[extropy-chat] Panspermia lives, maybe

[Damien Broderick]

Searching for 'our alien origins'
By Andrew Thompson
BBC Horizon

In July 2001, a mysterious red rain started falling over a large area
of southern India.

Locals believed that it foretold the end of the world, though the
official explanation was that it was desert dust that had blown over
from Arabia.

But one scientist in the area, Dr Godfrey Louis, was convinced there
was something much more unusual going on.

Not only did Dr Louis discover that there were tiny biological cells
present, but because they did not appear to contain DNA, the
essential
component of all life on Earth, he reasoned they must be alien
lifeforms.

"This staggering claim is that this is possibly extraterrestrial.
That
is a big claim I know, but all the experiments are supporting this
claim," said Dr Louis.

His remarkable work has set in motion a chain of events with
scientists
around the world debating the origin of these mysterious cells.

The main reason why Dr Louis's ideas have not been immediately
laughed
out of court is because they tie in with a theory promoted by two UK
scientists ever since the 1960s.

Space qualified

The late Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe have
been
the champions of "Panspermia", the idea that life on Earth originated
on another planet.

They speculate that life was first brought here on the back of a
comet.
Over the last decade, Panspermia is being taken ever more seriously.

The US space agency (Nasa) is now increasingly interested in
searching
for extra-terrestrial life.

A new robotic submarine is being developed to explore the oceans of
one
of Jupiter's moons. This submarine is on test at the moment in a lake
in Texas.
Finding life elsewhere in the Solar System would be a vital bolster
to
the Panspermia theory.

Another section of Nasa is devoted to the study of bacteria found on
Earth that can survive extreme conditions.

Finding these types of bacteria makes it more likely that
micro-organism could survive the hardships of travelling through
space
on the back of a meteoroid.

Professor Wickramasinghe explained: "Bacteria have got to endure the
extreme cold of space, the vacuum of space, ultraviolet radiation,
cosmic rays, X-rays.

"That sounds like a tall order but bacteria do that. From what we
know
survival out in space is more or less ensured. Bacteria seem to me to
be born space travellers."

 From another place

Last summer, Horizon had exclusive access to a trip taken by
Professor
Wickramasinghe to India to investigate at first hand the red rain
phenomenon.

He met Dr Louis and together they visited the people who had
witnessed
the red rain.

He was able to see the recent work of Dr Louis which shows that the
red
rain can replicate at 300C, an essential attribute of a space
micro-organism that might have to endure extreme temperatures.


All this has convinced Professor Wickramasinghe that the red rain is
a
form of alien life.

"Before I came I had grave doubts as to whether the red rain was
really
an indication of life coming from space; new life coming from space,"
he said.

"But on reflection and after talking to Godfrey, I think I would now
fairly firmly believe that it did represent an invasion of microbes
from space."

Many scientists remain highly sceptical, however, but if
Wickramasinghe and Louis are correct it will be 
the strongest evidence so far that
the theory of Panspermia might be true.

It also raises the intriguing possibility that if life first
originated
on another planet then it must mean all Earth organisms, including
humans, evolved from alien life.

Horizon - We Are The Aliens is broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesday 14
November at 2100 GMT

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6146292.stm

Published: 2006/11/14 10:58:35 GMT

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