1|Page

Assignment Topic: Panspermia

Course Name: Biostatistics
Course Code: Z-3104
Submitted to: Dr. Muhammad Tahir
Submitted by: Syeda Aqsa Mazhar
Roll No. 0277-BH(E) -2018
Class: BSc (H) Zoology
Semester: 5th
Department: Zoology
University: Government College University, Lahore
2|Page

Contents:

1) Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #3
2) Panspermia According to Akihiko Yamagishi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .#3
3) History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #4
4) Data In The Support of Panspermia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .#6
5) Supportive Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #7
6) Questions Arose on Panspermia Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #8
7) Limitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #9
8) References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .#9
3|Page

“Panspermia”
Definition:
Panspermia (derived from Ancient Greek, pan 'all', and sperma 'seed' combined to form seeds
everywhere) is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust,
meteoroids, asteroids, comets, planetoids, and also by spacecraft carrying unintended
contamination by microorganisms. The distribution may have occurred spanning galaxies and
therefore cannot be restricted to the limited scale of solar systems.
The panspermia hypothesis suggests life began on Earth when the "seeds" of life, already present
in the universe, arrived here from space.

Figure 1, showing panspermia

Panspermia According to Akihiko Yamagishi:

“Deinococcus could survive during the travel from Earth to Mars and vice versa, which is several
months or years in the shortest orbit, The origin of life on Earth is the biggest mystery of human
beings (and) scientists can have totally different points of view on the matter, Some people think
that life is very rare and happened only once in the Universe, while others think that life can happen
on every suitable planet. If panspermia is possible, life must exist much more often than we
previously thought.” said Akihiko Yamagishi, a Professor at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and
Life Sciences and principal investigator of Tanpopo.
That means spacecraft visiting Mars could theoretically carry microorganisms and potentially
contaminate its surface. However, this isn’t just about Earth and Mars—the ramifications of
panspermia, if proven, are far-reaching.
4|Page

Figure 2, Concept of A Large Asteroid Hitting Earth

History:
Greek philosopher Anaxagoras wrote about the idea in the 5th century B.C. He influenced
Socrates. However, Aristotle's theory of spontaneous generation came to be preferred by science
for more than two thousand years. But on April 9, 1864, French chemist Louis Pasteur reported
his experiment disproving spontaneous generation as it was then held to occur. In the 1870s, British
physicist Lord Kelvin and German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz reinforced Pasteur and
argued that life could come from space. And in the first decade of the twentieth century, Swedish
chemist and Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius theorized that bacterial spores, propelled through
space by light pressure, were the seeds of life on Earth.
In the 1920s, Russian biochemist Alexander Oparin and English geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, writing
independently, revived the doctrine of spontaneous generation in a more sophisticated form. In the
new version, the spontaneous generation of life no longer happens on Earth, takes too long to
observe in a laboratory, and has left no clues about its occurrence. Supporting this theory, in 1953,
American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey showed that some amino acids can be
chemically produced from ammonia and methane. The Miller-Urey experiment is now famous,
and the paradigm of Oparin and Haldane still prevails today.
Starting in the 1970s, British astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe rekindled
interest in panspermia. By careful spectroscopic observation and analysis of light from distant stars
they found new evidence, traces of life, in the intervening dust. They also proposed that comets,
which are largely made of water-ice, carry bacterial life across galaxies and protect it from
5|Page

