{"id":3777,"date":"2007-10-25T19:00:54","date_gmt":"2007-10-26T02:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/25\/bbc-reports-scientists-testing-theory-that-life-could-have-come-from-mars\/"},"modified":"2007-10-25T19:00:54","modified_gmt":"2007-10-26T02:20:42","slug":"bbc-reports-scientists-testing-theory-that-life-could-have-come-from-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3777","title":{"rendered":"BBC Reports: Scientists Testing Theory That Life Could Have Come from Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t remember when I first heard the theory that life could have evolved on Mars and traveled to Earth by way of meteorite, a theory which a commenter on my livejournal points out is called panspermia<\/a>. I’ve always thought panspermia was pretty far-fetched, but apparently it’s close-enough fetched that scientists are testing its viability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scientists at the University of Aberdeen are investigating whether life can travel between planets via meteorite, including whether or not it could have traveled from Mars to Earth. Investigating the later claim, they sculpted a slab of rock into a particular shape, and are attached it to an unmanned Russian craft.<\/p>\n

Further details of the experiments are to be revealed later, but the scientists already have some theories about what a meteorite that could carry life would have to look like:<\/p>\n

Prof Parnell said primitive life could not survive a meteorite of small size because of the heat, but believed it could survive inside the centre of a larger one measuring tens of centimetres. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

UPDATE: In comments, Robert and Ron try to correct my ignorance on the issue. Robert writes:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a numbers game. Simplifying assumption: the transport mechanism is viable, widespread, and easy\/automatic – impacts on planetary surfaces that carry life-bearing rock out into deep space is pretty good as far as those go.<\/p>\n

With that assumption in place, then life can start anywhere in the universe and spread through the transport mechanism. The initial \u201cinvention\u201d of life remains very unlikely, but you have trillions of potential places for it, instead of just one. \u201cIt happened somewhere else and then drifted here\u201d is much more likely than \u201cit happened here\u201d.<\/p>\n

The analogy I like to use is rock music. Is there rock music in your town? Sure. Was it invented there? No, it was invented in (a hundred) other places, and CAME there. It\u2019s a more likely scenario that you live in a place that has bands who were inspired from some outside source, than it is that you have bands who invented it themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t remember when I first heard the theory that life could have evolved on Mars and traveled to Earth by way of meteorite, a theory which a commenter on my livejournal points out is called panspermia. I’ve always thought … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind-blowing-miscellania-and-other-neat-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}