[ExI] Panspermia ..... Life on Mars ..... and elsewhere

[Jeff Davis]

This is not where I started, but check it out, and if you don't have a lot
of time, start at 6:51.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbgB2TaYhio

The point I take from this is that normally we think of life processes as
proceeding at a certain pace.  We don't often think of the pace -- the
"time" variable -- of life as having a broad range.  ("fast": bacteria: 20
min reproductive cycle; slow: redwood tree reproductive maturity: a few
years, but lifespan: thousands of years.)

But this Ted talk on these deep sea microbes suggest that some life forms
-- bacterial -- have an astonishingly low metabolic rate, so that their
lifespans cover  -- what? -- tens of thousands? ... millions? ... of
years?

This dovetails quite nicely with Thomas Gold's "Deep Hot Biosphere" thesis.
In that theory the microbes deep in the Earth use enzymatic methods to
extract excess energy from rocks formed deep in the earth at high
temperature and pressure. It's a very "thin gruel" so these life forms must
live very slowly.

And I would add this further point. The theory of panspermia, the
transmission of life across space on ejecta, requires travel times of
thousands or millions of years.  Which suggests that life-forms with
extremely low rates of metabolism and very long life spans would be
particularly well-suited to make the trip and seed other planets.  Then,
after landing on a nutrient-rich planet, these life-forms would evolve
faster rates of metabolism.

Here's where I started.

Mars Curiosity Detects High Methane Levels Which Could Be Life
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/06/mars-curiosity-detects-high-methane-levels-which-could-be-life.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29


... that brought the various puzzle pieces together.

I predict we will find life nearly everywhere.  I suspect that the notion
of the Goldilocks's Zone embodies a misconception: that the zone of life
exists exclusively in at a certain orbital distance from whatever
particular star. (Because liquid water can exist at that orbital
distance.)  But I would suggest that more distant planets have there own
little Goldilocks's Zone, somewhere below the frigid cloud tops.  Follow
the thermal profile down, and you must inevitably reach a region of
suitable temperature (and pressure?).

Best, Jeff Davis

          "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                                                Ray Charles
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