WEBVTT - Is Life on Earth of Alien Origin?

0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:07.080
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.479
<v Speaker 1>Lauren Vogel bomb here. Imagine a comet hurtling through the

0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:14.160
<v Speaker 1>nothingness of space. It smashes into a planet, causing destruction,

0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.639
<v Speaker 1>but also bringing life. That's because hitching a ride on

0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.200
<v Speaker 1>the surface of the comet were tiny traces of organic

0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:24.080
<v Speaker 1>material or even alien eggs, explaining how life could spread

0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.880
<v Speaker 1>across the cosmos and arrive on our planet. Pant Spermia,

0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:30.960
<v Speaker 1>meaning seeds Everywhere, is the name of the theory that

0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:34.199
<v Speaker 1>life on Earth may have cosmic origins, and it's been

0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.760
<v Speaker 1>both debated by scientists and featured in works of science fiction.

0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.520
<v Speaker 1>Now a group of nearly three dozen scientists from around

0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:44.360
<v Speaker 1>the world are putting a tweak in the theory, suggesting

0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.680
<v Speaker 1>not that Earth's earliest life had outer space origins, but

0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:52.360
<v Speaker 1>that panspermia may be responsible for the Cambrian explosion. That's

0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.160
<v Speaker 1>a point in Earth's history approximately four hundred and fifty

0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:58.560
<v Speaker 1>one million years ago when most major animal groups appear

0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:02.120
<v Speaker 1>in the fossil record. In their article cause of Cambrian

0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.200
<v Speaker 1>Explosion Terrestrial or Cosmic, published in eighteen issue of the

0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.679
<v Speaker 1>journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular biology. Thirty three scientists

0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.679
<v Speaker 1>tie the rise of unique animals tartegrades, octopuses, and the

0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:17.480
<v Speaker 1>bevy of other odd and unique animals that flourished at

0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.240
<v Speaker 1>that time to pan spermia, suggesting that many of these

0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:25.400
<v Speaker 1>relatively bizarre and never before seeing creatures descend from organic

0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:30.160
<v Speaker 1>alien material. The author's right. It takes little imagination to

0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:33.720
<v Speaker 1>consider that the Precambrian mass extinction event was correlated with

0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:37.160
<v Speaker 1>the impact of a giant lifebearing comet and the subsequent

0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:40.759
<v Speaker 1>seating of Earth with new cosmic derived cellular organisms and

0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.600
<v Speaker 1>viral genes. But we haven't cracked the mystery of life's

0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:47.720
<v Speaker 1>origins just yet. This new paper isn't built on any

0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.840
<v Speaker 1>new discoveries or research. It's a literature review that, for

0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.160
<v Speaker 1>the most part, references the author's own existing work. But

0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.480
<v Speaker 1>that's by design. The authors acknowledge. They write, we are

0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:00.440
<v Speaker 1>acutely aware that mainstream thinking on the or gin and

0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.480
<v Speaker 1>further evolution of life on Earth is anchored firmly in

0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:07.200
<v Speaker 1>the terrestrial paradigm. Our aim here is to facilitate further

0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:13.040
<v Speaker 1>discussion in the biophysical, biomedical, and evolutionary science communities. Panspermia

0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:15.800
<v Speaker 1>is at this point only a concept, but it dates

0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:18.040
<v Speaker 1>back well before the last hundred years or so of

0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.600
<v Speaker 1>modern science fiction. Way back at the turn of the

0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.400
<v Speaker 1>eighteenth century, French diplomat and natural historian Benois de May

0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:27.520
<v Speaker 1>proposed that life across the cosmos could have been seeded

0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:31.440
<v Speaker 1>from space, and a few scholars even interpret ancient Greek

0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:35.200
<v Speaker 1>philosopher and Axagorus of Clazomenas musings along the same lines.

0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.639
<v Speaker 1>He spoke vaguely of cosmic seeds two thousand, five hundred

0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:43.200
<v Speaker 1>years ago. The paper has already drawn skepticism after biologist

0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.440
<v Speaker 1>Francis Westall, for instance, points out that while some forms

0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.600
<v Speaker 1>of extremophile life have been observed surviving in the vacuum

0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.360
<v Speaker 1>of space for short periods of time, this new paper

0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:56.880
<v Speaker 1>suppositions would require eggs, embryos, or other cells survived thousands

0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:00.400
<v Speaker 1>of years, if not more, in space. West All told

0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.799
<v Speaker 1>Newsweek when discussing the paper, Unfortunately, it is all too

0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:06.440
<v Speaker 1>easy to pull information out of the literature to support

0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.960
<v Speaker 1>one's hypothesis. Nature is incredible, and I do not think

0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:13.040
<v Speaker 1>it is necessary to call on extraterrestrials to explain it.

0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:16.880
<v Speaker 1>An alternate theory for the Cambrian explosion goes by the

0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.640
<v Speaker 1>name Snowball Earth, and it suggests that seven fifteen million

0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:23.160
<v Speaker 1>years ago our planet became encased in ice for a

0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.480
<v Speaker 1>hundred and fifty million years, killing most existing life forms,

0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:30.360
<v Speaker 1>and that a massive thought allowed for an explosion of biodiversity.

0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:38.320
<v Speaker 1>Today's episode was written by Christopher Hasseiotis and produced by

0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:40.760
<v Speaker 1>Tyler Klang. For more on this and lots of other

0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.880
<v Speaker 1>life affirming topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works

0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:55.640
<v Speaker 1>dot com.