Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Taylor, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says I was lonely
Speaker 1: then like an alien. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And yes, folks, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about aliens again today. Yes, because there's nothing more futuristic
Speaker 1: than where life on Earth came from. Well, sometimes to
Speaker 1: go forward, you first must move backward. What did the
Speaker 1: two topics I just said have to do with each other? Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, we're talking about kind of a model
Speaker 1: that's been made that could possibly predict where we would
Speaker 1: most likely find aliens. But that's we're getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because alien life had to come from somewhere, our
Speaker 1: life had to come from somewhere. Studying one can potentially
Speaker 1: lead to figuring stuff out about the other, Right, And
Speaker 1: it's possible that both the alien life and our life
Speaker 1: came from the same place. Wait a minute, I saw Prometheus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did not think about the Prometheus tie in when
Speaker 1: I agreed to do this topic. Joe has feelings about Prometheus,
Speaker 1: don't we all have feelings. I don't. I never watched Okay,
Speaker 1: I it makes me feel things about Wiley Coyote mostly there. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: there is a there is a bald, godlike muscled figure
Speaker 1: in it that I suppose you might be able to
Speaker 1: relate to somewhat. Jonathan being the bald, muscular dude that
Speaker 1: I am, I'm mostly made off. Actually, I was emphasizing
Speaker 1: the godlike part. Okay, all right, I'll take it. But no,
Speaker 1: this is this is a thing that happens in the
Speaker 1: movie Prometheus. You see these bald, pale, weird dough is
Speaker 1: flying throughout the galaxy seeding life on other planets. So
Speaker 1: he sets down on what looks like some part of
Speaker 1: Iceland and appears to PLoP some weird DNA goop into
Speaker 1: the water and boom life on Earth. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to a theory that is essentially really I
Speaker 1: should say, a hypothesis that is essentially that well, a
Speaker 1: little bit less purposeful, I would say. Yeah, So to
Speaker 1: to kind of just do a quick run through of
Speaker 1: some of the stuff we mentioned before with alien life,
Speaker 1: just so that we uh, you know, have a foundation here.
Speaker 1: One of the things we have often referenced on this
Speaker 1: show is the Drake equation, which is a probabilistic formula
Speaker 1: created by Dr Frank Drake. Sure, and this equation is
Speaker 1: it is an equation, but when you think of an equation,
Speaker 1: you often think of something that has lots of known
Speaker 1: values in it, Right, you can you can manipulate to
Speaker 1: your will potentially. This is more of a thought experiment
Speaker 1: expressed in the form of a mathematical equation with lots
Speaker 1: of variables. Yeah, it's it's meant to be a way
Speaker 1: to kind of estimate how many uh, technologically advanced alien
Speaker 1: civilizations would be out there. But in order to actually
Speaker 1: get a number on that, we would have to have
Speaker 1: a lot more information than what the the what we
Speaker 1: currently have. Yeah, but you arrive at it by multiplying
Speaker 1: a bunch of different probabilities. And of course, as you know,
Speaker 1: when multiplying probabilities, if any of these probabilities are in
Speaker 1: fact zero, then your product in the end is going
Speaker 1: to be zero, right, And if there are fractions, your
Speaker 1: product in the end is going to be tiny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna get smaller and smaller as you multiply these
Speaker 1: small fractions together. Yeah. So here are some of the
Speaker 1: things are actually here are all the things that go
Speaker 1: into the Drake equation. First, you take the rate of
Speaker 1: formation of stars capable of developing and supporting intelligent life.
Speaker 1: That's your first number, which already is a little complicated
Speaker 1: because we're basing this on a sample size of one. Right,
Speaker 1: because based upon our assumptions, we could say, all right,
Speaker 1: let's just look at the stars that are son like,
Speaker 1: But it may be that there are other types of
Speaker 1: stars that also are able to support life. It's just
Speaker 1: life that's very different from the kind that we have
Speaker 1: on our planet. Yeah, sure, what if there is life
Speaker 1: on planets orbiting red giants, life on planets orbiting neutron stars. Right,
Speaker 1: there's also the possibility of life on rogue planets which
Speaker 1: don't orbit a star at all, or on commets or yeah,
Speaker 1: so such, I guess orbit stars. Never mind, but still
Speaker 1: it's not a planet commets, sure, I guess. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: whatever they're doing, whether or not they're orbiting a star,
Speaker 1: they're orbiting the galactic center here. Yeah, So then you
Speaker 1: take that number and you multiply that by the fraction
Speaker 1: of those stars that have planetary systems, because some stars
Speaker 1: do not. I want to come back to this variable
Speaker 1: in a minute. Ye, then multiply that by the number
Speaker 1: of planets per solar system that have an environment suitable
Speaker 1: for life. For this, multiply that by the action of
Speaker 1: suitable plants on which life is present, Multiply that by
Speaker 1: the fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life
Speaker 1: can evolve, and then multiply that by the length of
Speaker 1: time such civilizations released detectable signals into space. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the funny parts about this thought experiment is
Speaker 1: that back when it was first articulated, I think more
Speaker 1: of these probability variables were just big question marks. Sure,
Speaker 1: no idea at all, But a couple of the things
Speaker 1: you mentioned are actually figures where we are starting to
Speaker 1: gain some relevant knowledge, where we we could actually look
Speaker 1: at this and say, here's a good guess for what
Speaker 1: this number would be. For example, the fraction of stars
Speaker 1: that have planetary systems. Oh, yeah, we're learning more about
Speaker 1: extra planets every day. Yeah, I mean, that's something we
Speaker 1: can actually put a pretty reasonable estimate on now, and
Speaker 1: and back at the time we didn't know, although, of
Speaker 1: course they there are other parts of that variable that
Speaker 1: we would have to add to you know, we we
Speaker 1: have some information about some of the planets about whether
Speaker 1: or not there are any kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: markers for potential biological life, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: we don't know for a lot of those exoplanets yet. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've certainly never received a signal. It's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: text me back, right, you're Toad's not in the group message,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? Guys? But I do think it's
Speaker 1: interesting that here's one where here's one figure where we
Speaker 1: used to not know, and now we we have a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea, And there are other ones where we're
Speaker 1: about to get a much better idea, Like we're about
Speaker 1: to be able to use telescopic techniques to learn more
Speaker 1: about the environments of extra planets, so like whether they
Speaker 1: have an atmosphere that we think would be conducive to life.
