The idea that life on Earth originated elsewhere is not as far out as it seems

The fun part about the panspermia theory is that it&#x27;s a very old idea first proposed by Anaxagoras (c. 500 – c. 428 BC), a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher.<p>He had also imagined the concept of a &quot;Cosmic mind&quot; (Nous). If i understand well, for him, this &quot;Cosmic mind&quot; is not really an external metaphysical god, but more a physical part of the universe itself. A mind inside the universe, but isolated from the rest, and who try to organise everything else in the universe (including life).

I wonder why Occam&#x27;s razor is wrongly used in many of this thread comments as a rule instead of an heuristic for simplicity. Violating the Occam&#x27;s razor is not a logic absurd. This is not in favor or against of the article proposal, just an issue with using logical arguments.

Tough to rule it out I suppose, and would be interesting to know purely as a matter of history, but I really don&#x27;t see the attraction of it as an idea in of itself.<p>The emergence of primitive proto-cells, then unicellular life, whereever it originated, seems quite easy to understand, and I&#x27;d agree with Stuart Kaufmann&#x27;s &quot;At home in the universe&quot; suggestion that it appears more inevitable given a few environmental prerequisites than something requiring an extraordinary explanation. If interstellar RNA(?) did find it&#x27;s way to earth, then it was likely competing with home-grown primitive cells, given what we know about early earth conditions and the inevitable rise of complexity.<p>The basic idea is that all it took for life&#x2F;evolution to get started was a circular chain of chemical reactions (a primitive&#x2F;proto-metabolism - consuming environment chemicals, and producing others) and some type of semi-permeable container (eventually to become a cell wall) such as a fatty bubble made out of hydrocarbons that can be produced in early-earth conditions. That&#x27;s all evolution would have needed to get started - some froth on the seashore (or by the deep sea vent&#x2F;whereever) &quot;competing&quot; with other flavors of froth for numerical supremacy.<p>The more interesting phases of evolution, which it seems are less inevitable (or perhaps I should say lower probability - but nonetheless inevitable given enough time) are things like the emergence of multi-cellular life, or what triggered the &quot;Cambrian explosion&quot; of variety to emerge.

The simplest known forms of life - simple bacteria and archea are extremely complex. They have hundreds of different proteins, RNA, DNA, membranes, interacting in a million different ways. Humankind has been able to create multi-gigahertz processors, H bombs, complicated software systems, but not artificial living being from scratch.<p>It looks like there were bacteria on Earth just a few hundred million years after the planet formed a solid surface. On other hand next major steps in evolution - like eucariots and multi-cellurality took billions of years. Either early life evolution was extremely fast or life originated elsewhere and had much more time to evolve into bacteria and archea.<p>One panspermia hypothesis is life originated on Mars. It has a lot of iron, and iron catalysis a lot of the chemical reactions that probably made early life. Mars formed a solid surface about a billion years earlier than Earth. Also early on it had a magnetic field, that could protect a thicker athmosphere, that would allow for the existance of seas and oceans. So potentially life originated on Mars, took a billion years to evolve into bacteria&#x2F;archea, which made the jorney to earth on pieces of rock, displaced by an asteroid impact (a lot of Marsian rocks fall down on Earth).

What scientific problem would actually be solved by panspermia? Obviously, the product of two unlikely events is not more likely than one unlikely event by itself.<p>Not to mention, we have zero evidence that comets can really seed life and we also have absolutely no reason to believe that any place in the universe is better at spawning life than earth.<p>So I wonder, why is this idea so attractive?

Sure panspermia is cute idea, but occams razor cuts it; its simply more complex theory that life first originated somewhere else and then migrated to earth than just that life originated on earth. Unless there are some very compelling explanations why some other place would be so much more favourable environment for originating life?

The problem with panspermia, simulation hypothesis and the like, aside from Occam&#x27;s razor violation, is that instead of proposing an answer they just declare it effectively unknowable. An interesting panspermia hypothesis would include a description of the place where life originated instead of Earth and the process by which it emerged.

We are exceptionally close to big bang, only 2 sun&#x27;s lifetimes from it and life is on earth for maybe half that, IMHO there is not much time for panspermia, 30-50 Gy in the future sure, but now? It seems too soon.

If we stop looking at life as some great mystical thing, and look at it as a more mechanical expression of self replicating molecules, it’s quite likely to be all over the place.<p>Even “intelligence” doesn’t seem to be that uncommon, even here on earth.<p>Enough intelligence to look outside and leave a planet may be rarer, given that only one species has it on earth - the dinosaurs were around for longer than humans, but why didn’t they develop enough intelligence and capability to do what we did?

&quot;The idea of life on Earth&quot; is already so far out that the mere possibility of it having originated elsewhere actually makes it a more plausible occurrence

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.esa.int&#x2F;Science_Exploration&#x2F;Space_Science&#x2F;Rosetta&#x2F;Where_life_began#" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.esa.int&#x2F;Science_Exploration&#x2F;Space_Science&#x2F;Rosett...</a><p>&quot;However, there is now direct evidence that some of the so-called chemical ‘building blocks’ of life – organic molecules – can be found in comets.&quot;

To me, it seems unlikely because, as far as I understand, life immediately began as soon as Earth cooled. So life is just barely younger than the Earth by only tens to hundreds millions of years.<p>Also, it seems hard to imagine a better place for life to emerge than Earth.<p>I can&#x27;t watch the video right now, but what are the theories of how life got onto meteors in the first place?

Fun video. The bulk of engagement in the comments appears to be contrarians who didn’t bother watching.

I didn&#x27;t think this idea was all that far out there in the first place, was it?

Adjacent to Terrance McKenna&#x27;s ideas about spores from space.

I loved this theme in the movie Prometheus.

I&#x27;ve been mocked for decades for supporting this theory. Just like my opinions on AI. Quietly waiting for you guys to level up.