PANSPERMIA THEORY SUPPORTED BY NEW REPORT
April 15th / Sunday, April 14th 1996
By: AUFORA News Update
U.S. scientists released a report on Friday which supports the theory
of panspermia, in which the Earth was "seeded" with life when celestial
objects collided with the Earth.
The report shows focuses on a 60-by-27 kilometer impact site near
Sudbury, Ontario. This impact crater was created 1.85 billion years ago
when an object the size of Mt. Everest collided with the Earth.
The report shows that buckyballs found at the impact site were of a
celestial origin. Buckyballs are arrays of carbon atoms shaped in a way
which resembles geodesic domes created by architect R. Buckminster Fuller.
The scientists were able to determine the celestial origin of these
buckyballs by analyzing helium isotopes trapped inside the buckyballs.
This shows that the buckyballs firstly didn't originate on Earth, and
secondly that they managed to survive the impact.
This suprised many scientists, including Jeffrey Bada, an author of
the report. "I started out as an opponent because I didn't think that
anything could survive that collision," he said. The conventional opinion
was that no carbon-based molecules would be able to survive an impact.
40 years ago, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey were able to create
amino acids by simulating the conditions of early Earth using a mixture of
methane, water, ammonia and the laboratory equivalent of lightning.
However, current understanding shows that the early Earth atmosphere was
largely made up of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, neither of which would
form amino acids.
"You make nothing, so you are left with the problem of how did life
on Earth get started?," Bada asks.
Thus, you have the theory of panspermia. The major problem with
panspermia used to be the doubt that complex carbon-based molecules would
be able to survive entry and impact. The fact that buckyballs survived
seems to add support to the fact that other carbon-based molecules,
including organic molecules, could have survived entry.
"If a meteorite or comet can deliver intact carbon molecules to the
Earth's surface, it is likely that other organic compounds can survive the
impact," said Robert Poreda, one of the report's other authors.
Poreda says he is now looking at the survivability of carbon-hydrogen
molecules which are also beleived to exist in asteroids.
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