Were your ancestors martians? According to Seth Shostak of the Search For Extraterrestrial Life Institute (SETI), Martian organisms may have traveled to Earth, bringing life with them.
HOW WOULD THIS BE POSSIBLE?
In an article for The Huffington Post, Shostak described the logic of his theory, which is based on a phenomenon called panspermia. Panspermia, the astronomer said, is “the mechanism by which biology can spread through space without the benefit of expensive space-agency hardware”. If true, perhaps that famous book would be republished under a different name.
HOW LIFE COULD HAVE EMIGRATED
More than two thousand years ago, panspermia was postulated by the Greek thinker Anaxagoras. But its recent history began about a century ago, when the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius suggested that stars’ radiation pressure could force microorganisms through space.
Shosktak insisted that lithopanspermia – a similar phenomenon in which protoplasm is protected by other materials, like a rock to travel through space – is a more realistic theory. It would only be possible if the primordial protoplasm were protected to space conditions that don’t exactly nurture life. “After all, space is hardly benign: cosmic rays, extreme temperatures, and prolonged desiccation will relentlessly corrode any biology that takes too much time en route,” wrote Shostak.
HOW THE IDEA COULD BE TESTED
Shostak never went beyond speculation, and does not actually claim that Martians are forerunners of humans. He did, however, mention a possible empirical test for the idea. If astronomers find evidence of DNA-based life existing on Mars, “then we’ll have good reason to believe that terrestrial biology is an import. We could say that not only men are from Mars; we all are.”
As Before It’s News pointed out, the idea that life on Earth originated on Mars is accepted in some academic circles. Steven Benner of the Westheimer Institue of Science and Technology has published a paper supporting the notion, and some of Shostak’s research has been published by Harvard University.
ARE WE MARTIANS? WHAT MARTIAN ANCESTRY WOULD MEAN
As it is thought that billions of rocks came to Earth from Mars when the solar system was young, couldn’t life have come to Earth, too? Maybe, and the possibility certainly shouldn’t be totally ruled out when we consider this evidence. If lithopanspermia is possible (which the astronomer admits is unlikely), “countless worlds could be encrusted with biology”, according to the astronomer.
