This is the first chapter of a finished book. It fits in as a link between 'The Genesis Race' published in 2003 & Ancient Alien Ancestors published last year. Enjoy. You can purchase this volume in its entirety or by the chapter via download.
CH1 – The Seeds of Life: Water is Out There
It is odd that we seldom hear about how life originated on earth. But we
hear physicists making claims about having a theory of everything, of
having solved many of the great mysteries of time, space, energy and
matter.Why?
They are addressing the non-living side of the universe, not biology. The
truth is that physicist have no idea about how life got in the universe and on
our planet. Darwin’s idea of the spontaneous generation of life on earth
was falsified by several scientists in the 19th century, including Luis
Pasteur.
Another theory called panspermia (seeds everywhere) was put forth by a
Swedish scientist Svante Arhenius, he claimed that the seeds of life
originated in the cosmos, not on earth, and were carried to this planet by
various cosmic forces and/or objects.
Positing that life began in outer space is not a new concept it was first
proposed by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, then revived by
Arehenius in the 19th century. However, the theory´s most passionate,
modern proponent is astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe- the director
of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology.
He is a former student of British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, with whom he
co-developed panspermia into a modern scientific theory. In 1974,
Wickramasinghe proposed that, dust in interstellar space and in comets,
was composed largely of organic molecules.
He is currently refining methods for detecting these proposed life forms
that live in outer space. In the first part of this chapter we are going to gain
some fresh insights into Chandra’s views concerning how life got on earth.
In 2000 SPACE.com interviewed him and I am here including portions of
that exchange:
SPACE.com: Do you think there will be mild, or perhaps significant
renewed interest in Panspermia?
Wickramasinghe: With every new piece of experimental/observational
evidence that comes to light showing that microbial life can withstand the
rigors of space travel, there is a renewed interest in Panspermia. Until
recently, Panspermia was not even regarded as a scientific hypothesis.
Now that has changed.
The general view still prevailing is that although life could easily be
transported, terrestrial life must have begun on Earth. There is no logic
that demands that and at the present time all the evidence is against that
point of view.
SPACE.com: While most scientists seem to support Panspermia as a
possibility, I've never seen an expression of the chances that it is the
method for originating life on Earth. What do you think are the odds that
Panspermia is the cause, as opposed to the "primordial soup" idea?
Wickramasinghe: The survival properties of bacteria under extreme
conditions show clearly the feasibility of transferring microbial life across
galactic distances. On the other hand the emergence of life from a
primordial soup on Earth is merely an article of faith that scientists are
finding difficult to shed. There is no experimental evidence to support this
at the present time.
Indeed all attempts to create life from non-life, starting from Pasteur, have
been unsuccessful. Also recent geological evidence indicates that life was
present on Earth over 3.6 billion years ago, at a time when the Earth was
being pummeled by comet and meteorite impacts, and no primordial soup
could have been expected to brew…
* * *
Now, though that interview took place a scant 14 years ago, the latest
evidence supporting panspermia theory, lends very strong support. Though
there may be alien, biochemical pathways on other planets that use
different ingredients, on Earth we know that water and certain organic
molecules are prerequisites for life.
In the search for life in the cosmos, the very first thing we would look for
are the signatures of H2O. In fact, NASA discovered water on the moon as
far back as the Apollo missions.
Neil Armstrong actually reported observing a cloud of water vapor on the
moon in 1969. Though that early report was dismissed, as we shall see
below, NASA has unequivocally found water on the moon in more recent
missions.
The next thing we should then search for is organic molecules which form
the basis of living things. With the advent, and increasing sophistication of
DNA analysis, scientists have made startling discoveries in recent years
while examining meteorites. (Examined in CH 2)
In fact, science has been accumulating a mass of positive data regarding
the existence of the ingredients of life in extraterrestrial environments (on
meteorites that landed on Earth as well) over the past few years.
The game-changers have already occurred, though the public is largely
unaware of the full import of this reality. In truth, we are already in a new
era with a paradigm-shift involving the earth’s place in the cosmos
occurring at present.
Moreover, establishing that life exists in the cosmos and was transported to
Earth, by one means or another, can be used as a precursor to the theory of
Directed Panspermia (Cosmic Ancestry). The author’s theory, borrowed
from Nobel prize recipients, Sir Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel.
That theory goes a step further by asserting that an advanced
extraterrestrial race deliberately shipped life (microbes) to Earth (Cosmic
Ancestry 2).
