WEBVTT - Searching for Alien Life Starts Here 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:15.000 Forward Thinking, Taylor, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:17.759 that looks at the future and says I was lonely 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:22.400 then like an alien. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:25.520 I'm Joe McCormick. And yes, folks, we're going to talk 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:29.600 about aliens again today. Yes, because there's nothing more futuristic 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:35.519 than where life on Earth came from. Well, sometimes to 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:39.280 go forward, you first must move backward. What did the 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:43.280 two topics I just said have to do with each other? Well, 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:47.080 in this case, we're talking about kind of a model 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:51.760 that's been made that could possibly predict where we would 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:56.320 most likely find aliens. But that's we're getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah, 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.560 because because alien life had to come from somewhere, our 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:03.040 life had to come from somewhere. Studying one can potentially 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:05.840 lead to figuring stuff out about the other, Right, And 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:08.839 it's possible that both the alien life and our life 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:15.000 came from the same place. Wait a minute, I saw Prometheus. Yeah, 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.120 I did not think about the Prometheus tie in when 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:22.480 I agreed to do this topic. Joe has feelings about Prometheus, 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.639 don't we all have feelings. I don't. I never watched Okay, 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:34.399 I it makes me feel things about Wiley Coyote mostly there. Yeah, okay, 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:38.480 there is a there is a bald, godlike muscled figure 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:40.640 in it that I suppose you might be able to 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:46.080 relate to somewhat. Jonathan being the bald, muscular dude that 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:50.000 I am, I'm mostly made off. Actually, I was emphasizing 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:53.760 the godlike part. Okay, all right, I'll take it. But no, 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.120 this is this is a thing that happens in the 0:01:56.120 --> 0:02:00.520 movie Prometheus. You see these bald, pale, weird dough is 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:04.880 flying throughout the galaxy seeding life on other planets. So 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:07.120 he sets down on what looks like some part of 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:12.800 Iceland and appears to PLoP some weird DNA goop into 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.240 the water and boom life on Earth. Yeah, and we're 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:18.760 gonna get to a theory that is essentially really I 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:22.320 should say, a hypothesis that is essentially that well, a 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:29.400 little bit less purposeful, I would say. Yeah, So to 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:31.520 to kind of just do a quick run through of 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:33.959 some of the stuff we mentioned before with alien life, 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.360 just so that we uh, you know, have a foundation here. 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:40.520 One of the things we have often referenced on this 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:45.000 show is the Drake equation, which is a probabilistic formula 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:49.320 created by Dr Frank Drake. Sure, and this equation is 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.480 it is an equation, but when you think of an equation, 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.040 you often think of something that has lots of known 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.120 values in it, Right, you can you can manipulate to 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:03.000 your will potentially. This is more of a thought experiment 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.400 expressed in the form of a mathematical equation with lots 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.320 of variables. Yeah, it's it's meant to be a way 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:15.880 to kind of estimate how many uh, technologically advanced alien 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:18.840 civilizations would be out there. But in order to actually 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:21.200 get a number on that, we would have to have 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:23.880 a lot more information than what the the what we 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.880 currently have. Yeah, but you arrive at it by multiplying 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.960 a bunch of different probabilities. And of course, as you know, 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:33.720 when multiplying probabilities, if any of these probabilities are in 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.440 fact zero, then your product in the end is going 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:39.400 to be zero, right, And if there are fractions, your 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:41.800 product in the end is going to be tiny. Yeah, 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.520 it's gonna get smaller and smaller as you multiply these 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:48.200 small fractions together. Yeah. So here are some of the 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:50.240 things are actually here are all the things that go 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:52.640 into the Drake equation. First, you take the rate of 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:56.080 formation of stars capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. 