Panspermia!
Last time on Dirty Word Theater, we had Interrobang, everyone's favorite non-standard punctuation.
This time we have some pseudo-science... seeds of life from space, known as Panspermia!
The first known mention of the idea was in the writings of the 5th century BC Greek philosopher Anaxagoras.The panspermia hypothesis was dormant until 1743 when it appeared posthumously in the writings of Benoît de Maillet, who suggested that germs from space had fallen into the oceans and grown into fish and later amphibians, reptiles and then mammals. In the nineteenth century it was again revived in modern form by several scientists, including Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1834), Kelvin (1871),Hermann von Helmholtz (1879) and, somewhat later, by Svante Arrhenius (1903). Panspermia can be said to be either interstellar (between star systems) or interplanetary (between planets in the same star system). Mechanisms for panspermia include radiation pressure (Arrhenius) and lithopanspermia (microorganisms in rocks) (Kelvin). Directed panspermia from space to seed Earth (Orgel and Crick, 1973) or sent from Earth to seed other solar systems (Mautner 1979, 1997) has also been proposed.
There is as yet no compelling evidence to support or contradict it, although the majority view holds that panspermia - especially in its interstellar form - is unlikely given the challenges of survival and transport in space. One new twist to the theory by engineer Thomas Dehel (2006) proposes that plasmoids ejected from the magnetosphere may move the few spores lifted from the Earth's atmosphere with sufficient speed to cross interstellar space to other systems before the spores can be destroyed
Panspermia: Because it's got a dot-org, it has to be true.
http://www.panspermia.org/
This time we have some pseudo-science... seeds of life from space, known as Panspermia!
The first known mention of the idea was in the writings of the 5th century BC Greek philosopher Anaxagoras.The panspermia hypothesis was dormant until 1743 when it appeared posthumously in the writings of Benoît de Maillet, who suggested that germs from space had fallen into the oceans and grown into fish and later amphibians, reptiles and then mammals. In the nineteenth century it was again revived in modern form by several scientists, including Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1834), Kelvin (1871),Hermann von Helmholtz (1879) and, somewhat later, by Svante Arrhenius (1903). Panspermia can be said to be either interstellar (between star systems) or interplanetary (between planets in the same star system). Mechanisms for panspermia include radiation pressure (Arrhenius) and lithopanspermia (microorganisms in rocks) (Kelvin). Directed panspermia from space to seed Earth (Orgel and Crick, 1973) or sent from Earth to seed other solar systems (Mautner 1979, 1997) has also been proposed.
There is as yet no compelling evidence to support or contradict it, although the majority view holds that panspermia - especially in its interstellar form - is unlikely given the challenges of survival and transport in space. One new twist to the theory by engineer Thomas Dehel (2006) proposes that plasmoids ejected from the magnetosphere may move the few spores lifted from the Earth's atmosphere with sufficient speed to cross interstellar space to other systems before the spores can be destroyed
Panspermia: Because it's got a dot-org, it has to be true.
http://www.panspermia.org/