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows what's really conducive to life, but right, yeah,
Speaker 1: conducive to our type of life. Yeah. So this this
Speaker 1: means that we are slowly filling in those blanks, but
Speaker 1: we haven't. We're still far away from being able to
Speaker 1: use this equation in any real meaningful way. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: there's another way. We could try and see if they're
Speaker 1: technological civilizations out there, which is listen to see if
Speaker 1: they're broadcasting anything. Yeah, yeah, tune into those text messages. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In this case, we're talking largely about SET the Search
Speaker 1: for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which scans the sky for any radio
Speaker 1: transmissions and then goes through all the data that comes back,
Speaker 1: tries to find anything that's meaningful that looks like it's
Speaker 1: a purposeful broadcast as opposed to random noise. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, a good approach to We figure that
Speaker 1: that's more likely to to result in us discovering life
Speaker 1: than just say, direct observation or having some aliens stumble
Speaker 1: upon us. Those two are not terribly likely. Of course,
Speaker 1: as you probably know, CT has not really turned up
Speaker 1: anything so far, unless you want to count some possibly
Speaker 1: anomalous weird signals like the Wow signal. If some most
Speaker 1: of the stuff that people think are are probably uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pulsar related or other naturally related phenomena. And
Speaker 1: space is huge. I don't know if you've read Hitchicker's
Speaker 1: Guy to Galaxy like like like really big exactly, you
Speaker 1: thought it was a long way down to the chemists,
Speaker 1: But that's peanuts compared to space. Uh yeah, space is enormous.
Speaker 1: So focusing on any section of space is like it's
Speaker 1: like you're in a massive arena. You have been blindfolded
Speaker 1: and spun around a huge number of times, and your
Speaker 1: goal is to throw a dart at a tiny target
Speaker 1: that's someplace around you and maybe you'll hit it. Like
Speaker 1: that's and even that is being pretty optimistic compared to
Speaker 1: just pointing telescopes out space to try and listen for stuff.
Speaker 1: But we might be able to narrow down that search
Speaker 1: a bit if we're able to make some predictions about
Speaker 1: where life would most likely arise. And of course this
Speaker 1: brings us to what we were alluding to at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the episode, which is the pan spermia hypothesis. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I want to clear up at the beginning here,
Speaker 1: because I think I've encountered a lot of confusion about this,
Speaker 1: at least when I read people leaven comments about it
Speaker 1: online and stuff. A lot of people think that pan
Speaker 1: spermia is a hypothesis about the origins of life, which
Speaker 1: is not. Now, it's about distribution of life. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the origins of life is a is a big question
Speaker 1: in science and you know, in physics and chemistry and
Speaker 1: organic chemistry, we we don't know exactly how life comes
Speaker 1: about from the molecules that exist in the universe, and
Speaker 1: that that's a big question that a lot of really
Speaker 1: smart people are working on and it's a big interest
Speaker 1: of mine. But pan spermia is the idea of not
Speaker 1: how life comes about, but how life got here. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's it's more about, uh, not just how life got here,
Speaker 1: but how could life potentially get to other places in
Speaker 1: the galaxy. Exactly right, So, so pan spermia is a
Speaker 1: Greek word. It means seeds everywhere, and uh, the hypothesis
Speaker 1: posits that seeds of life are scattered throughout the universe
Speaker 1: and can be propagated through space. And this is not
Speaker 1: that knew of an idea it might sound, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was not like Golden Age of science fiction kind
Speaker 1: of idea right around for a minute. Yeah, it's been around. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you want to go way back, the actual origins
Speaker 1: of the word pant spermia date back to the ancient times.
