomenas

(03:01):
musings along the same lines. He spoke vaguely of cosmic
seeds two thousand, five hundred years ago. The paper has
already drawn skepticism. Astrobiologist Francis Westall, for instance, points out
that while some forms of extremophile life have been observed
surviving in the vacuum of space for short periods of time,
this new paper suppositions would require eggs, embryos or other

(03:23):
cells survive thousands of years, if not more, in space.
Westall told NEWSWEK when discussing the paper, Unfortunately, it is
all too easy to pull information out of the literature
to support one's hypothesis. Nature is incredible, and I do
not think it is necessary to call on extraterrestrials to
explain it. An alternate theory for the Cambrian explosion goes

(03:44):
by the name Snowball Earth, and it suggests that seven
and fifteen million years ago our planet became encased in
ice for a hundred and fifty million years, killing most
existing life forms, and that a massive thaw allowed for
an explosion of biodiversity. Today's episode is based on the
article panspermia Did alien seeds cause life to explode on Earth?

(04:08):
On how stuff Works dot Com written by Christopher hassi Otis.
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