0:03:56.760 --> 0:04:00.840 That's your first number, which already is a little complicated 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.080 because we're basing this on a sample size of one. Right, 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:07.560 because based upon our assumptions, we could say, all right, 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:09.800 let's just look at the stars that are son like, 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:12.240 But it may be that there are other types of 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.800 stars that also are able to support life. It's just 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:16.919 life that's very different from the kind that we have 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.200 on our planet. Yeah, sure, what if there is life 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:23.400 on planets orbiting red giants, life on planets orbiting neutron stars. Right, 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.760 there's also the possibility of life on rogue planets which 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.240 don't orbit a star at all, or on commets or yeah, 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:33.880 so such, I guess orbit stars. Never mind, but still 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:37.320 it's not a planet commets, sure, I guess. Well, I mean, 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:39.920 whatever they're doing, whether or not they're orbiting a star, 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.120 they're orbiting the galactic center here. Yeah, So then you 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:45.280 take that number and you multiply that by the fraction 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.080 of those stars that have planetary systems, because some stars 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:50.560 do not. I want to come back to this variable 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:53.200 in a minute. Ye, then multiply that by the number 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:56.840 of planets per solar system that have an environment suitable 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.400 for life. For this, multiply that by the action of 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:04.600 suitable plants on which life is present, Multiply that by 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.799 the fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.160 can evolve, and then multiply that by the length of 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:13.600 time such civilizations released detectable signals into space. You know, 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.800 one of the funny parts about this thought experiment is 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:19.679 that back when it was first articulated, I think more 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:24.200 of these probability variables were just big question marks. Sure, 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:26.840 no idea at all, But a couple of the things 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:30.000 you mentioned are actually figures where we are starting to 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.159 gain some relevant knowledge, where we we could actually look 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:35.080 at this and say, here's a good guess for what 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.600 this number would be. For example, the fraction of stars 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.320 that have planetary systems. Oh, yeah, we're learning more about 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.039 extra planets every day. Yeah, I mean, that's something we 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:48.080 can actually put a pretty reasonable estimate on now, and 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.240 and back at the time we didn't know, although, of 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.200 course they there are other parts of that variable that 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:56.120 we would have to add to you know, we we 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:58.280 have some information about some of the planets about whether 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:01.480 or not there are any kind of uh, you know, 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:06.240 markers for potential biological life, but for the most part, 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:09.880 we don't know for a lot of those exoplanets yet. Yeah. Yeah, 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:12.600 and we've certainly never received a signal. It's like, hey, guys, 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:17.480 text me back, right, you're Toad's not in the group message, 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:20.240 what's wrong with you? Guys? But I do think it's 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.840 interesting that here's one where here's one figure where we 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:24.560 used to not know, and now we we have a 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:26.640 pretty good idea, And there are other ones where we're 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:28.640 about to get a much better idea, Like we're about 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:32.200 to be able to use telescopic techniques to learn more 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.200 about the environments of extra planets, so like whether they 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.080 have an atmosphere that we think would be conducive to life. 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:43.440 I mean, who knows what's really conducive to life, but right, yeah, 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.160 conducive to our type of life. Yeah. So this this 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:49.680 means that we are slowly filling in those blanks, but 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.080 we haven't. We're still far away from being able to 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.560 use this equation in any real meaningful way. Now, of course, 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:59.200 there's another way. We could try and see if they're 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:02.680 technological civilizations out there, which is listen to see if 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:07.520 they're broadcasting anything. Yeah, yeah, tune into those text messages. Yeah. 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.760 In this case, we're talking largely about SET the Search 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:16.200 for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which scans the sky for any radio 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:19.680 transmissions and then goes through all the data that comes back, 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.280 tries to find anything that's meaningful that looks like it's 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:27.640 a purposeful broadcast as opposed to random noise. Uh. And 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:30.720 that's you know, a good approach to We figure that 0:07:30.720 --> 0:07:34.840 that's more likely to to result in us discovering life 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:38.040 than just say, direct observation or having some aliens stumble 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:41.080 upon us. Those two are not terribly likely. Of course, 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:43.480 as you probably know, CT has not really turned up 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.520 anything so far, unless you want to count some possibly 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:50.480 anomalous weird signals like the Wow signal. If some most 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.760 of the stuff that people think are are probably uh, 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:58.960 you know, pulsar related or other naturally related phenomena. And 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:02.640 space is huge. I don't know if you've read Hitchicker's 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.280 Guy to Galaxy like like like really big exactly, you 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:07.000 thought it was a long way down to the chemists, 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:10.200 But that's peanuts compared to space. Uh yeah, space is enormous. 