Speaker 1: But to really get into a point where it became
Speaker 1: part of the conversation in scientific circles, you need to
Speaker 1: look at the mid eighteenth century. Bnoir de Mallier wrote
Speaker 1: in seventeen forty three that he thought that Earth was
Speaker 1: seated by life essentially kind of germs falling from space
Speaker 1: into the oceans, rather than through a biogenesis. And that
Speaker 1: kind of leads us to the question what is a biogenesis? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: that idea includes a biogenesis somewhere. I mean, life still
Speaker 1: has to begin somewhere, begin replicating and then spread. Well,
Speaker 1: a biogenesis could be part of that. For for the
Speaker 1: scientifically minded, it certainly is part of that. He thought, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so also, yeah, I guess it's worth acknowledging. Some people
Speaker 1: would also attribute this to some kind of supernatural cause
Speaker 1: it's not really the type of stuff that we're to
Speaker 1: talk about. We're looking at the scientific side. Uh. And
Speaker 1: a biogenesis is a theory that was really popular. I mean,
Speaker 1: like Aristotle talked about how completely obvious it was, that
Speaker 1: it was true for a very long time. And it's
Speaker 1: the idea that life can be generated from non living things.
Speaker 1: For example, the idea that wasn't disproven until like the
Speaker 1: mid sixteen hundreds. I think that maggots come from dead stuff, right,
Speaker 1: like something dies and then maggots spontaneously, right, right, Not
Speaker 1: that eggs get laid in dead stuff and then the
Speaker 1: maggots grow from them, but that they just spontaneously show up.
Speaker 1: Some of these ideas are so funny. One of them
Speaker 1: was I remember reading about this guy named Jean Baptiste
Speaker 1: van Helmont, who was the seventeenth century physician, who said
Speaker 1: that if you got a sweaty shirt and you put
Speaker 1: it in a box of grain and then covered it
Speaker 1: up and left it, I think he said, leave it
Speaker 1: for a few weeks or something, and then come back,
Speaker 1: it will have sprouted mice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, mice come
Speaker 1: from hey, bees come from flowers. Oh it's so good.
Speaker 1: Like how else could you explain mice in a box
Speaker 1: of grain that you left there for several weeks? And
Speaker 1: while while these these ideas are obviously comical to us,
Speaker 1: the concept of a biogenesis itself is not necessarily that ridiculous,
Speaker 1: in that it's really looking more at could life have
Speaker 1: arisen from some combination of organic but non living materials
Speaker 1: under certain conditions? Sure sure that that chemistry is responsible
Speaker 1: for life. The big differences that spontaneous generation had to
Speaker 1: do with complex organisms spontaneously arising out of non living material,
Speaker 1: whereas typically if you talk to uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: molecular biochemist who's working on the problem of a biogenesis. Today,
Speaker 1: they're trying to figure out how how DNA was assemboled
Speaker 1: out of you know, chemical soups and conditions in you know,
Speaker 1: the Earth, like three point eight billion years ago. And
Speaker 1: I have a thing to say about that way at
Speaker 1: the end of the episode, but for now, let's get
Speaker 1: back to the the pant spermia hypothesis. So we've got
Speaker 1: this idea that there are some sort of of seeds
Speaker 1: of life out there in the galaxy. How they came
Speaker 1: about is not addressed in this hypothesis, as Joe had
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, but they might be carried by an asteroid
Speaker 1: or a comet or a meteorite, or even exist as
Speaker 1: part of interstellar dust pushed around by the solar wind
Speaker 1: microbe delivery. Now, clearly these would be what we would
Speaker 1: call extreme O files, right because they'd have to survive
Speaker 1: the ride. And we've talked on this show so many
Speaker 1: times about how the ride through space is not a
Speaker 1: nice ride. You got the vacuum going, you've got radiation going,
Speaker 1: you've got extreme temperatures going. You've got lots of different
Speaker 1: types of pressure changes going as these these items move
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere of a planet. Yeah. So obviously organisms
Speaker 1: like us are not going to be surviving this ride.
Speaker 1: But there are organisms we know of on planet Earth
Speaker 1: that survived bizarrely harsh conditions. Yeah. Yeah, there's various bacteria
Speaker 1: I think that can survive inside volcanoes. There's those water bears.
Speaker 1: Those are great. Yeah. Yeah, the water bears. I love them,
Speaker 1: Tarte grades. They're so cute. I just want to pinch
Speaker 1: their little microscopic cheeks. I can't wait till the horror
Speaker 1: movie where they get blown up to human size and
Speaker 1: then they just vacuum our liquids out. Pretty sure that
Speaker 1: watch that today? So yeah, there are examples of extremophiles
Speaker 1: here on Earth that can live in conditions that we
Speaker 1: would find completely inhospitable. Although to flip that, they would
Speaker 1: find the conditions we live in to be completely inhospitable.
Speaker 1: So um, there there's some pretty interesting examples of that.
