Post by Andrei Tchentchik on Apr 1, 2019 23:28:59 GMT 2
(.#135).- Would life be older than Earth?
Would life be older than Earth?
Apr 18, 2013
The application of laws (suppositions) that relate to computer science, biology, raises the intriguing possibility that life existed before the Earth and could thus have its origin outside our solar system, according to scientists.
The law of Moore is the observation that computers increase in complexity exponentially, at a rate of about twice as many transistors per integrated circuit every two years. If you apply Moore's law to the computational complexity rates of recent years, and you go back, you will have to go back to the 1960s, when the first chip was invented.
Moore's Law (Wikipedia)
Recently, two geneticists have applied Moore's Law to the speed with which life on Earth is growing in complexity, and the results suggest that organic life was born well before the Earth itself.
Scientist Alexei Sharov of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, and biologist Richard Gordon of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida, used Moore's law, replacing the transistors with nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, and DNA. RNA, and circuits with genetic material before performing the calculation.
The results suggest that life would have appeared about 10 billion years ago, far more distant than the estimated 4.5 billion years for the Earth.
Curve drawn from the study (Alexei Sharov-Richard Gordon)
So, even if it is mathematically possible that life existed before Earth, is it physically possible? Once again, Sharov and Gordon think so. While our solar system was forming, pre-existing organisms in the form of bacteria or even the simplest nucleotides could have reached the Earth, transported by comets, asteroids or other mineral debris from space from an ancient area of the galaxy, a theoretical process called panspermia.
The scientists' calculations are not the scientific proof that life is anterior to the Earth, there is no way to know for sure that organic complexity has increased at a steady pace at any point in history of the universe. For Sharov, it must be called an exercise of thought or an essay, rather than a theory.
The idea of Sharov and Gordon raises other interesting possibilities. On the one hand, "life before the Earth" demystifies the science fiction part that deals with scientifically advanced exotic species. If genetic complexity progresses at a steady pace, then the social and scientific development of any other form of extraterrestrial life in the Milky Way would be roughly equivalent to that of humans.
The study of Sharov and Gordon combines a theoretical and practical part between the origin of life and the relationship between life and knowledge.
Human evolution does not occur only in the genome, it occurs "epigenetically", or in the mind, while technology, language and cultural memory become more complex. The functional complexity of organisms (is) partially coded in the hereditary genome and partially in the perishable spirit.
By applying Moore's law, a theory initially designed to explain technological development, to life, geneticists do not simplify evolution, they recognize its extraordinary complexity.
Although some doubt Sharov and Gordon's conclusions, the scientists are sticking to their conclusions.
Contamination with bacterial spores from space seems the most plausible hypothesis that explains the early appearance of life on Earth.
Their study published online on Arxiv: Life Before Earth.
Useful information :
c/f : fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermie
Panspermia
Panspermia is an assumption that the origin of life on Earth is due to extraterrestrial "contamination". This idea appeared for the first time in ancient times but is still debated today.
These would be transfers of microscopic living organisms or constituent molecules of organic matter (such as ribose) through space, thanks to comets for example. The hypotheses are numerous: the transfers can be made between neighboring planets or, on the contrary, over great distances, they can be deliberate or perfectly natural.
Panspermia could also be used by humanity to colonize other planets or to help life flourish, but ethical questions arise.
However, while this hypothesis is attractive, it remains a speculative hypothesis without tangible evidence to support it, 1 despite the discovery of organisms potentially capable of surviving the journey through space. The Stanley Miller experiment (primitive soup) tends to refute this theory. Today the main hypothesis of the origin of earthly life is that it would have appeared on earth.
History
The term "panspermia", from the ancient Greek panspermia (πανσπερμία), pan (πᾶν) all and sperma (σπέρμα) the seed, appears for the first time in the fifth century BC. AD in the writings of Anaxagoras, but is challenged by the assumptions of Aristotle and falls into oblivion.
The term reappears in the nineteenth century, with the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1834, the Prussian botanist Hermann E. Richter in 1865, the British physicist Lord Kelvin in 1871 and the Prussian scientist Hermann von Helmholtz in 1879.
Finally in 1903 the Swedish chemist Svante August Arrhenius formulates the first theoretical description of panspermia.