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:15.320 So focusing on any section of space is like it's 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:20.160 like you're in a massive arena. You have been blindfolded 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:23.400 and spun around a huge number of times, and your 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.560 goal is to throw a dart at a tiny target 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.800 that's someplace around you and maybe you'll hit it. Like 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:35.320 that's and even that is being pretty optimistic compared to 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:38.840 just pointing telescopes out space to try and listen for stuff. 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.680 But we might be able to narrow down that search 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.400 a bit if we're able to make some predictions about 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.199 where life would most likely arise. And of course this 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:52.400 brings us to what we were alluding to at the 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:56.880 beginning of the episode, which is the pan spermia hypothesis. Yeah. Now, 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.800 one thing I want to clear up at the beginning here, 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.200 because I think I've encountered a lot of confusion about this, 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:05.760 at least when I read people leaven comments about it 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:08.440 online and stuff. A lot of people think that pan 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:13.440 spermia is a hypothesis about the origins of life, which 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.720 is not. Now, it's about distribution of life. Yeah, so 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:19.760 the origins of life is a is a big question 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:22.360 in science and you know, in physics and chemistry and 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:26.840 organic chemistry, we we don't know exactly how life comes 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:29.920 about from the molecules that exist in the universe, and 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.320 that that's a big question that a lot of really 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:35.240 smart people are working on and it's a big interest 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:39.720 of mine. But pan spermia is the idea of not 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:45.959 how life comes about, but how life got here. Yeah, exactly, 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:49.640 it's it's more about, uh, not just how life got here, 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.240 but how could life potentially get to other places in 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:55.320 the galaxy. Exactly right, So, so pan spermia is a 0:09:55.360 --> 0:10:00.599 Greek word. It means seeds everywhere, and uh, the hypothesis 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.840 posits that seeds of life are scattered throughout the universe 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.439 and can be propagated through space. And this is not 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:11.000 that knew of an idea it might sound, you know, yeah, 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:13.320 this was not like Golden Age of science fiction kind 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.120 of idea right around for a minute. Yeah, it's been around. Actually, 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.200 if you want to go way back, the actual origins 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:22.760 of the word pant spermia date back to the ancient times. 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:24.800 But to really get into a point where it became 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.800 part of the conversation in scientific circles, you need to 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:32.319 look at the mid eighteenth century. Bnoir de Mallier wrote 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:36.120 in seventeen forty three that he thought that Earth was 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:39.960 seated by life essentially kind of germs falling from space 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:44.800 into the oceans, rather than through a biogenesis. And that 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:49.240 kind of leads us to the question what is a biogenesis? Right, Well, 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:54.240 that idea includes a biogenesis somewhere. I mean, life still 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:58.120 has to begin somewhere, begin replicating and then spread. Well, 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:03.560 a biogenesis could be part of that. For for the 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:08.760 scientifically minded, it certainly is part of that. He thought, yeah, okay, 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:12.280 so also, yeah, I guess it's worth acknowledging. Some people 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.560 would also attribute this to some kind of supernatural cause 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:19.840 it's not really the type of stuff that we're to 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:23.680 talk about. We're looking at the scientific side. Uh. And 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:28.240 a biogenesis is a theory that was really popular. I mean, 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:32.000 like Aristotle talked about how completely obvious it was, that 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:34.880 it was true for a very long time. And it's 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:39.920 the idea that life can be generated from non living things. 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:44.560 For example, the idea that wasn't disproven until like the 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:49.800 mid sixteen hundreds. I think that maggots come from dead stuff, right, 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:53.400 like something dies and then maggots spontaneously, right, right, Not 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.400 that eggs get laid in dead stuff and then the 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.600 maggots grow from them, but that they just spontaneously show up. 