Speaker 1: And pant Spermia suggests that these organisms would arrive at
Speaker 1: a planet uh. In other words, there'd be a collision,
Speaker 1: you'd have an asteroid or a comet or a meteorite
Speaker 1: collide with a planet, and anything surviving on that could
Speaker 1: potentially spread to that planet. And there are three major
Speaker 1: variations of this hypothesis, right, because this obviously it asks
Speaker 1: some questions of us. We say, okay, so life is
Speaker 1: maybe frozen in a comet somewhere headed towards Earth for
Speaker 1: millions of years, it finally smashes into Earth starts spreading here.
Speaker 1: How to get on the comet? Yeah, And pant spermia
Speaker 1: doesn't answer those questions necess serreily, although there are some
Speaker 1: some variations of the hypothesis that that's at least suggested.
Speaker 1: You don't get to the point zero origin, but you
Speaker 1: can get to all right, Well, in this way, something
Speaker 1: could be ejected from a planet and therefore make its
Speaker 1: way to some other place. Yeah, yeah, that I'm just
Speaker 1: asking one step back, so like did it come from
Speaker 1: another star in the galaxy, or did it come from
Speaker 1: another planet in the Solar System? Or did it come
Speaker 1: from somebody with some ideas? Right, So with that first version,
Speaker 1: you've got a litho pan spermia, that's interstellar panspermia that
Speaker 1: suggests that a planet that supports life somewhere is in
Speaker 1: like a star system. There's some sort of major collision
Speaker 1: that happens, and bits o planet break off and get
Speaker 1: ejected into space, and those bits o planet happened to
Speaker 1: have life forms on them. Obviously it would have to
Speaker 1: be in some kind of bacterial format or something similar
Speaker 1: to that. It could not, you know, ed like Ed
Speaker 1: would not make the trip, probably not, not unless he
Speaker 1: brought a really good space suit. Yeah. Yeah, we're we're
Speaker 1: imagining here kind of a uh at the end of
Speaker 1: the never ending story situation, the little grain No no no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm imagining when it doesn't have a scene where like
Speaker 1: the planets all smashed up into pieces and their bits
Speaker 1: flying apart. Yeah, and then well eventually there's only one
Speaker 1: little grain of sand left and you have to make
Speaker 1: wishes to make it grow. Yeah, and then you get
Speaker 1: a luck dragon. So uh, you get these massive, massive
Speaker 1: collisions where stuff gets ejected into space. That stuff ends
Speaker 1: up finding its way to other solar systems. So this
Speaker 1: is a huge amount of distance these things would have
Speaker 1: to travel, right, you have to be some hardy organisms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd have to be probably in essentially suspended animation the
Speaker 1: equivalent to that for millions of years to make a
Speaker 1: trip for one solar system to another. But it is
Speaker 1: one of the three versions of pant spermia we tend
Speaker 1: to talk about. Then there's ballistic pan spermia. This is
Speaker 1: interplanetary pant spermia. This would happen within the within the
Speaker 1: confines of a single solar system. Right. So, if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard the hypothesis that originally life on Earth came
Speaker 1: from Mars, that would be an example of this, right.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you have Mars and there's some sort
Speaker 1: of massive bombardment of Mars, which which it results with
Speaker 1: tons of stuff being ejected from Mars and heading towards Earth,
Speaker 1: eventually colliding with Earth. That would be this version. So, uh,
Speaker 1: those are your your two basic Uh, stuff just happens naturally.
Speaker 1: But then you've got the third kind, right, directed pants spermia,
Speaker 1: and that is in fact the Prometheus model. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. It definitely includes that the person spreading the
Speaker 1: life must be naked and huge and muscily, that's part
Speaker 1: of the hypothesis science clearly in the small print, because
Speaker 1: I did not see that when I was looking this over. Yah.
Speaker 1: Directed pant spermia is essentially the idea that some intelligent
Speaker 1: life form is purposefully spreading life by by shooting out
Speaker 1: whatever bodies, you know, like like rocks or whatever they
Speaker 1: may be. Could even be rockets filled with bacteria, uh
Speaker 1: to go to distant places and uh and potentially to
Speaker 1: propagate life that way. Now I'm wondering if this includes
Speaker 1: life that's spread by accident, because I mean that that
Speaker 1: would have to sort of be another option if it
Speaker 1: weren't part of directed pants bermia, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like if if one of our probes
Speaker 1: a long time the future ran into another planet and
Speaker 1: it has bacteria in it, and that winds up spawning
Speaker 1: an entire civilization. That's exactly what I mean. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it reminds me a little bit. This isn't
Speaker 1: the same thing, really, but it reminds me a little
Speaker 1: bit of when we were first getting some reports that
Speaker 1: that one of the rovers had detected the presence of
Speaker 1: methane on Mars, and people got excited, and then the
Speaker 1: scientists were saying, listen, we have to make sure that
Speaker 1: this wasn't a contamination, that it wasn't brought and of
Speaker 1: course it was, yes, And that's that's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you know, we already have instances of the
Speaker 1: stuff we've sent to other bodies carrying things with it
Speaker 1: that were not necessarily intentional. I want to go on
Speaker 1: a little digression real quick and say, if you read
Speaker 1: any headline anywhere on the Internet saying that we have
Speaker 1: found life on Mars and you haven't already noticed people
Speaker 1: freaking out about this, it's probably not true. They're probably
Speaker 1: just trying to con you into a click. I clicked
Speaker 1: on something to see an N's website the other day
Speaker 1: that was like life on Mars, and I was like,
Speaker 1: how come I haven't heard about this? And you know
Speaker 1: what it was? It was rocks. It was some rocks
Speaker 1: that looked like lizards and squirrels, and one of them
Speaker 1: just looked like a pyramid. And I'm like, there's there's
Speaker 1: no living pyramid that just looks like a thing that
Speaker 1: you recognize. There's pyramid Head. There is. He is. He's
Speaker 1: a living thing, but if you run into him, you
Speaker 1: are not likely to be living for much. Actually he
Speaker 1: might be undead. Technically, Yeah, have they found undead thing?