The assumptions of panspermia were taken up by Donald Barber in 1963, then by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel in the 1970s (panspermie directed).
In 1974, astronomer Fred Hoyle, a great advocate of panspermia that he links to his theory of the stationary state, and his student Chandra Wickramasinghe restart the debate and declare that certain diseases on Earth would be of extraterrestrial origin (pathospermia) .
In 1996, Brig Klyce proposed the Cosmic Ancestry version, a combination of Hoyle's panspermia with James Gaia Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.
In April 2009, Stephen Hawking said:
"Life could spread from planet to planet or to stellar system, carried on meteors"
"Life could spread from one planet to another or from one star system to another, carried by meteors"
Between 2008 and 2015, during a series of experiments in astrobiology (EXPOSE [What?]), A wide variety of biomolecules and micro-organisms were exposed, for a year and a half, to the vacuum of space and solar radiation outside the International Space Station; some organisms have survived for a very long time in these difficult conditions.
Mechanisms
Panspermia is not a unique hypothesis, several variants have emerged over time:
Lithopanspermia
Lithopanspermia is the transfer of living organisms in rocks from one planet to another in a natural way.
Although there is no evidence of lithopanspermia in the solar system, various technological advances have made it possible to test the different phases of such a transfer (planetary ejection, survival during transfer and atmospheric entry) and that some living organisms have an extraordinary level of resistance.
The study of several meteorites, notably that of Murchison, yielded a rich harvest of various organic molecules, including porphyrins, purine and pyrimidine bases that are involved in the composition of nucleic acids in DNA. The Murchinson meteorite contains no less than 74 types of amino acids, 8 of which are common in proteins (glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, proline, aspartic and glutamic acids), most of them being of extraterrestrial origin since only 20 Amino acids are part of the composition of living proteins. It also revealed the presence of diamino acids, suggesting the prebiotic formation of polypeptide structures, protein bricks.
Researchers have reported on several occasions that they have observed indigenous microfossils (cyanobacteria) in meteorites (for example the CI1 fossils from the Orgueil, Alais, Ivuna, Tonk and Revelstoke meteorites). These interpretations are invalidated by subsequent studies that show that these observations correspond to instrumental, mineralogical or organic artifacts.
![]()
It may be tempting to see fossil forms (carbon corpuscles of spherical contour or bacterial filaments) in these two grains of the Murchison meteorite, but such an interpretation is subject to major risks of artifacts.
Directed panspermy
Directed panspermia refers to the deliberate transport of microorganisms into space, sent to Earth to start life, or sent from Earth to colonize new planetary systems.
Several publications since 1979 have suggested that if a distinctive signature were discovered, deliberately implanted, in the genome or genetic code of living beings on Earth, this would prove the existence of directed panspermia. In 2013 a team of physicists said they discovered traces of such a signature, but their discovery was quickly refuted.
Space agencies have even integrated planetary protection procedures to reduce the risk of contamination of other planets during space missions.
Panspermia directed has already been proposed to extend and secure life in space.
Pseudo-panspermia
Pseudo-panspermia (sometimes called soft panspermia, molecular panspermia or quasi-panspermia) considers that the natural molecules necessary for life come from space and have been incorporated into the solar nebula from which the solar system was formed. , before being redistributed later to the planets (abiogenesis).
Transpermia
Transpermia is the transfer of organisms living only between neighboring planets, such as between Mars and the Earth.
Pathospermia
Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have speculated that several epidemics on Earth are of extraterrestrial origin, including the 1918 flu, some outbreaks of polio and mad cow disease. For the 1918 pandemic, they hypothesized that comet dust had brought the virus to Earth in several places simultaneously, a view almost universally rejected by the experts of this pandemic. Hoyle also hypothesized that HIV came from space.
After Hoyle's death, The Lancet published a free Wickramasinghe and two colleagues forum in which they speculated that the virus responsible for the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in China could be extraterrestrial and could would not come from chickens. The Lancet later published three responses to this letter, showing that the hypothesis was not based on evidence and cast doubt on the quality of the experiences referenced by Wickramasinghe in his letter.
Accidental panspermia
Thomas Gold, suggested in 1960 the hypothesis that the origin of terrestrial life would be due to waste thrown on Earth by extraterrestrials long ago (Cosmic Garbage).