So in a very real sense our process of space exploration and discovery thus
far, has been all about seeing if we can find the basic ingredients of life out
there. Now, finding earth-like planets is high on the list as well.
Obviously, life must exist elsewhere in the universe for an advanced
civilization to have first evolved and then later dispatched the seeds
(microorganisms), via a spacecraft to the earth in remote antiquity. But
confirming that scientifically is still several steps ahead of where we are
today.
Nonetheless, where we are right now is many orders of magnitude beyond
where science (Crick and Orgel) were in the late 1960s. NASA has
confirmed that water exists on other planetary bodies. That is now an
established fact as we shall soon see.b
Of course science fiction authors have long speculated about there being
life beyond the earth, including advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.
Nonetheless, it is one thing to speculate --including the formulation of
statistical probabilities as scientists have done -- that life exists elsewhere
in the cosmos.
But it is quite another to have collected hard evidence that unequivocally
proves it.
That is the threshold we have recently crossed and it is a critical one in
scientific terms. Nonetheless, before presenting that proof we should
address the more fundamental issue, which is the undeniable proof that
water exists on other planetary bodies.
One of the oldest space controversies, aside from the ‘little green men’ is
that involving Mars and whether there was ever H2O on the red planet.
The long standing debate has been settled, NASA’s Curiosity rover found
evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few scattered sites.
These included the rock-outcrop pictured in the insert. The researchers
named the site “Hottah” after Hottah Lake in Canada’s Northwest
Terriroties.
Remains of an ancient streambed (NASA)
Look closely and you will see geological features that geologists call
sedimentary conglomerate, rocks cemented together over time. These
same features are very common on Earth and are associated with flowing
streams.
Scientists found smoothed pebbles within this conglomerate and they
noted that this finding indicated sustained abrasion of rock fragments,
within water flows, that crossed the Gale Crater in remote antiquity.
The main evidence for the existence of flowing water are the size and
rounded shapes of the gravel in and around the bed-rook. Hottah has bits
of gravel embedded in it (called clasts) up to a few inches in size and
located inside the matrix of sand particles.
The question is, how did these clasts form and get in there? In fact,
geologists knew the answer to that question instantly -- because these
features of Martian geology match those on Earth – flowing water causes
them.
There is an old truism that biologist’s use- where there is water there is
probably some form of life.
The above images compare sites on Mars and on Earth, the latter an
established streambed, showing the close similarities. According to
NASA’s JPL lab:b
“The rocks are the first ever found on Mars that contain streambed
gravels. The sizes and shapes of the gravels embedded in these
conglomerate rocks – from the size of sand particles to the size of golf balls
– enabled researchers to calculate the depth and speed of the water that
once flowed across this location.”
From this we have the smoking-gun proof that water once existed on
Mars. The old questions and debates have been resolved. Since water is a
necessary prerequisite to life, establishing its existence on other planets is a
necessary first step to expanding the search for life.
That has been accomplished on Mars and is being determined on other
planets as well, that discussion continues below.
Since the moon lacks an atmosphere and the day-time temperatures are
near boiling, NASA scientists long claimed that it was bone-dry.
However, that all changed in 2009 due to observations of the lunar surface made with
India’s Chandrayaan-1 (named after Chandra Wickramasinghe.
Then NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and finally NASA's Deep Impact probe,
corroborated the findings. So 3 automated spacecraft, killed that obsolete
assumption in 2010.
That was due to multiple detections of the spectral signal of either water or
the hydroxyl group (a molecular form of oxygen and hydrogen chemically
bonded). Though there was some temporary uncertainty about the exact
nature of the discovery, the Deep Impact observations of conditions on the
Moon unequivocally confirmed the presence of [water/hydroxyl] on the
lunar surface.
Beyond that they also revealed that “the entire lunar surface is hydrated
during at least some portion of the lunar day,” NASA scientists wrote in
their study.
Next, taking those general findings a step further, using data from NASA's
Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard the Chandrayaan-1;
scientist´s also detected magmatic water, or water that originates from
deep within the moon's interior, on the surface of the moon.
“The Moon continues to surprise us,” said Carle Pieters, principal
investigator for the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M cubed) at a 2009 press
conference. “Widespread water has been detected on the surface of the
Moon. You have to think outside of the box on this. This is not what any of
us expected decades ago.”
These findings were published in the Aug. 25, 2013 edition of Nature
Geoscience. They represent the first detection of this form of water from
this vantage point.