Speaker 1: What a wonderful end to the curiosity rovers pyramid Head
Speaker 1: just puts that one big blade through it, hear the
Speaker 1: scraping sound, and that's the last transmission. You don't know
Speaker 1: who pyramid Head is. I suggest you Google search it anyway. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Back back to the matter at hand, right, So, so
Speaker 1: specifically looking at Earth, is it possible that life here
Speaker 1: on the planet did not arise through a biogenesis here
Speaker 1: on Earth, but instead was the result of a seed
Speaker 1: of life landing on Earth. Well, one argument for this hypothesis,
Speaker 1: one of the things that people argue to support it,
Speaker 1: is that life on Earth appears to have developed sometime
Speaker 1: around three point eight three billion years ago. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I've never heard it dated with that much precision before.
Speaker 1: I've always heard like around three point five or four
Speaker 1: billion years. Yeah, I'm I'm guessing that this itself is
Speaker 1: an estimation. Well, obviously it's an estimation. It's like no
Speaker 1: one was around there to start doing tick marks. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I'm just curious where that number
Speaker 1: comes from, because I've never heard one that precise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was in the source I was reading. It was
Speaker 1: they were specifically calling it out that specific, But I
Speaker 1: honestly find that a little um convenient too. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, around that same time, period around between three
Speaker 1: point eight and four billion years ago, Earth went through
Speaker 1: a period of bombardment where meteorites were hitting the planet
Speaker 1: fairly regularly, and so this timing seems to somewhat support
Speaker 1: that argument, the idea that perhaps some of these media
Speaker 1: rights contained elements of life on them, whether they were
Speaker 1: the bacteria or the missing secret sauce, that was going
Speaker 1: to allow life to happen here on Earth, and that
Speaker 1: as a result, that's why we have life here on Earth. However,
Speaker 1: there's nothing conclusive, like there's no smoking gun here. It
Speaker 1: could just as easily be that it's an a biogenesis
Speaker 1: approach here on Earth and that this was something that
Speaker 1: also happened around that same time. Well, I mean, another way,
Speaker 1: you could look at the coincidence of the origins of
Speaker 1: life and the bombardment period, as you could say that
Speaker 1: the bombardment created conditions or in introduced materials that made
Speaker 1: the a biogenesis process happen. Right, So in other words,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that there were life forms on the meteorites themselves,
Speaker 1: It's just that that was one more ingredient into life.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like I've read, don't don't wholly to
Speaker 1: this because I could be mistaken, but I think I've
Speaker 1: read that some people hypothesized that this is where a
Speaker 1: lot of Earth's water came from, Like during this bombardment period,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of icy objects that slammed into
Speaker 1: the Earth and brought water to the surface. I've heard
Speaker 1: the same thing. And another argument in support of the
Speaker 1: Earth's life comes from Space Seeds, which I believe is
Speaker 1: a fantastic Star Trek episode that introduces Khan. Space Seed
Speaker 1: is the Con episode. Uh. Chekhov, by the way, not
Speaker 1: in that episode, So I don't know how Cohn recognizes
Speaker 1: him in Wrath of Con But that's beside the point anyway.
Speaker 1: Is it really beside the point? It's really the point.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make this whole episode about that, but
Speaker 1: I was trying to kind of hide it by Chekhov
Speaker 1: does a lot of like Facebook snooping around Kirk in
Speaker 1: his friend But how would Khan know about Chekhov? Is
Speaker 1: that because he says I never could have faced Mr
Speaker 1: from faceoff? Okay, yeah, that's probably right. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: you've got an unfriend con that's rule number one. So
Speaker 1: another Instagram feeds private Another argument in support of that
Speaker 1: hypothesis that Earth in fact was seeded by outer space bacteria.
