pantheory Posted August 29, 2013 Posted August 29, 2013 (edited) We may all be Martians http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/eaog-wma082613.php This is not the first such proposal concerning "Earth-life" first evolving on Mars. The possibility is very speculative, but interesting none the less. Because the first life on Earth was probably very delicate there may be no remnants or fossils left on Earth. But the first microbial DNA life that we know of was very complicated and it may have taken longer than just a few hundred million years for it to have evolved, as in the present Earth primordial soup hypothesis. If so the Mars-First hypothesis might provide maybe another few hundred million years for the first evolution of life to have evolved there, but even close to a billion years may not still have been enough time for complicated DNA RNA life to have evolved. This is why people like Fred Hoyle thought such DNA life needed billions of years to first evolve. Such people proposed that the first DNA life development inside large comets, or similar sized icy entities, maybe before the sun, solar system, or our surrounding stars formed, and afterwards seeded all the planets and moons in our solar system in a process called panspermia. Today Earth may be the only solar system body where life can survive and proliferate on the surface of a planet or moon, but we might someday find complicated microbial life below the surface of Mars, our moon, in the sub-surface oceans of the icy moons of the outer planets, etc. Edited August 29, 2013 by pantheory
Bill Angel Posted August 29, 2013 Posted August 29, 2013 This is why people like Fred Hoyle thought such DNA life needed billions of years to first evolve. Such people proposed that the first DNA life development inside large comets, or similar sized icy entities, maybe before the sun, solar system, or our surrounding stars formed, and afterwards seeded all the planets and moons in our solar system in a process called panspermia. Fred Hoyle had a problem accepting the idea that the universe started with a big bang. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle He also was a proponent of intelligent design underlying the creation of life. To quote from that same wiki article: In 1982 Hoyle presented Evolution from Space for the Royal Institution's Omni Lecture. After considering what he thought of as a very remote probability of Earth-based abiogenesis he concluded: If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of... Fred Hoyle So I would venture to assert that Fred Hoyle's opinions on this subject may be of historical interest, but of little scientific interest.
pantheory Posted August 29, 2013 Author Posted August 29, 2013 Bill Angle, My opion is that the question of where life originated from is still unanswered. The Earth primordial soup orgin and other Earth origins of life ideas are by far the most dominant but other origins of Earth life, I think, are still possible, and to me quite interesting. It is not unlikely that the conditions favorable for generating DNA life could have originated somewhere else first, like Mars for instance. Then through a meteor blast on Mars, sent this living material on a million-year-ride to Earth as the article suggests.
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