[ExI] Panbiogenesis

[Anders Sandberg]

On 25/01/2012 02:41, The Avantguardian wrote:
> Remember Panbiogenesis, my whacky theory that once a long time ago the entire universe was a warm and wet primoridal soup of life? Well check out this recent news:
>   
> http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-bacteria-extreme-gravity.html
>   
> Apparently bacteria *thrive* under an acceleration of over a hundred thousand g's.

I don't see the link to panbiogenesis, the article merely mentions 
panspermia, which is something entirely different. And even there the 
link is tenuous: for panspermia to work, bacteria have to survive being 
launched by meteor impacts and then freeze dryed for very long time - 
they do not have to grow in high gravity environments. While the paper 
shows that life could exist on even heavier worlds than we previously 
thought (good news for all those big waterworlds we think are out 
there), this doesn't improve chances of panspermia much since heavy 
worlds are much less likely to be sources of launched life than lighter 
worlds.

So this paper at most bumps up our estimate of the amount of life on 
heavy worlds, but it does not support panspermia or panbiogenesis.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University