LARRY KLAES
Tue, 26 Oct 2004 07:11:29 -0700
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Galactic Panspermia? Are there bodies of planetary sizes that exist in abundance in the spaces between the stars? We would not have discovered them even if they were so numerous that their combined masses were an appreciable fraction of the total masses of all the stars. Molecular clouds may well be forming such objects constantly , and only a fraction would come to be associated with a star. Perhaps the frequent motion of such objects through the outer reaches of our solar system are the causes of the large perturbations that comets seem to suffer, and that bring them occasionally into the inner part of the solar system where they become evident to us. Such objects could contain and maintain for billions of years an active internal microbial life, just as seems to be the case on the Earth. Panspermia across galactic distances would then be a possibility, through impacts spalling off pieces like our Martian meteorite, when such an object had come, perchance, into the vicinity of a planetary system. In this case there would be no dependence on dormant life for long periods, nor on any long term resistance to the damage of cosmic rays, two problems that have made other galactic scale panspermia proposals seem improbable. |