Radiopanspermia
In 1903, Svante August Arrhenius hypothesized that microscopic life forms can be projected into space under the effect of star radiation pressure. But different studies have shown that microorganisms can not survive long in space without the protection of sufficiently large rocks.
Extrophilous organisms
An organism is said to be extremophilic when its normal living conditions are deadly for most other organisms: temperatures close to or above 100 ° C (hyperthermophilic) or below 0 ° C (psychrophilic), exceptional pressures (barophile deep seabed) high salt (halophilic) media, highly acidic (acidophilic) or hyper-alkaline (alkalophilic) media, radioactive or anoxic media (without oxygen) or non-illuminated media such as endoliths.
Although the simulations suggest that a meteorite could take several tens of millions of years before colliding with another planet, there are viable and documented terrestrial bacteria, 40 million years old and very resistant to radiation. , others able to come back to life after sleeping 25 million years, suggesting that life transfers by lithopanspermia are possible with meteorites larger than 1m.
The discovery of ecosystems in the deep sea, advances in astrobiology, astronomy and the discovery of large varieties of extremophiles, have opened a new path in astrobiology, massively increasing the possible number of extraterrestrial habitats and the possibility of transfer of microbial life over vast distances.
Conspiracy theory
Several occult theories develop arguments close to panspermia based, among other things, on the interpretation of passages from Genesis evoking the Nephilim, giants born, according to apocryphal gospels, the union of angels descended on Earth and women human. For some occultists, these passages would be a misinterpretation of the passage on Earth of extraterrestrial life forms that could have transmitted some of their knowledge, or even their DNA, to humanity in order to improve it.
Among other defenders of this theory, Jaz Coleman, composer and occultist, regularly refers to it in his texts and interview, or Rael, guru of the Raelian sect, who claims to have designed the first human clone and advocates the reception extraterrestrials by humanity. These ideas are also found in the theory of ancient astronauts.
Influences
• Panspermia is the main theme of the Muse Symphony, Exogenesis: Symphony, released in 2009.
• Bernard Werber's The Butterfly of the Stars presents a theory about panspermia.
• the film Prometheus also speaks of panspermia.
F I N .
Would life be older than Earth?
Apr 18, 2013
The application of laws (suppositions) that relate to computer science, biology, raises the intriguing possibility that life existed before the Earth and could thus have its origin outside our solar system, according to scientists.
The law of Moore is the observation that computers increase in complexity exponentially, at a rate of about twice as many transistors per integrated circuit every two years. If you apply Moore's law to the computational complexity rates of recent years, and you go back, you will have to go back to the 1960s, when the first chip was invented.
Moore's Law (Wikipedia)
Recently, two geneticists have applied Moore's Law to the speed with which life on Earth is growing in complexity, and the results suggest that organic life was born well before the Earth itself.
Scientist Alexei Sharov of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, and biologist Richard Gordon of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida, used Moore's law, replacing the transistors with nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, and DNA. RNA, and circuits with genetic material before performing the calculation.
The results suggest that life would have appeared about 10 billion years ago, far more distant than the estimated 4.5 billion years for the Earth.
Curve drawn from the study (Alexei Sharov-Richard Gordon)
So, even if it is mathematically possible that life existed before Earth, is it physically possible? Once again, Sharov and Gordon think so. While our solar system was forming, pre-existing organisms in the form of bacteria or even the simplest nucleotides could have reached the Earth, transported by comets, asteroids or other mineral debris from space from an ancient area of the galaxy, a theoretical process called panspermia.
The scientists' calculations are not the scientific proof that life is anterior to the Earth, there is no way to know for sure that organic complexity has increased at a steady pace at any point in history of the universe. For Sharov, it must be called an exercise of thought or an essay, rather than a theory.
The idea of Sharov and Gordon raises other interesting possibilities. On the one hand, "life before the Earth" demystifies the science fiction part that deals with scientifically advanced exotic species. If genetic complexity progresses at a steady pace, then the social and scientific development of any other form of extraterrestrial life in the Milky Way would be roughly equivalent to that of humans.
The study of Sharov and Gordon combines a theoretical and practical part between the origin of life and the relationship between life and knowledge.