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:02.959 Some of these ideas are so funny. One of them 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:06.200 was I remember reading about this guy named Jean Baptiste 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:11.880 van Helmont, who was the seventeenth century physician, who said 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:14.640 that if you got a sweaty shirt and you put 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:16.680 it in a box of grain and then covered it 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:18.440 up and left it, I think he said, leave it 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:20.560 for a few weeks or something, and then come back, 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.240 it will have sprouted mice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, mice come 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:27.760 from hey, bees come from flowers. Oh it's so good. 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:30.680 Like how else could you explain mice in a box 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.440 of grain that you left there for several weeks? And 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:37.600 while while these these ideas are obviously comical to us, 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:43.400 the concept of a biogenesis itself is not necessarily that ridiculous, 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:47.480 in that it's really looking more at could life have 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:53.760 arisen from some combination of organic but non living materials 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:58.640 under certain conditions? Sure sure that that chemistry is responsible 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:02.640 for life. The big differences that spontaneous generation had to 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:07.559 do with complex organisms spontaneously arising out of non living material, 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:11.760 whereas typically if you talk to uh, you know, a 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.400 molecular biochemist who's working on the problem of a biogenesis. Today, 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:19.319 they're trying to figure out how how DNA was assemboled 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.720 out of you know, chemical soups and conditions in you know, 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:25.080 the Earth, like three point eight billion years ago. And 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.400 I have a thing to say about that way at 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:30.080 the end of the episode, but for now, let's get 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:34.720 back to the the pant spermia hypothesis. So we've got 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:40.720 this idea that there are some sort of of seeds 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:43.800 of life out there in the galaxy. How they came 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:47.280 about is not addressed in this hypothesis, as Joe had 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:50.319 mentioned earlier, but they might be carried by an asteroid 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:52.880 or a comet or a meteorite, or even exist as 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:56.320 part of interstellar dust pushed around by the solar wind 0:13:56.640 --> 0:14:02.439 microbe delivery. Now, clearly these would be what we would 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.720 call extreme O files, right because they'd have to survive 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.640 the ride. And we've talked on this show so many 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.559 times about how the ride through space is not a 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:16.800 nice ride. You got the vacuum going, you've got radiation going, 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:20.840 you've got extreme temperatures going. You've got lots of different 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.640 types of pressure changes going as these these items move 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.160 into the atmosphere of a planet. Yeah. So obviously organisms 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.200 like us are not going to be surviving this ride. 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:34.240 But there are organisms we know of on planet Earth 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:39.680 that survived bizarrely harsh conditions. Yeah. Yeah, there's various bacteria 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:43.400 I think that can survive inside volcanoes. There's those water bears. 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:45.960 Those are great. Yeah. Yeah, the water bears. I love them, 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:48.360 Tarte grades. They're so cute. I just want to pinch 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:52.120 their little microscopic cheeks. I can't wait till the horror 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:54.840 movie where they get blown up to human size and 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:57.920 then they just vacuum our liquids out. Pretty sure that 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:03.840 watch that today? So yeah, there are examples of extremophiles 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:06.320 here on Earth that can live in conditions that we 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:10.720 would find completely inhospitable. Although to flip that, they would 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:13.560 find the conditions we live in to be completely inhospitable. 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:17.640 So um, there there's some pretty interesting examples of that. 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.520 And pant Spermia suggests that these organisms would arrive at 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:25.280 a planet uh. In other words, there'd be a collision, 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:29.640 you'd have an asteroid or a comet or a meteorite 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:33.840 collide with a planet, and anything surviving on that could 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:37.880 potentially spread to that planet. And there are three major 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:43.680 variations of this hypothesis, right, because this obviously it asks 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:46.600 some questions of us. We say, okay, so life is 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:50.120 maybe frozen in a comet somewhere headed towards Earth for 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.720 millions of years, it finally smashes into Earth starts spreading here. 