It's an interesting idea. Goes something like this, the necessary ingredients for cellular/genetic life exist throughout the universe. And whenever they are introduced to a environment that will support them, they flourish. The idea got some attention back when the "Mars Rock" was thought to have cellular fossils. Turned out to be just a strange rock. But at the time, people even suggested that life on Earth may have originated on Mars. That once Mars hosted primitive organic life. They went on to suggest that a asteroid impact jetisoned the "Mars Rock" into space and it arrived on Earth and began life here. But or more plausible scenario is comets. They containn many elements and could possibly suppport the needed "Cellular Ingredients" for life. As the comets travel throughout the universe they could randomly deposit these building blocks in both hospitable and non hospitable envirnoments.

Damn Aug old boy! You have a very wide range of interests. Usually, you are stirring the pot in some way, and maybe you are now. But, I am still surprised and enjoy your posts. I'm sure the creationists will be around shortly to "Poo Poo" your evolutionary dribble. An even more interesting question, and maybe this is war your point originally, what if we seed a far off planet ourselves?

I just think about shit. No malice is usually involved. But if one wants to take offence at my thought process, f-em.

SteyrAUG LIVES....

The organic compounds, hydrocarbon etc.., would be stable in the center of a comet. We know that a comet reaches the earth surface on occasions but not often. However millions of comets strike the upper atmosphere and breakup every year. It is now thought that most of the water on our planet came to us this way. We are literally living under an unnoticed rain of gaseous water and hydrocarbons and these are the building blocks of life.

the circus is back in town.

..."And on the 6th Day, He created life in the rocks. And the rocks were carried by asteroids to Earth. The asteroids dropped the rocks. The rocks then begot Man. And it was Good." Sure, I'll buy it.

An elegant and appealing idea.

wlynn5 got to it before I did. And it isn't "my" idea, I just presented it here. This idea does kinda fit. I don't think life is the random product of arbitrary evolution anymore than I think some big invisible guy sat down with some play do and knocked us out on day. I think life is as fact of the universe and will flourish whenever conditions permit it. I'm even willing to "believe" that Mars had a brief period that supported life, not green guys but cellular life, in it's ancient history. But I doubt Earth life was transplanted from the Red planet. More likely Mars was exposed to the same "seeding" process as the Earth and breifly sustained it.

All your cosmic seeding are belong to us! Sorry to do that but it was my turn. Interesting theory. I wonder about the origin of man on occasion myself. Usually after a Crown and Coke on an empty stomache like now. People like to think we are something special in the big scheme of things, but I have to wonder if we are a fluke more than a designed specimine. We look at the "miracle of life" and say shit like, "god planned all of this", but I wonder if the momma cockroach tells the daddy cockroach the same thing. Screwemall, I need another drink.

OK, now for the big one.... "Why do dogs dream?" Hope nobody sees this one while they are high...

SteyrAUG--coming to the BRC? Interestingly enough, the current state (last time I checked) of thought is that small pellets of clay held the Nitrogen, Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen to allow the initial formation of organic compounds to form from basic chemicals like Water, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, and Ammonia. Shortly after the molecues formed, the first Yuppie Scum arose from the slime and drove off in his BMW. An incompletely formed human with a dorsal fin then arose from the slime in an order to sue the Yuppie Scum for running over the remaining scum with his vehicle. That is how life formed. Dogs dream because they lay down memory paths in their brains, same as humans. Synaptic connections and pathways are tested and explored during dreams. Cats don't dream--they just eat, sleep and stink up the litter box.

[(:|)]

Well, it is possible. I believe there were two critters called man. One came about through the primordial ooze (space rocks/water/sunlight????.) route. And another(Adam),was created by a infinitely wise being (GOD). One had a soul (breath of life), and the other was an animal (no soul). IMHO Waterdog

It seems to me SteyrAug is wanting to discuss an alternate theory as to how man came about and even though i believe in God, i see no reason to involve creationism in this discussion because its simply off topic.

SteyrAUG is spreading his seed all over this Board! [img]http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/tdo13.gif[/img]

The bigger question is, what do they dream about?

... fire hydrants [;)]

The theory is called panspermia and I believe it was imagined first by Fred Hoyle (RIP), the same physicist who coined the term "Big Bang" if I am not mistaken. It's conceivable (no pun intended) but to be fair it only pushes back the question of the origin of life one step. The cool thing about it is, if we ever do find life on other, earthlike worlds around other stars, it might not be THAT different from life here.

How did Armed Scientist ever miss this one? If there is life on Mars, that dude is determined to be the one to find it.

