Life on Earth from the outer space

[Ladeira]

There is one thing that I simply hate: the personification of simple concepts, as 'nature', 'life' or 'Earth'. These concepts must be treated as natural issues. Life doesn't have a mind, it doesn't think, it's a concept that exists, it's a term, a way to describe a phenomenon, and this kind of distinction is something very rare.

 

So... today, I opened a famous Brazilian magazine, called Época, and there was an interesting topic titled "Were the worms astronauts?". Actually, it referred to an interview with Chandra Wickramasinghe, an astrophysicist that supports the theory of us as evolved from what he calls "alien virus". Through the interview it's possible to read very curious sentences such as "For the Church in the age of Copernicus and Galileu, Earth was the center of the Universe. At 21st century, we didn't see the obvious yet: life came from space".

 

Ooops, I see some sensationalism here.

 

We all understand that it's possible to guess that complex life (like bacteria) could have come from meteorites; a big example (also cited in the interview) is the extremophile microorganisms (such as the famous Deinococcus radiodurans). But the arguments that Chandra presents are totally outdated, as we can see when he answers the question "What are the evidences of our cosmic ancestrality?", and he says:

 

The radio astronomers have detected more than 400 organic molecules in space, Jupiter's and Saturn's moons or in clouds of interstellar space light-years away. How were those molecules created? […] In nature, there is only one known process able to create organic compounds. Its name is life. The fact that we live on earth and we are surrounded by life does not imply that life is exclusively terrestrial.

 

Seems like all our doubts about life occurence are over! And seems like he stills consider Vitalism as a valid argument. Oh bad thing!

 

And suddenly, after trying to support his thoughts at any cost, he says:

 

Life wasn't born like that famous experience in 1952, when biologists in Chicago University used electrical discharges in a glass globe filled by water, methane, amonium and hydrogen, the compounds which are known to form the primitive atmosphere of Earth. After one month of discharges, chemical reactions covered the walls of the glass by organic molecules. By transforming inorganic compound into organic ones, that experiment became, for half a secule, the model for which life occurs. Nowadays, we know those conditions were not sufficient. Life doesn't depend only on the existence of organic molecules. It depends on how they are organized.

 

Vidya Jothi Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe is a Professor of Mathmatics and Astronomy in Cardiff University (UK). By Sir Fred Hoyle side, Chandra developed the panspermia theory, which says that life comes from space.

 

I'm not trying to blow him and his theory up. I'm just trying to find convincing arguments.

 

So, what do you think?