Speaker 1: Is that that bacteria can be dormant for a really
Speaker 1: really long time and then yeah, and they can they
Speaker 1: can then be viable. Right, It's not just that they
Speaker 1: stick around. They stick around and then they could come back. So,
Speaker 1: for example, there have been cases where we have retrieved
Speaker 1: bacteria from sources that had been trapped for as many
Speaker 1: as two hundred and fifty million years and the bacteria
Speaker 1: were still viable. So stuff like finding bacteria in the
Speaker 1: gut of bees that had been embedded in amber for
Speaker 1: millions of years and the bacteria, once extracted, regained viability.
Speaker 1: So there are examples of critic Yeah, it's amazing that
Speaker 1: this can even happen. That's creepy. It is a little creepy.
Speaker 1: Yeah there, yeah, I guess for science. But cool, like
Speaker 1: these bacteria don't remember dinosaurs because there weren't dinosaurs yet
Speaker 1: they slept right through dinosaurs. Yeah. Well, the the interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me is that this does mean that there
Speaker 1: is at least some some feasibility for the pant spermia hypothesis,
Speaker 1: because we've seen instances where bacteria can survive very long periods.
Speaker 1: Uh and then come back from being dormant, whether or
Speaker 1: not significantly longer than two fifty million years, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And even even an interplanetary um pant spermia hypothesis suggests
Speaker 1: that it could be millions of years from the point
Speaker 1: when something is ejected into space to the point where
Speaker 1: it collides with another planet. That's that's just interplanetary. When
Speaker 1: you take in solar systems into account, star systems into account,
Speaker 1: that's an enormous, enormous amount of time. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: think paint spermia is a really interesting hypothesis. It's one
Speaker 1: of those that for a long time at least, I
Speaker 1: think it's probably just going to remain an interesting hypothesis
Speaker 1: because we don't have strong enough ways of confirming or
Speaker 1: disconfirming it. You can only just sort of look for
Speaker 1: evidence that's consistent or inconsistent with it. Sure, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that people are not running mathematics on it, right.
Speaker 1: In fact, we've got some astrophysicists out of Harvard who
Speaker 1: wanted to try and start building a predictive model based
Speaker 1: upon the pant spermia hypothesis. So they're not testing the hypothesis, right,
Speaker 1: That's not what their their research is all about their
Speaker 1: Their research starts from the premise that assuming this hypothesis
Speaker 1: is true, then we should be able to start predicting
Speaker 1: where life would uh kind of where the point of
Speaker 1: origin would be from any given explosion of life that
Speaker 1: moves outward, um, and then we would have a better
Speaker 1: idea of where to look if we're searching for evidence
Speaker 1: of that life. Uh So, basically they are creating a
Speaker 1: model that think of it like a Google Maps type
Speaker 1: thing of Milky Way galaxy, except instead of showing you
Speaker 1: where the traffic is, it's showing you circles of where
Speaker 1: life would likely be found. Due to uh, some evidence
Speaker 1: that there was this pant spermia permutation to the spreading
Speaker 1: of life. So based on this, they suggest, well, life
Speaker 1: would probably spread out in kind of just a full
Speaker 1: expanding globe around whatever body was was impacted. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you you just say, all right, well, the planet that
Speaker 1: originated the life, wherever that life maybe uh go an
Speaker 1: equal distant out in every direction, and that's where the
Speaker 1: seeds of life would be spread. And so um it
Speaker 1: was that that to me is already an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: So they're suggesting that's not something that would be purely
Speaker 1: directional where there'd be an impact, and straight on the
Speaker 1: other side be where the life goes out. And that's it. Um,
Speaker 1: they're saying, no, think of it like almost like an explosion.
Speaker 1: In fact, they they likened it to the way an
Speaker 1: epidemic spreads and talked about how the galaxy could be
Speaker 1: infected with life a cancer. Um. So, if we work
Speaker 1: from this hypothesis and we assume that the Earth is
Speaker 1: let's say, on the edge of one of these bubbles. Um,
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily think that, because we have no evidence
Speaker 1: yet to to think one way or the other. But
Speaker 1: let's assume that we are, then we'll play along. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then what what would need to happen next is we
Speaker 1: would actually still need to look somewhere and find some
Speaker 1: evidence of if not life, not not direct evidence of life,
Speaker 1: at least some some bio markers that could indicate the
Speaker 1: presence of life. And according to this model, the best
Speaker 1: thing to do at that point would be to really
Speaker 1: focus your attention in that general direction and kind ignore
Speaker 1: everything on the other side, because if Earth is on
Speaker 1: the edge of one of these bubbles, everything behind us
Speaker 1: would be lifeless. Everything ahead of us in from that
Speaker 1: perspective would be potentially yeah, full of life. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: that of course assumes that we're on the edge of