Sounds like the theories of exogenesis or panspermia. Doesn't solve the origin of life question, just moves it to another planet.

I'm in if you guys are. Let's start by seeding Mars with some choice handrolled terraforming organisms. Collect all the bacteria, phages and plasmids you can lay your paws upon. Start building your DNA fragment libraries today. The fun part about terraforming is that aside from the interplanetary delivery system, the bioengineering work is mainly knowledge based and could be carried out in a well equipped garage. As the planet becomes more to our tastes we can ship across more complex life forms. Eventually it should be possible to hunt on Mars. :)

Yep, Hoyle's da man. If "earthlike" means similar size, mass, water content, atmospheric gases, EMF/radiation exposure, heat distribution, climate changes, weather patterns, etc., then I'd say it's "possible" for life elsewhere to resemble Earth's life but not at all necessarily so. There's a lot of randomness and rare catastrophic events that have occurred in the history of life here on Earth (axis tilts, ice ages, comets, choice of handedness of amino acids, etc.) that drastically dictated major changes in present life forms (most notably the loss of dinosaurs). Events such as these most likely would not have occured at the same times in other planet's life-form's histories or other events may have happened there that didn't happen here instead. This adds up to, IMO, a great possibility that much of the life-forms (beyond the bacterial) on other planets probably don't resemble life-forms here because of the drastic differences in natural selection forces working on different planets.

Another, far more ambitious approach to planet colonization: Bioengineering will eventually give us the ability to produce billions of identical microscopic "seeds". Nanoengineering will eventually give us the ability to produce the microscopic support mechanisms necessary to: 1. seek out planets capable of supporting life, 2. sustain these "seeds" during long space flights and during atmospheric entry on hospitable planets, 3. support their growth on said planets. Why spend untold billions of dollars exploring/colonizing a few planets on a macroscopic scale, when the same money could be used to "shotgun" the universe with billions of "planet coloniziers" on a microscopic scale?

Then we get into ethical considerations - would it be ethical to do this, knowing that our "planet colonizers" could possibly wipe out any life already on a planet? In "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" the Genesis Project was tested on a world known to be dead because A) they wanted to make sure there were no life forms to be transformed and skew the test results, and B) they didn't want to destroy any life in order to create new life. Perhaps the planet colonizers should send nanomachines to a candidate world to check for life before seeding it.

An unnoticed and 'continuing' rain of..........

"Beam Me up Scotty ! "

Woo! A subject dear to my heart. I tend to believe in the seeding theory, although for me it's not so much that Star Trek concept of an ancient alien species passing through seeding genetic material (a plot device they used to explain all the humanoid species that appear in the show)... I tend to think of it more as, if it's even remotely possible that life can develop and survive, it will. And if there's one thing we've learned, it's that every time we think a place is inhospitable to any kind of life, we find some there after all. I still believe we -will- find signs of life on Mars. It'll probably be ancient and fossilised, but we know mars had liquid water on its surface, and a thicker, warmer atmosphere in the past. I think when we get there we'll find that at some point there's been life there too. The reason we haven't found it yet is that despite out best efforts it's like we're trying to prove there's chocolate chips in choc-chip icecream by dipping the tip of a needle into it. How many times is that needle gonna come back with only a tiny bit of icecream coating it? Does that mean there's no chocolate chips in there? We really have to get there, on the surface and -explore-. We'll never do it as well as that through teleoperation. In addition to Mars I think there's a damn good chance we'll find existing, living, and bloody fascinating new forms of life when we eventually get to Europa (one of Jupiter's moons) and make it through the ice crust to the ocean underneath. Even Io, although a killer environment for us might turn out support life similar to what we find on earth in volcanos and around sulpher springs. It's gonna be awesome... I just wish we'd hurry the hell up and get out there. Instead we're wasting $175 Billion on the ISS, to do the same orbital experiments we've been doing for 40 years. We could have put a base on the moon for a lot less, and it would make a much better staging point for future missions then the ISS ever could. And again with Mars, NASA's basing its strategy on a hugely expensive method of getting there when it could be done so much faster and cheaper... On my more paranoid days I get the feeling that they're just stalling. Like they don't really want to go at all. But even then it could only be managments position, not that of the scientists who really make things happen. I could go on all day... But I'll spare you all. :)

Give the scientists a billion years or so and I'm sure it'll happen. They spend weeks getting the "soup" ready, zap it once with electricity, and call it a failure when nothing shows up. It was an ongoing process on the infant Earth - all day long, every day of the year, and in every ocean, lake, and puddle of water.