Human evolution does not occur only in the genome, it occurs "epigenetically", or in the mind, while technology, language and cultural memory become more complex. The functional complexity of organisms (is) partially coded in the hereditary genome and partially in the perishable spirit.
By applying Moore's law, a theory initially designed to explain technological development, to life, geneticists do not simplify evolution, they recognize its extraordinary complexity.
Although some doubt Sharov and Gordon's conclusions, the scientists are sticking to their conclusions.
Contamination with bacterial spores from space seems the most plausible hypothesis that explains the early appearance of life on Earth.
Their study published online on Arxiv: Life Before Earth.
Useful information :
c/f : fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermie
Panspermia
Panspermia is an assumption that the origin of life on Earth is due to extraterrestrial "contamination". This idea appeared for the first time in ancient times but is still debated today.
These would be transfers of microscopic living organisms or constituent molecules of organic matter (such as ribose) through space, thanks to comets for example. The hypotheses are numerous: the transfers can be made between neighboring planets or, on the contrary, over great distances, they can be deliberate or perfectly natural.
Panspermia could also be used by humanity to colonize other planets or to help life flourish, but ethical questions arise.
However, while this hypothesis is attractive, it remains a speculative hypothesis without tangible evidence to support it, 1 despite the discovery of organisms potentially capable of surviving the journey through space. The Stanley Miller experiment (primitive soup) tends to refute this theory. Today the main hypothesis of the origin of earthly life is that it would have appeared on earth.
History
The term "panspermia", from the ancient Greek panspermia (πανσπερμία), pan (πᾶν) all and sperma (σπέρμα) the seed, appears for the first time in the fifth century BC. AD in the writings of Anaxagoras, but is challenged by the assumptions of Aristotle and falls into oblivion.
The term reappears in the nineteenth century, with the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1834, the Prussian botanist Hermann E. Richter in 1865, the British physicist Lord Kelvin in 1871 and the Prussian scientist Hermann von Helmholtz in 1879.
Finally in 1903 the Swedish chemist Svante August Arrhenius formulates the first theoretical description of panspermia.
The assumptions of panspermia were taken up by Donald Barber in 1963, then by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel in the 1970s (panspermie directed).
In 1974, astronomer Fred Hoyle, a great advocate of panspermia that he links to his theory of the stationary state, and his student Chandra Wickramasinghe restart the debate and declare that certain diseases on Earth would be of extraterrestrial origin (pathospermia) .
In 1996, Brig Klyce proposed the Cosmic Ancestry version, a combination of Hoyle's panspermia with James Gaia Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.
In April 2009, Stephen Hawking said:
"Life could spread from planet to planet or to stellar system, carried on meteors"
"Life could spread from one planet to another or from one star system to another, carried by meteors"
Between 2008 and 2015, during a series of experiments in astrobiology (EXPOSE [What?]), A wide variety of biomolecules and micro-organisms were exposed, for a year and a half, to the vacuum of space and solar radiation outside the International Space Station; some organisms have survived for a very long time in these difficult conditions.
Mechanisms
Panspermia is not a unique hypothesis, several variants have emerged over time:
Lithopanspermia
Lithopanspermia is the transfer of living organisms in rocks from one planet to another in a natural way.
Although there is no evidence of lithopanspermia in the solar system, various technological advances have made it possible to test the different phases of such a transfer (planetary ejection, survival during transfer and atmospheric entry) and that some living organisms have an extraordinary level of resistance.
The study of several meteorites, notably that of Murchison, yielded a rich harvest of various organic molecules, including porphyrins, purine and pyrimidine bases that are involved in the composition of nucleic acids in DNA. The Murchinson meteorite contains no less than 74 types of amino acids, 8 of which are common in proteins (glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, proline, aspartic and glutamic acids), most of them being of extraterrestrial origin since only 20 Amino acids are part of the composition of living proteins. It also revealed the presence of diamino acids, suggesting the prebiotic formation of polypeptide structures, protein bricks.
Researchers have reported on several occasions that they have observed indigenous microfossils (cyanobacteria) in meteorites (for example the CI1 fossils from the Orgueil, Alais, Ivuna, Tonk and Revelstoke meteorites). These interpretations are invalidated by subsequent studies that show that these observations correspond to instrumental, mineralogical or organic artifacts.
