Life Comes from Space

The following sections are included:

• Foreword
• Contents

We are led to believe that modern science is free of all forms of irrational prejudice that plagued science over the centuries. In this book we document an instance when this is far from true in relation to the most fundamental aspects of biology — the question of the origin of life and its cosmic provenance. From the early 1980’s evidence in favour of the theory of cosmic life and a version of panspermia, developed by Fred Hoyle and CW has grown to the point that its continued marginalisation, or even outright rejection, is a cause for serious concern. We present here the story of panspermia in which we ourselves have been directly involved…

Microorganisms (or microbes) are microscopic organisms, living entities which range from relatively large protozoa, to incredibly minute viruses. Microscopic fungi (i.e. moulds like Penicillium species), yeasts and green photosynthetic algae (such as Chlorella) also come within the orbit of microbiology. Protozoa, like Paramecium were once regarded as being animals, while algae, bacteria and fungi were traditionally studied by botanists…

The current scientific consensus tends to distance itself from panspermic ideas and resolutely maintains that life on Earth arose as a one-off act of spontaneous generation (abiognenesis) at some point in the past. This view has a long history; Robert Chambers in his influential, pre-Darwin book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation on transmutation (i.e. evolution) of 1845 stated that: The first step in the creation of life on this planet was the chemico-electric operation by which simple germinal vesicles were produced

While this view has become the orthodox opinion on the origin of life, Alfred Russel Wallace, whose theory of "natural selection" came at about the same time as Darwin's, took the following, different view: I submit that…. living protoplasm has never been chemically produced, the assertion that life is due to chemical and mechanical processes alone is quite unjustified. Neither the probability of such an organism nor even its possibility has been supported by anything which can be termed scientific facts or logical reasoning.

The current, popular view, of the likely origin of life then depends firmly on a belief in a single act of spontaneous generation; that simple life arose from organic chemicals here on Earth or from similar chemicals which may conceivably have arrived from space. This protolife then became more complex, via an evolutionary process explained by Darwinian and neo-Darwinian syntheses…

By the early 1800s many thinkers considered it an obvious possibility that life exists on other planets (spheres and globes, as they were often called). This belief was based largely on the simple dictum that the Creator (generally used in reference to the Christian God) would never have established such a large number of worlds only to leave them empty; or as Isaac Taylor states, in his Physical Theory of Another Life of 1836: None could tolerate the idea, and especially seeing what we see in our own planet, that the innumerable spheres around us are totally untenanted, and that the stupendous celestial mechanism, is a mechanism merely.

A particularly common feature of this early literature is how often a view is given that living things are adapted to the conditions found on Earth and that such adaptation occurs in life-forms which exist on other planets. Such ideas were current before Charles Darwin wrote his seminal work on evolution in 1859…

In the year 2022 one could scarcely imagine that a purely astronomical research project started in 1962 led to a fundamental challenge to the received wisdom of how we came to be! How did life originate and come to be dispersed throughout the cosmos, planet Earth being just one of trillions of similar locales on which this same life may have taken root and developed over the past 4 billion years. A purely astronomical investigation unconnected with life into nature’s cosmic dust, the dust clouds that show up as dark patches and striations against the background of stars in the Milky Way, ended up with the conclusion that interstellar dust must include vast quantities of bacteria and viruses in various stages of degradation and decay. These conclusions are still being vigorously disputed by those who still insist on preserving the status quo against all the odds. The received wisdom in 2022, as we have already discussed, is that life started de novo on Earth from organic molecules that were formed on an ancient Earth by purely non-living processes. In spite of a growing body of evidence that challenges this orthodoxy, an institutional and cultural imperative to maintain the status quo remains implacably strong, and still continues to dominate.

By the start of the 1980’s one of us (CW) and Fred Hoyle were firmly committed to the view that an immensely powerful cosmic biology somehow came to be overlaid on Earth from the external universe some 4 billion years ago. In 1982 at a public lecture delivered in Cardiff under the auspices of the Royal Astronomical Society Fred Hoyle concluded thus: Microbiology may be said to have had its beginnings in the nineteen-forties. A new world of the most astonishing complexity began then to be revealed. In retrospect I find it remarkable that microbiologists did not at once recognise that the world into which they had penetrated had of necessity to be of cosmic order. I suspect that the cosmic quality of microbiology will seem as obvious to future generations as the Sun being the centre of the solar system seems obvious to the present generation.

