Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogel Bom and today's episode as
Speaker 1: a classic from the archives. Some of our episodes deal
Speaker 1: with incredibly mundane topics, how everyday objects are made, or
Speaker 1: the history behind some specific law or tradition, and I
Speaker 1: like those, but I also like this one because the
Speaker 1: question asks is a little bit better. How did life
Speaker 1: on Earth begin? Could it have come from beyond the stars?
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogel bomb Here, imagine a comet
Speaker 1: hurtling through the nothingness of space. It smashes into a planet,
Speaker 1: causing destruction, but also bringing life. That's because hitching a
Speaker 1: ride on the surface of the comet were tiny traces
Speaker 1: of organic material or even alien eggs, explaining how life
Speaker 1: could spread across the cosmos and derive on our planet.
Speaker 1: Pants Bermia, meaning seeds Everywhere, is the name of the
Speaker 1: theory that life on Earth may have of cosmic origins,
Speaker 1: and it's been both debated by scientists and featured in
Speaker 1: works of science fiction. Now, a group of nearly three
Speaker 1: dozen scientists from around the world are putting a tweak
Speaker 1: in the theory, suggesting not that Earth's earliest life had
Speaker 1: outer space origins, but that pan spermia may be responsible
Speaker 1: for the Cambrian explosion. That's a point in Earth's history,
Speaker 1: approximately four hundred and fifty one million years ago when
Speaker 1: most major animal groups appear in the fossil record. In
Speaker 1: their article cause of Cambrian Explosion Terrestrial or Cosmic, published
Speaker 1: in eighteen issue of the journal Progress in Biophysics and
Speaker 1: Molecular Biology, thirty three scientists tie the rise of unique
Speaker 1: animals tartegrades, octopuses, and the bevy of other odd and
Speaker 1: unique animals that flourished at that time to pan spermia,
Speaker 1: suggesting that many of these relatively bizarre and never before
Speaker 1: seeing creatures descend from organic alien material. The author's right,
Speaker 1: it takes little imagination to consider that the Precambrian Massi
Speaker 1: state auction event was correlated with the impact of a
Speaker 1: giant lifebearing comet and the subsequent seating of Earth with
Speaker 1: new cosmic derived cellular organisms and viral genes. But we
Speaker 1: haven't cracked the mystery of life's origins just yet. This
Speaker 1: new paper isn't built on any new discoveries or research.
Speaker 1: It's a literature review that, for the most part, references
Speaker 1: the author's own existing work, but that's by design. The
Speaker 1: authors acknowledge. They write, we are acutely aware that mainstream
Speaker 1: thinking on the origin and further evolution of life on
Speaker 1: Earth is anchored firmly in the terrestrial paradigm. Our aim
Speaker 1: here is to facilitate further discussion in the biophysical, biomedical,
Speaker 1: and evolutionary science communities. Panspermia is at this point only
Speaker 1: a concept, but it dates back well before the last
Speaker 1: hundred years or so of modern science fiction. Way back
Speaker 1: at the turn of the eighteenth century, French diplomat and
Speaker 1: natural historian Benois de May proposed that life across the
Speaker 1: cosmos could have been seated from space, and a few
Speaker 1: scholars even interpret ancient Greek philosopher and Xagorus of Clazomenas
Speaker 1: musings along the same lines. He spoke vaguely of cosmic
Speaker 1: seeds two thousand, five hundred years ago. The paper has
Speaker 1: already drawn skepticism. Astrobiologist Francis Westall, for instance, points out
Speaker 1: that while some forms of extremophile life have been observed
Speaker 1: surviving in the vacuum of space for short periods of time,
Speaker 1: this new paper suppositions would require eggs, embryos or other
Speaker 1: cells survive thousands of years, if not more, in space.
Speaker 1: Westall told NEWSWEK when discussing the paper, Unfortunately, it is
Speaker 1: all too easy to pull information out of the literature
Speaker 1: to support one's hypothesis. Nature is incredible, and I do
Speaker 1: not think it is necessary to call on extraterrestrials to
Speaker 1: explain it. An alternate theory for the Cambrian explosion goes
Speaker 1: by the name Snowball Earth, and it suggests that seven
Speaker 1: and fifteen million years ago our planet became encased in
Speaker 1: ice for a hundred and fifty million years, killing most
Speaker 1: existing life forms, and that a massive thaw allowed for
Speaker 1: an explosion of biodiversity. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article panspermia Did alien seeds cause life to explode on Earth?
Speaker 1: On how stuff Works dot Com written by Christopher hassi Otis.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership
Speaker 1: with how stuff Works dot Com, and it's produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klain. Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio visit
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