Earlier studies had shown the existence of magmatic water in lunar rock
samples. Those were returned during NASA's Apollo program (those early
findings were disputed however, so never publicly confirmed).
The discoveries have forced planetary scientists to radically revise their
earlier models of the moon. They have cautioned that it remains drier than
any desert on Earth and the lunar water exists in very small quantities…
but the fact that it exists at all is amazing and enigmatic!
The findings of all three spacecraft "provide unambiguous evidence for the
presence of hydroxyl or water," said Paul Lucey of the University of
Hawaii in an opinion essay accompanying the three studies back in 2010.
(He was not involved in any of the missions and is therefore impartial.)
With the conclusive proof that water exists both on Mars and on the Moon,
the latter representing a number of anomalies, we can move on to other
exciting, recent discoveries.
In 2013, NASA announced that the Hubble Space Telescope spotted faint
signatures of water in three of the five atmospheres of distant planets they
were surveying.
These were not Earth-like worlds, such as the Kepler telescope
subsequently identified, they more resemble Jupiter. This was the first
study to measure and compare the profiles of these H2O signatures on a
number of remote worlds.
The scientists who conducted the mission summarized their conclusions in
the following way:
“This work really opens the door for comparing how much water is
present in atmospheres on different kinds of exoplanets, for example
hotter versus cooler ones.” (NASA JPL laboratory)
These are astounding findings and we should not take them for granted
because scientists, even 50 years ago, would not have anticipated any of
them. Quite the opposite in fact. If water turns out to be rather ubiquitous in
the solar system, and then the galaxy, the probability that life exists in
interstellar space becomes a virtual certainty.
The above discoveries lend strong support to the theory of Panspermia
while offering some indirect support to Directed Panspermia. In fact, the
findings are exactly what these theories predict scientists would discover
and must find if Panspermia, at least, is a viable thesis.
On the other hand they deal a near knock out blow to Darwinian,
closed-state, Earth-based theories of the origins of life.
We must note here that correctly predicting the outcomes of future
experiments, and verifying projected discoveries, is one of the strongest
supports for any scientific theory. Discovering water on other planets is the
first serious, if still tentative, confirmation of the theory of Cosmic
Ancestry (Panspermia and/orDirected Panspermia).
Now we turn to another satellite in our solar system where H2O has been
discovered, this time in relatively large quantities. Beneath the icy veneer
and inside of Enceladus, one of Saturn´s moons, scientists claim there is a
large sea of water estimated to be the size of Lake Superior.
(Scientists just announced this finding, as this chapter is being finalized in
April, 2014)
The discovery, published in the journal Science, confirms what planetary
scientists have suspected about this moon, ever since 2005. In that year
they were astonished to view photographs showing geysers of ice crystals
shooting out of its south pole.
“What we’ve done is put forth a strong case for an ocean,” said David J
Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of
Technology and an author of the Science paper.
For many researchers, this small, shiny moon, just over 300 miles wide, is
now the most promising place to look for life elsewhere in the solar
system, even a better candidate than Mars.
“Definitely Enceladus because there´s warm water right there now,” said
Larry W Esposito, a professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences at
the University of Colorado told reporters (he was not involved in the
research).
We are not yet done with our water survey, we have yet another planetary
satellite where water appears to have been found to examine, Europa.
Scientists say this moon — which orbits the planet Jupiter about 778
million km (484 million miles) from the sun — could support life because
it might have an ocean of liquid water under its miles-thick frozen crust.
In 2013, NASA reported that ¨the Hubble Space Telescope observed
water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter's moon Europa,
providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's
surface."
That would make the second moon, in our solar system that has displayed
ice crystal geysers and the third to possess water.
In their paper, which presented the theory that an advanced alien
civilization shipped microbes to Earth billions of years ago, Crick and
Orgel wrote:
“However, some second generation stars not unlike the Sun must have
formed within 2x 10gyer of the origin of the galaxy. Thus it is quite
probable that planets not unlike the Earth existed as much as 6.5 x 10gyr
before the formation of our own Solar System.” (Francis Crick, Leslie
Orgel – Directed Panspermia, 1973)
That prediction has been subsequently borne out by the Kepler and other
missions. Now scientists know that there are Earth-like planets, and water
bearing worlds out there, which had not been established back in the
1970’s.
With each passing decade we have moved closer to proving that the
ingredients of life exist in outer space; soon it will become evident that we
are not alone in the universe. The next two chapters move of us even closer
to that realization.
.
Comments