It may be tempting to see fossil forms (carbon corpuscles of spherical contour or bacterial filaments) in these two grains of the Murchison meteorite, but such an interpretation is subject to major risks of artifacts.
Directed panspermy
Directed panspermia refers to the deliberate transport of microorganisms into space, sent to Earth to start life, or sent from Earth to colonize new planetary systems.
Several publications since 1979 have suggested that if a distinctive signature were discovered, deliberately implanted, in the genome or genetic code of living beings on Earth, this would prove the existence of directed panspermia. In 2013 a team of physicists said they discovered traces of such a signature, but their discovery was quickly refuted.
Space agencies have even integrated planetary protection procedures to reduce the risk of contamination of other planets during space missions.
Panspermia directed has already been proposed to extend and secure life in space.
Pseudo-panspermia
Pseudo-panspermia (sometimes called soft panspermia, molecular panspermia or quasi-panspermia) considers that the natural molecules necessary for life come from space and have been incorporated into the solar nebula from which the solar system was formed. , before being redistributed later to the planets (abiogenesis).
Transpermia
Transpermia is the transfer of organisms living only between neighboring planets, such as between Mars and the Earth.
Pathospermia
Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have speculated that several epidemics on Earth are of extraterrestrial origin, including the 1918 flu, some outbreaks of polio and mad cow disease. For the 1918 pandemic, they hypothesized that comet dust had brought the virus to Earth in several places simultaneously, a view almost universally rejected by the experts of this pandemic. Hoyle also hypothesized that HIV came from space.
After Hoyle's death, The Lancet published a free Wickramasinghe and two colleagues forum in which they speculated that the virus responsible for the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in China could be extraterrestrial and could would not come from chickens. The Lancet later published three responses to this letter, showing that the hypothesis was not based on evidence and cast doubt on the quality of the experiences referenced by Wickramasinghe in his letter.
Accidental panspermia
Thomas Gold, suggested in 1960 the hypothesis that the origin of terrestrial life would be due to waste thrown on Earth by extraterrestrials long ago (Cosmic Garbage).
Radiopanspermia
In 1903, Svante August Arrhenius hypothesized that microscopic life forms can be projected into space under the effect of star radiation pressure. But different studies have shown that microorganisms can not survive long in space without the protection of sufficiently large rocks.
Extrophilous organisms
An organism is said to be extremophilic when its normal living conditions are deadly for most other organisms: temperatures close to or above 100 ° C (hyperthermophilic) or below 0 ° C (psychrophilic), exceptional pressures (barophile deep seabed) high salt (halophilic) media, highly acidic (acidophilic) or hyper-alkaline (alkalophilic) media, radioactive or anoxic media (without oxygen) or non-illuminated media such as endoliths.
Although the simulations suggest that a meteorite could take several tens of millions of years before colliding with another planet, there are viable and documented terrestrial bacteria, 40 million years old and very resistant to radiation. , others able to come back to life after sleeping 25 million years, suggesting that life transfers by lithopanspermia are possible with meteorites larger than 1m.
The discovery of ecosystems in the deep sea, advances in astrobiology, astronomy and the discovery of large varieties of extremophiles, have opened a new path in astrobiology, massively increasing the possible number of extraterrestrial habitats and the possibility of transfer of microbial life over vast distances.
Conspiracy theory
Several occult theories develop arguments close to panspermia based, among other things, on the interpretation of passages from Genesis evoking the Nephilim, giants born, according to apocryphal gospels, the union of angels descended on Earth and women human. For some occultists, these passages would be a misinterpretation of the passage on Earth of extraterrestrial life forms that could have transmitted some of their knowledge, or even their DNA, to humanity in order to improve it.
Among other defenders of this theory, Jaz Coleman, composer and occultist, regularly refers to it in his texts and interview, or Rael, guru of the Raelian sect, who claims to have designed the first human clone and advocates the reception extraterrestrials by humanity. These ideas are also found in the theory of ancient astronauts.
Influences
• Panspermia is the main theme of the Muse Symphony, Exogenesis: Symphony, released in 2009.
• Bernard Werber's The Butterfly of the Stars presents a theory about panspermia.
• the film Prometheus also speaks of panspermia.
F I N .