Speaker 1: a bubble and not in the middle. If we're in
Speaker 1: the middle, then technically everywhere we look should still have
Speaker 1: lots of potential for life. But it is an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: It does obviously have some drawbacks. For example, we still
Speaker 1: have to find evidence of some form of life somewhere
Speaker 1: in order for us to even have an idea of
Speaker 1: where to look. But from that point we could start
Speaker 1: to model where the life would most likely be found,
Speaker 1: and then we could concentrate our efforts in those directions,
Speaker 1: thinking that perhaps it's possible that we could discover um
Speaker 1: intelligent life that way, because we we have a you know,
Speaker 1: a specific direction to focus on. The other thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind is that, over the course of millions
Speaker 1: of years, star systems move in relation to one another,
Speaker 1: and if this event happened many many, many hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of years ago, then it makes it more difficult
Speaker 1: to figure out where that central spot would be because
Speaker 1: the the star systems have continued to move apart or
Speaker 1: you know, in relation to one another over that time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can think about it the way that
Speaker 1: uh that the Earth is not always a constant distance
Speaker 1: from Venus or Mars. Likewise, the solar system is not
Speaker 1: always a constant distance from other solar systems. Yeah, everything
Speaker 1: in space is moving around. Yeah. I imagine it as
Speaker 1: Let's say that you've got a bowl of water, and
Speaker 1: you have like a little drop of food coloring that
Speaker 1: can float on the surface of that water, and you
Speaker 1: drop it, and at first it's a nice little circle
Speaker 1: that starts to spread, but eventually it starts to break
Speaker 1: up and move around in relation, so that things that
Speaker 1: used to be right next to each other now might
Speaker 1: be across the bowl of water from one another. So
Speaker 1: so we need to create a model for the way
Speaker 1: that the universe and in our little localized region of it,
Speaker 1: has been spreading, like a very detailed model. In order
Speaker 1: to really get to the bottom of this and to
Speaker 1: understand that, we would need to at least have an
Speaker 1: estimation of how long ago the life spread out in
Speaker 1: the first place. Now here on Earth, we're talking possibly,
Speaker 1: you know, around around four billion years ago or so.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of time. How long did it take
Speaker 1: to get here? Yeah, exactly, So it gets it gets
Speaker 1: hard for X exactly. Yeah. So in other words, this
Speaker 1: is a really interesting thought experiment, and I'm sure that
Speaker 1: it will end up being useful and in the long run.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those where I still think that
Speaker 1: there are some variables that we can't fill in yet.
Speaker 1: Even even if we were to discover a planet distant
Speaker 1: planet that appears to have these markers for biological activity,
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult for us to estimate when
Speaker 1: that would have happened in the galactic time scale. It
Speaker 1: would be really nice if our giant, bald alien neighbors
Speaker 1: would just send us a message and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: uh we did we did this about this long ago
Speaker 1: in Earth years, in which case we're like, well, the
Speaker 1: whole reason we were looking into it was to talk
Speaker 1: to you, So I guess now we can just stop anyway.
Speaker 1: Plus you can just tell us where you put it.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of questions out. First of all,
Speaker 1: have you shot that store? Like? There's a lot of
Speaker 1: clothing stores that we can hook you up with here
Speaker 1: on Earth, you know, if you if you feel like it,
Speaker 1: you know, no, no shame, no shaming. I'm just imagining
Speaker 1: a really interesting moment in the future of humanity. When
Speaker 1: let's say we do encounter microbial life somewhere out there,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's on Mars or it's on a
Speaker 1: comet or something like that, and we bring it back
Speaker 1: and we say, okay, it's time to let's assume it's
Speaker 1: DNA based the moment when we test that, to see
Speaker 1: do we share jeans with this thing? Because it seems
Speaker 1: like that would be the test. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: an astrobiologist. I don't really know, but my guests would
Speaker 1: be the test for pan spermia. The real test would
Speaker 1: be you find an alien life form and then you
Speaker 1: test it the same way we look for ancestral similarity
Speaker 1: in in life forms on Earth. You say, okay, do
Speaker 1: you match these points of loci on a on a
Speaker 1: you know, gene panel, And if you do, wow, I
Speaker 1: mean that's interesting. I'd imagine you could also probably be
Speaker 1: able to look at its genome and our genome and determine,
Speaker 1: based on assumptions about the mutation rate, about how long
Speaker 1: ago we split apart, right, I suppose, I mean it's roughly.
Speaker 1: Those kind of estimates are pretty shaky on a on
Speaker 1: a global time scale, but but but absolutely, yeah, we
Speaker 1: could at least look to see if if there are
Speaker 1: enough common elements to make an educated guess at it.
