There are competing theories about how life began here on Earth but one of them just went to the head of the class. In December 2012 a meteor came to land after it’s fiery entrance over Sri Lanka’s Polonnaruwa . From there the meteorite fragments were gathered up and reviewed at the Sri Lanka Research Institute. There the fossilized evidence of siliceous microalgae was identified and seeing the scientific communities skepticism, the fragments were then sent to Cardiff’s University in Wales where they were analyzed and came up with, surprise, the same results.
Allow me to recap the theories now at the forefront of many scientists mind. Panspermia is a theory that represents the belief that life exists throughout the Universe and is distributed by Asteroids, Meteoroids and Planetoids traveling light year upon light year to far galaxies. These life forms with in the objects are able to survive the effects of deep space (they are ‘extremophiles’ – an organism that is able to survive under extreme conditions.) Through collisions that were random in nature an asteroid or other delivery system allowed the organism to become active from its dormant stage and thus life began. To follow the belief one must assume that such asteroids or other methods of travel have taken life to all ends of the Universe and so we cannot in theory be alone.
Now of the scenario submitted above, there are two schools of thought. One believes that this ‘just happened’ and the other is of the mind that some advanced alien race ‘controlled it’. Of course then that leads to the speculation if they controlled it were they dying and wanted life to continue, or knew that their bodies were not strong enough and will one day come to collect them? While my SciFi side was tickled by the thought of directed Panspermia, I tend to believe that it just happened. [By the way, in case Panspermia is ever needed for your crosswords – its origin is Greek and it means ‘all’ (pan) and ‘seeds’ (sperma)]
Still, the amazing thing is that this evidence is not quite considered to be evidence. While Cardiff University’s results are not suspect per se, these results need to be found elsewhere. As to the meteorite, well, there’s plenty more like this one. This whole event seems to bolster Richard B. Hoover’s claims in not only 1997, and not just again in 2007 but also in 2011. All three times he claimed to have found fossilized organisms within meteorites. The testing done in Cardiff’s research does seem to offer more evidence. Utilized in the investigation were X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy.
It will take crater after crater of evidence for this ‘theory’ to become fact. Of course then we will be looking over our shoulders knowing that we are not alone!
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