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:58.680 How to get on the comet? Yeah, And pant spermia 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.400 doesn't answer those questions necess serreily, although there are some 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:06.840 some variations of the hypothesis that that's at least suggested. 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.560 You don't get to the point zero origin, but you 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:14.080 can get to all right, Well, in this way, something 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:16.520 could be ejected from a planet and therefore make its 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:18.560 way to some other place. Yeah, yeah, that I'm just 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.800 asking one step back, so like did it come from 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:25.240 another star in the galaxy, or did it come from 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:28.560 another planet in the Solar System? Or did it come 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:32.720 from somebody with some ideas? Right, So with that first version, 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.920 you've got a litho pan spermia, that's interstellar panspermia that 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:40.360 suggests that a planet that supports life somewhere is in 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.120 like a star system. There's some sort of major collision 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:48.720 that happens, and bits o planet break off and get 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:51.720 ejected into space, and those bits o planet happened to 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:55.320 have life forms on them. Obviously it would have to 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:58.480 be in some kind of bacterial format or something similar 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:02.520 to that. It could not, you know, ed like Ed 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.399 would not make the trip, probably not, not unless he 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:09.160 brought a really good space suit. Yeah. Yeah, we're we're 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.280 imagining here kind of a uh at the end of 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:16.320 the never ending story situation, the little grain No no no, no, 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:18.560 I'm imagining when it doesn't have a scene where like 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:21.399 the planets all smashed up into pieces and their bits 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.520 flying apart. Yeah, and then well eventually there's only one 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:26.680 little grain of sand left and you have to make 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:32.120 wishes to make it grow. Yeah, and then you get 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:38.720 a luck dragon. So uh, you get these massive, massive 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:41.960 collisions where stuff gets ejected into space. That stuff ends 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:44.880 up finding its way to other solar systems. So this 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:47.320 is a huge amount of distance these things would have 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:51.280 to travel, right, you have to be some hardy organisms. Yeah, 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:55.000 you'd have to be probably in essentially suspended animation the 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:59.280 equivalent to that for millions of years to make a 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:02.119 trip for one solar system to another. But it is 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:04.760 one of the three versions of pant spermia we tend 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:08.439 to talk about. Then there's ballistic pan spermia. This is 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:12.239 interplanetary pant spermia. This would happen within the within the 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:14.960 confines of a single solar system. Right. So, if you've 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.760 ever heard the hypothesis that originally life on Earth came 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.920 from Mars, that would be an example of this, right. 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:25.640 So imagine that you have Mars and there's some sort 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.720 of massive bombardment of Mars, which which it results with 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:33.520 tons of stuff being ejected from Mars and heading towards Earth, 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:37.879 eventually colliding with Earth. That would be this version. So, uh, 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.680 those are your your two basic Uh, stuff just happens naturally. 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:46.360 But then you've got the third kind, right, directed pants spermia, 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:51.120 and that is in fact the Prometheus model. Yes, yeah, 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:55.399 pretty much. It definitely includes that the person spreading the 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:59.040 life must be naked and huge and muscily, that's part 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:04.119 of the hypothesis science clearly in the small print, because 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.400 I did not see that when I was looking this over. Yah. 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:11.600 Directed pant spermia is essentially the idea that some intelligent 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:17.520 life form is purposefully spreading life by by shooting out 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:22.239 whatever bodies, you know, like like rocks or whatever they 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:25.520 may be. Could even be rockets filled with bacteria, uh 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.800 to go to distant places and uh and potentially to 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:34.320 propagate life that way. Now I'm wondering if this includes 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.200 life that's spread by accident, because I mean that that 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.040 would have to sort of be another option if it 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.440 weren't part of directed pants bermia, you know what I mean. 