At the same time Fred Hoyle and CW wrote that the birth of a new scientific discipline combining astronomy and biology was imminent and he suggested the name Astrobiology – a fact that is ignored by modern commentators who wish to stake their claim for the new discipline.…

Comets are relatively small celestial bodies that show up as spectacular objects in the night sky. Their conspicuous long tails stretch across great arcs in the night sky, and such events have had a long recorded history in Chinese, Indian and Egyptian annals. Comets were at once feared and revered in many ancient cultures, seeing them as harbingers of doom and bringers of pestilence and death. The true nature of individual comets was of course unknown to ancient cultures…

The theory of panspermia is becoming increasingly more sophisticated as new variants of the theory are being developed. It is necessary therefore to define the various “sub-species” of the theory that are currently on record. Here, we shall restrict the term Panspermia to incorporate the view that life on Earth necessarily had a cosmic origin. A second variant, so called Neopanspermia will be used to refer to the view that life, not only arrived to Earth from space, but continues to do so, while the term Pathospermia will be used to cover the theory that diseases occurring on Earth, such as influenza and SARS and COVID-19 originate from space. Other variants of panspermia include the view that microbes were brought to Earth in meteorites, so called Lithopanspermia, and even that they may one day be ejected from terrestrial building material flung out into space from Earth impact events, so called Archaepanpsermia…

A number of scientists now believe that microorganisms can be transferred between various planets including the Earth and their moons in our solar system, and by extension in the many other exoplanetary systems that are now known to exist. It is possible that such “negative, or reverse panspermia” could have seeded life from this planet to Mars, or vice versa, or even transferred life across many hundreds of light years between exoplanetary systems. While panspermia has long been hypothesized and recently developed with great force by the present writers and Fred Hoyle amongst others, there has simultaneously been a recent surge of enthusiasm for the theory, following claims of potential extraterrestrial fossils in meteorites. Of particular note is the (oft disputed) evidence for fossilized microbial life in the ALH84001 meteorite…

Meteorites are fragments of rock originating from either asteroids or comets that populate interplanetary space and which survive impact on the Earth’s surface; a fragment of such material is referred to as a meteoroid before its impact. The study of meteorites can reveal how the solar system first began, what life (if any) is like on other planets and how such planets were formed. Rocks originating from elsewhere in the solar system therefore carry with them crucial information about the planets or planetary bodies from which they originated. Meteorites could also potentially bring evidence for the past existence on Earth of other life forms that are now extinct…

The following section is included:

• Some Personal Recollections (MW)

We have already referred to the results of a few investigations carried out by co-author MW on samples of stratospheric material supplied to him by CW.

These were obtained from a balloon-sampling experiment carried out over India (Fig. 12.1). A very large balloon was used to carry what is called a cryosampler into the stratosphere at a height of up to 42 km (around 25 miles). You can gauge this height by thinking of the flight you made in a holiday jet which generally cruise at around 10 km (Further details of the methods employed can be found in the Appendix)…

Having confirmed that bacteria and fungi exist in the stratosphere and after publishing the results, we gave a number of local and international lectures, which were generally well received. We were hopeful that funding for continuing this work would follow naturally in view of the immense interest that had been aroused. Then bad news arrived! The Indian scientists asked us to contribute some funds in order to continue having access to their stratosphere-derived samples and actively collaborating with them. This seemed reasonable enough, so we set about trying to obtain grants from UK grant-giving agencies in order to continue our work. We had of course attempted this before, but without success, so we were not surprised when on this occasion as well a contribution to funding was denied…

As we have seen, the basic concept of panspermia has a long history stretching back over many centuries or even millennia, but until the1960s, when NASA made some tentative exploration, no attempt had been made to provide any experimental evidence in support of the theory. The reasons are obvious. Prior to this date it was difficult to reach and to sample the stratosphere and then investigate, using electron microscopes and other techniques (like EDAX), anything that was captured there. Even when these difficulties were overcome the stratosphere was assumed to be sterile and little interest was shown in exploring the possibility that this region is home to a distinct biosphere. The studies of the Russian, A.A. Imshenetsky should have alerted scientists to the reality that microbes can be found at heights above 42 km, but his work was, as usual, dismissed on the basis of contamination. Work by the Indian group and ourselves later confirmed the Russian studies, as we discussed in earlier Chapters, but the same old excuse was used in order not to take these findings on-board. There have now been sufficient independent studies to show that microorganisms do indeed exist in the stratosphere. The question then is how did they get there? Surprisingly, even experienced scientists claim that “they just drift up there”. In reality, it is extremely difficult to elevate even small, one micron, particles to the high stratosphere. We of course assert, that it is impossible for the larger (10 to 40 μm plus) particles, which we find in this region, to come from Earth. Instead, our evidence shows that they are incoming to Earth from space. Such findings show that the theory of panspermia is the only theory that can accord with the facts that life exists elsewhere in the cosmos. Of course critics might be emboldened to say, without any proof, that large particles can be elevated to the stratosphere, but the mechanism by which this is achieved has yet to be discovered. Obviously, we cannot argue against such strident soothsaying. However, the evidence that clinches it for us, is the absence of common terrestrial organisms on the inside of our samplers, such as, fungal spores and grass shards; all of which we find on the outer sampler containers which are exposed to the lower stratosphere. Since there is no sieve between this region and the stratosphere capable of holding back these common organisms, and only allow our BEs to go higher, then these unusual organisms we assert are arriving at the Earth from space…

The following sections are included:

• Postscript — Future Prospects
• Appendix
• Acknowledgements
• Biographies of Authors
• Further Reading
• References to Technical Literature by Subject
• Index