I encountered panspermia word in a new science article. The term is used to describe the theory that life on earth originated from extraterrestial microbes, more specifically from Mars. What do you think of the word, panspermia (I kinda like it), and/or the theory it describes? Here's the article:
Life on Earth Started HOW?
By Cathryn Conroy, Netscape News Editor
Bacteria. From Mars. Transported on meteorites. Stop laughing. This is not a joke. Serious international scientists with academic degrees and lofty work experience and fully-funded laboratories are suggesting that life on Earth could have arrived in the form of bacteria carried from Mars on meteorites. First brought forth in 1903, the theory is called "panspermia" and holds that life started elsewhere and was then spread through space. Fast forward almost 100 years. Scientists now think there is some plausibility to the idea. Recent discoveries of Martian meteorites on Earth have raised the possibility that bacterial spores could have hitched a ride on these rocks.
To test their theories, Gerda Horneck of the German Aerospace Centre and her colleagues in Cologne purposely sent millions of bacterial spores into outer space on a Russian satellite. No, they weren't trying to infect the solar system. They wanted to find out how those spores were affected by solar radiation. The results could tell them if this panspermia theory was something to be taken seriously--or laughed at. According to New Scientist, they learned that a single bacteria will not survive long enough in space to travel from one planet to another; however, meteorites protect the bacteria as it travels through space. Meteorites as small as a centimeter in diameter could carry life from one planet to another provided the journey was completed within a few years. "Early in the history of Mars and Earth, there could have been an exchange of biological material between the two planets," Benton Clark, a Mars exploration specialist at Lockheed Martin in Colorado, told New Scientist.