Speaker 1: It's we're talking so much in the hypothetical here. It's
Speaker 1: here that's very interesting. So, yeah, the super interesting idea
Speaker 1: for this this work. But again, it really depends on
Speaker 1: this pan spermia hypothesis being being being the way that
Speaker 1: life travels or distributes throughout the galaxy and the universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to go back to the concept of
Speaker 1: a biogenesis for a minute and talk about one of
Speaker 1: the alternate theories about how bodies impacting Earth could have
Speaker 1: led to life on Earth coming about so um without
Speaker 1: just bringing it here, without just bringing it without like
Speaker 1: bringing a water bug. And you know our common ancestor,
Speaker 1: the water bugpagating all life on Earth. All right, let's
Speaker 1: hear it, water water bear. What am I even talking about? Well,
Speaker 1: I'll stick with water bug actually at this point. So so,
Speaker 1: research from multiple team has found building blocks of life
Speaker 1: as we know it amino acids in comets, and in
Speaker 1: one experiment at the University of Hawaii and Manoah, chemists
Speaker 1: simulated a comet like environment like like ten degrees Calvin
Speaker 1: above zero uh and this ball of ice that included
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide and ammonia and methane and ethane and propane
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And when they zapped this ball
Speaker 1: with with simulated cosmic rays the high energy electrons, the
Speaker 1: chemicals reacted and formed dipeptides, which are paired amino acids,
Speaker 1: which are definitely essential to life. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: that this this UH concoction, that this this series of
Speaker 1: events that are you know, amazing that they all happened
Speaker 1: within enough time for this to be a to to work,
Speaker 1: could be the building blocks for life. The only thing
Speaker 1: we have to do now is wait billions of years
Speaker 1: to find out if it works. Oh well, And and
Speaker 1: you know, the next question after at was do these
Speaker 1: dipeptides actually exist in other places? Because if they only
Speaker 1: exist on Earth, then that would be a good indication
Speaker 1: that this experiment from Hawaii was totally off base. But
Speaker 1: research out of UC Berkeley and NASA have sampled UH
Speaker 1: stuff from Mars and from comets and both found amino acids.
Speaker 1: They found dipeptides on Mars, which indicates that this kind
Speaker 1: of material is indeed floating around the Solar System. And
Speaker 1: then uh I guess The next question is whether or
Speaker 1: not an impact with Earth would would help or hamper
Speaker 1: the situation, because that much energy is is a really
Speaker 1: big it's a big bota boom, you know. Um so, so,
Speaker 1: a team out of the Japan Agency for Marine Earth
Speaker 1: Science and Technology and also out of a Nagoya University
Speaker 1: ran an experiment that simulated the shock of a comet
Speaker 1: containing amino acids impacting the Earth, and they they got
Speaker 1: tripe peptides out of it, which is an even longer
Speaker 1: amino acid chain and is therefore even more impressive interesting.
Speaker 1: So you know, who knows tripeptides are certainly not water
Speaker 1: bugs or water bears neither one. Yeah. This this kind
Speaker 1: of goes back to some of that that idea of
Speaker 1: if you have organic but non living material, could that
Speaker 1: give rise to actual living or organisms and uh and
Speaker 1: this these sort of experiments are really important to add
Speaker 1: to our understanding about whether or not that's possible. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean I love the fact that we
Speaker 1: have multiple lines of inquiry out there looking at different
Speaker 1: different possibilities. And it may very well be that the
Speaker 1: the real answer is something that we haven't even thought
Speaker 1: of yet. Oh sure, it could absolutely be be a
Speaker 1: combination of any of these systems. And uh, the looking
Speaker 1: into to the dual chemical and energy jack system that
Speaker 1: could have brought life here about is so fascinating to me. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it really is interesting. So uh, you know, we've also
Speaker 1: often said this on the show as well. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: may seem like a particular uh experiment, or a particular
Speaker 1: discipline or whatever might seem like a long shot, but
Speaker 1: the important thing to remembers that we're learning important stuff
Speaker 1: about ourselves in the process, not just whether or not
Speaker 1: alien life is out there, but how how life had
Speaker 1: originated and then evolved over time here on Earth. These
Speaker 1: sort of questions are really awesome. I mean, it's great
Speaker 1: to learn more about it, and you never know what
Speaker 1: else you will be able to learn down the line.
Speaker 1: It can be stuff that ends up changing the course
Speaker 1: of humanity in the future. So really interesting. I'm glad
Speaker 1: we've got a chance to tackle this. I'm going back
Speaker 1: and forth about whether or not I need to see
Speaker 1: Prometheus now. I don't know. I've commend watching it. It's
Speaker 1: not good necessarily. Well, there's a sequel coming out. I
Speaker 1: guess I feel the same way. I mean, if if
Speaker 1: you love if you love Alien. It's worth seeing, but
Speaker 1: it's it's don't expect it to be good. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Prometheus two is Ridley Scott's next feature. That's the next one.
Speaker 1: You know that the Martian is done. I'm fine with
Speaker 1: that as long as he doesn't go back to doing
Speaker 1: sword and sandal movies. Yeah, I hear that. It's all
Speaker 1: sorts and sandal aliens. It's just it's just one alien
Speaker 1: writing on the back of a Xeno morph. But that's
Speaker 1: that sounds great. Actually, that sounds like that. I like
Speaker 1: that a lot better than than Gladiator. Yeah, that'd be
Speaker 1: another movie that we'd have to, um, we'd have to
Speaker 1: to dissect here on the show. So, guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics we can tackle here
Speaker 1: on Forward Thinking. Maybe there is a science fiction movie
Speaker 1: that you want us to look at and discuss the
Speaker 1: scientific merits or lack thereof. Let us know the email
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