radiation damage along the way. One aspect of this research program, that interstellar dust and
comets contain organic compounds, has been pursued by others as well. It is now widely accepted
that space contains the "ingredients" of life. This development could be the first hint of a huge
paradigm shift. But mainstream science has not accepted the hard core of modern panspermia, that
whole cells seeded life on Earth.
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe also broadened or generalized panspermia to include a new
understanding of evolution. While accepting the fact that life on Earth evolved over the course of
about four billion years, the genetic programs for higher evolution cannot be explained by random
mutation and recombination among genes for single-celled organisms, even in that long a time:
the programs must come from somewhere beyond Earth. They would be first incorporated into
earthly species by various means of genetic transfer. In a nutshell, their theory holds that all of life
comes from space. It incorporates the original panspermia much as the General Theory
incorporates the Special Theory of Relativity. Their expanded theory can well be termed "strong"
panspermia.
On a different track, in the early 1970s, British chemist and inventor James Lovelock proposed the
theory that life controls Earth's environment to make it suitable for life. The theory, which William
Golding suggested he call Gaia, has gained a small but growing, sometimes cultish following.
However, seen from a Darwinian perspective, the Gaia theory looks teleological. It is hard to
imagine how purposeful Gaian processes that take millions of years could be discovered by trial
and error. In response to such criticism, Lovelock has retreated slightly from some of his earlier
bold claims for Gaia. Lovelock's theory is endorsed at its original strength. Gaian processes are
not blindly found and peculiar to Earth, but are pre-existent and universal — life from space brings
Gaian processes with it. It is suggested that Gaian processes are necessary for higher forms of life
to emerge and succeed on any planet.
The union of Lovelock's Gaia with Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's expanded theory of panspermia
Cosmic Ancestry. This account of evolution and the origin of life on Earth is profoundly different
from the prevailing scientific paradigm. The new theory challenges not merely the answers but the
questions that are popular today. And it means, there can be no origin of life from nonbiological
matter. Without supernatural intervention, life must have always existed. Although these
conclusions cut across the boundaries between science, philosophy, and religion. New data that
support many aspects of Cosmic Ancestry are coming in rapidly.
6|Page

Figure 3, The Theory of Panspermia Or The Cosmic Origin Of Life

Data In The Support of Panspermia:

The following data proves recent developments that support panspermia hypothesis:
➢ 19 May 1995: two scientists at Cal Poly showed that bacteria can survive without any
metabolism for at least 25 million years; probably they are immortal.
➢ 24 November 1995: The New York Times described bacteria that can survive radiation
much stronger than any that Earth has ever experienced.
➢ 7 August 1996: NASA announced fossilized evidence of ancient life in meteorite ALH
84001 from Mars.
➢ 27 October 1996: geneticists showed evidence that many genes are much older than the
fossil record would indicate. Subsequent studies have strengthened this finding.
➢ 29 July 1997: a NASA scientist announced evidence of fossilized microscopic life forms
in a meteorite not from any known planet.
➢ Spring, 1998: a microfossil that was found in a meteorite and photographed in 1966, was
recognized by a Russian microbiologist as a magnetotactic bacterium.
➢ Fall, 1998: NASA's public position on life-from-space shifted dramatically.
➢ 4 January 1999: NASA officially recognized the possibility that life on Earth comes from
space.
➢ 19 March 1999: NASA scientists announced that two more meteorites hold even stronger
fossilized evidence for past life on Mars.
➢ 26 April 2000: the German team operating the mass spectrometer on NASA's Stardust
mission announced the detection of very large organic molecules in interstellar space.
Nonbiological sources for organic molecules so large are not known.
7|Page

➢ 19 October 2000, a team of biologists and a geologist announced the revival of bacteria
that are 250 million years old, strengthening that case that bacterial spores can be immortal.
➢ 13 December 2000: a NASA team demonstrated that the magnetosomes in Mars meteorite
ALH 84001 are biological.
➢ June 2002: Geneticists reported evidence that the evolutionary step from chimps to humans
was assisted by viruses.
➢ 2 August 2004: Very convincing photos of fossilized cyanobacteria in a meteorite were
reported by a NASA scientist.
➢ 25 January 2005: J. Craig Venter endorses panspermia.
➢ 10 May 2007: E. O. Wilson endorses panspermia.
➢ 18 April 2008: Richard Dawkins acknowledges the plausibility of panspermia.
➢ 7 April 2009: Stephen Hawking endorses panspermia.
➢ 2 May 2009: Freeman Dyson speaks favorably about panspermia.
➢ 3 March 2011: NASA's Richard Hoover publishes excellent images of microfossils in
carbonaceous meteorites.
➢ January 2013: A meteorite that fell, 29 December, in Sri Lanka, is seen to contain fossilized
diatoms.
➢ 21 Dec 2017: Robert Zubrin endorses panspermia with logic and data.
➢ 18 Jan 2018: NASA designates a Planetary Protection Officer, "responsible for the
protection of Earth from potential contamination by extraterrestrial life forms...."