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:46.119 It's sort of like if if one of our probes 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:49.000 a long time the future ran into another planet and 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:52.640 it has bacteria in it, and that winds up spawning 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.200 an entire civilization. That's exactly what I mean. Yeah, it's 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:57.600 I mean, it reminds me a little bit. This isn't 0:19:57.840 --> 0:19:59.880 the same thing, really, but it reminds me a little 0:19:59.880 --> 0:20:02.960 bit of when we were first getting some reports that 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.800 that one of the rovers had detected the presence of 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.040 methane on Mars, and people got excited, and then the 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:11.679 scientists were saying, listen, we have to make sure that 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:16.000 this wasn't a contamination, that it wasn't brought and of 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:19.160 course it was, yes, And that's that's one of those 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:22.280 things where you know, we already have instances of the 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:26.399 stuff we've sent to other bodies carrying things with it 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:29.919 that were not necessarily intentional. I want to go on 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:32.879 a little digression real quick and say, if you read 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:36.199 any headline anywhere on the Internet saying that we have 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:40.760 found life on Mars and you haven't already noticed people 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:45.800 freaking out about this, it's probably not true. They're probably 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.600 just trying to con you into a click. I clicked 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:51.160 on something to see an N's website the other day 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.280 that was like life on Mars, and I was like, 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.000 how come I haven't heard about this? And you know 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:00.399 what it was? It was rocks. It was some rocks 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:03.280 that looked like lizards and squirrels, and one of them 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:06.680 just looked like a pyramid. And I'm like, there's there's 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.360 no living pyramid that just looks like a thing that 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:16.040 you recognize. There's pyramid Head. There is. He is. He's 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:17.760 a living thing, but if you run into him, you 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.240 are not likely to be living for much. Actually he 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:24.359 might be undead. Technically, Yeah, have they found undead thing? 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:28.760 What a wonderful end to the curiosity rovers pyramid Head 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:31.679 just puts that one big blade through it, hear the 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:34.480 scraping sound, and that's the last transmission. You don't know 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:39.000 who pyramid Head is. I suggest you Google search it anyway. Sorry, 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:42.000 Back back to the matter at hand, right, So, so 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:46.320 specifically looking at Earth, is it possible that life here 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:50.120 on the planet did not arise through a biogenesis here 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:54.800 on Earth, but instead was the result of a seed 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:59.399 of life landing on Earth. Well, one argument for this hypothesis, 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:02.919 one of the things that people argue to support it, 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:05.520 is that life on Earth appears to have developed sometime 0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:09.280 around three point eight three billion years ago. That's interesting. 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:13.200 I've never heard it dated with that much precision before. 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:16.040 I've always heard like around three point five or four 0:22:16.080 --> 0:22:19.439 billion years. Yeah, I'm I'm guessing that this itself is 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.439 an estimation. Well, obviously it's an estimation. It's like no 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:26.800 one was around there to start doing tick marks. Well, no, 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:28.800 I mean, I guess I'm just curious where that number 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:31.040 comes from, because I've never heard one that precise. Yeah, 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:33.280 it was in the source I was reading. It was 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:36.159 they were specifically calling it out that specific, But I 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:39.959 honestly find that a little um convenient too. But at 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:43.880 any rate, around that same time, period around between three 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:47.480 point eight and four billion years ago, Earth went through 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:51.520 a period of bombardment where meteorites were hitting the planet 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:56.600 fairly regularly, and so this timing seems to somewhat support 0:22:56.640 --> 0:22:59.919 that argument, the idea that perhaps some of these media 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.200 rights contained elements of life on them, whether they were 0:23:03.200 --> 0:23:06.639 the bacteria or the missing secret sauce, that was going 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:09.119 to allow life to happen here on Earth, and that 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:13.080 as a result, that's why we have life here on Earth. However, 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:17.159 there's nothing conclusive, like there's no smoking gun here. It 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:20.160 could just as easily be that it's an a biogenesis 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:23.399 approach here on Earth and that this was something that 0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:26.440 also happened around that same time. Well, I mean, another way, 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:29.879 you could look at the coincidence of the origins of 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:33.119 life and the bombardment period, as you could say that 0:23:33.160 --> 0:23:37.720 the bombardment created conditions or in introduced materials that made 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:41.200 the a biogenesis process happen. Right, So in other words, 0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:44.360 it wasn't that there were life forms on the meteorites themselves, 0:23:44.359 --> 0:23:47.560 It's just that that was one more ingredient into life. 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:50.760 Like I feel like I've read, don't don't wholly to 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:53.040