Supportive Arguments:
One argument that supports the panspermia theory is the emergence of life soon after the heavy
bombardment period of earth, between 4 and 3.8 billion years ago. During this period, researchers
believe the Earth endured an extended and very powerful series of meteor showers. However, the
earliest evidence for life on Earth suggests it was present some 3.83 billion years ago, overlapping
with this bombardment phase. These observations suggest that living things during this period
would have faced extinction, contributing to the idea that life did not originate on Earth.
• In order for life to originate elsewhere in the universe, there would have to be an
environment on another planet capable of supporting it. Some studies of the universe
suggest that life would have a hard time surviving outside of the Earth. But it is important
to note that life on Earth can withstand many extreme conditions. Some bacteria grow at
temperatures as high as 113°C. At the other end, microbes can thrive at temperatures as
low as -18°C; many can be preserved in liquid nitrogen at -196°C. They can also tolerate
high doses of ionizing and UV radiation, extreme pressure, etc. These observations suggest
that it is difficult to define the conditions that favor life, and make it harder for us to predict
that life is unique to Earth.
• The presence of water elsewhere in the universe reinforces this. Mars is believed to have
contained water in the past. Much excitement for the presence of life on Europa, one of
Jupiter’s moons, has been fueled by speculations that it may have underground oceans.
8|Page

However, while water is essential for life, its presence does not necessarily indicate the
presence of life.
• The fact that organic matter is relatively common in space could also support the idea
of extraterrestrial life. Organic matter refers to matter composed of compounds that contain
carbon. All living things on Earth are carbon-based. A variety of organic compounds have
been detected in meteorites that have landed on earth, including amino acids, which are the
building blocks of proteins (and proteins are primary components all of living cells). The
presence of carbon-based matter in meteorites supports the possibility that life on our planet
could have come from outer space. But, even though life on earth is composed of organic
matter, organic matter itself is not considered life.

Questions Arose on Panspermia Theory:

Even if extraterrestrial life did exist, proponents of the panspermia theory must still determine how
life arrived on Earth. The best candidates to act as “seeds of life” are bacterial spores, which allow
bacteria to remain in a dormant state in the absence of nutrients. Bacteria constitute about one-
third of Earth’s biomass and are characterized by their ability to survive under extreme
conditions—those that we initially believed were unable to support life. In light of panspermia, the
important question is if bacteria or bacterial spores could survive in space.
To address this question, scientists at the German Aerospace Centre in Cologne designed
experiments using the Russian FOTON satellite. They mixed bacterial spores with particles of
clay, red sandstone, Martian meteorite or simulated Martian soil to make small lumps a centimeter
across. The lumps were then exposed via the satellite to outer space. After two weeks of exposure,
researchers found that nearly all of the bacterial spores mixed with red sandstone were able to
survive. Another study showed that bacterial spores could survive the extreme conditions of outer
space for six years if they were protected from extraterrestrial solar UV radiation. This would be
possible if the spores traveled within comets or meteorites. However, interplanetary distances are
large, so the time a bacterial spore would have to spend in a meteorite or comet before hitting a
host planet could range in the millions of years. Two studies involving the isolation of bacterial
spores, either from the abdomen of extinct bees preserved in amber or from a brine inclusion in an
old salt crystal from the Permian Salado formation, suggest that bacterial spores can remain viable
for up to 250 million years. Thus, bacterial spores could potentially account for life on earth.
“But are there bacterial spores floating through space?”
One study focused on the heat radiation emitted from Halley’s Comet's dust particles as the comet
approached the sun. The particles' radiation fingerprint corresponded surprisingly well to that of
bacteria heated to elevated temperatures – no material other than bacteria matched the observed
spectrum. As comets are known to have collided with Earth at different points in the past, this
observation presents an interesting argument for panspermia. While this study does not provide
conclusive evidence for presence of life in outer space, it does raise the possibility that our galaxy
may be littered with bacterial spores.
9|Page

Limitation:
Panspermia hypothesis gives no explanation for how life that arrived on Earth came to be. Even if
we are able to show that life on Earth was a result of panspermia, the question of where and how
life originated will be a lot harder to answer. So far, the knowledge of the solar system suggests
that life is unique to Earth, but, as science and technology advance, we will have to modify ideas
that we currently regard as facts. It remains to be seen if the questions regarding the origin of life
on Earth and the origin of life in the universe have the same answer.

References:
1. Lunine, J. Astrobiology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. 323-324. (2005).
2. Britt. R. "Eight-Legged Space Survivor Gives 'Panspermia' New Life". Space. (2008).
3. Scharf, C. "The Panspermia Paradox". Scientific American. (2012).
4. Gates, S. "Did Life Start On Mars? New Evidence Supports Long-Standing Theory That We
Are All Martians". Huffington Post. (2013).