

Dinosaur asteroid 'sent life to Mars' - alexkus
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25201572

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ChuckMcM
I have this vision of dinosaur astronauts, clinging to the rock that has been
ejected into space, on their way to Mars to establish a new life there.

I have always found the pan-spermia theories interesting. It still doesn't
answer the 'where first' question but it allows for many places to share
similar lifeforms without requiring a recreation of an improbable event in all
of them. Of course it would be _really_ weird if the universe was populated in
this way with humanoids, and the original Star Trek was closer to the truth
than not :-)

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mathattack
Given the right similar starting conditions in the DNA... It could be
interesting.

What surprises me is that life can survive these trips. A rock ejected from
the Earth would have to have tremendous heat during the escape velocity.
Science is fascinating.

~~~
mtdewcmu
That's what I was thinking. That piece of rock must be very hot as it's flying
out into space from a violent explosion. At least, that's how I picture it. It
seems odd that the article was concerned about the danger of space itself, but
never mentioned the exit from earth.

Science is very fascinating, but this phenomenon of life successfully leaving
earth and arriving on other planets has never been demonstrated, so it's more
idle speculation than science.

~~~
mathattack
I think they've at least seen them survive in space. I recall reading stories
of microbes surviving near absolute zero. Bacteria and spores could survive a
lot, but I would think they would have to be inside a mighty big rock to
survive the heat.

~~~
mtdewcmu
Some microscopic organisms are said to have survived exposure to space. But
just because some of the pieces have been shown to be plausible, doesn't
justify accepting the entire scenario.

~~~
mathattack
I agree with you.

I think this is a good statistics exercise too. What's more likely? That life
emerges spontaneously in multiple spots of space, or that life survives inter-
planetary (and perhaps inter-solar system) journeys?

~~~
mtdewcmu
You couldn't possibly answer that.

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alexkus
> "Even using conservative, realistic estimates... it's still possible that
> organisms could be swimming around out there in the oceans of Europa," she
> said.
    
    
        ALL THESE WORLDS
        ARE YOURS EXCEPT
             EUROPA
           ATTEMPT NO
         LANDING THERE

~~~
gagege
Have you seen the movie Europa Report? I don't want to spoil any part of it
for you, but it's _really_ good. If you have Netflix, it's on there.

~~~
deletes
Is it realistic or do they find aliens/god?

~~~
yepguy
[SPOILERS] There are some Hollywood embellishments I didn't care for, but I
would say the movie is still a lot more realistic than 95% of sci-fi movies.
It's definitely worth seeing. In the end, they do find complex life, but no
"aliens" like you'd find in a typical sci-fi action movie.

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pwnna
Panspermia[1] is not a new theory. This whole article is highly speculative.
It might sound compelling, but we just know way too little to make any sort of
prediction on this matter. Any real findings must come from actual data
provided by probes and landers such as the Mars 2020 Rover[2] and the
ExoMars[3] mission.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia)

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2020_rover_mission](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2020_rover_mission)

[3]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExoMars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExoMars)

~~~
omegant
The only way to confirm it is once the asteroid minimg begins. Then it's a
matter of time to find an asteroid from earth. Maybe it'll tale long but
eventually they'll be able to analize what's left there.

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negamax
So basically, if a planet has no dominant/intelligent species capable of
protecting itself; not only nature resets that planet; it scatters the
building blocks of life to other planets as well in the process.

Billions of years forward. Intelligent life on multiple planets from same
building blocks. They fight for dominance in a new natural selection. This
time to see which planet was conducive for creating better lifeforms.

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curtis
The notion that an asteroid impact could launch life-bearing debris to escape
velocity is not new. I remember it being mentioned in one of Lester Del Rey's
juvenile science fiction books -- possibly "Outpost of Jupiter", which
according to Wikipedia was first published in 1963.

~~~
icambron
The difference is that this models a specific impact to see whether it would
work. That's a long long way from conclusive, of course, but it's a useful
addition.

~~~
curtis
I agree. I just find it interesting that the base idea has been around so long
-- longer in fact than the "asteroid killed the dinosaurs" theory.

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hcarvalhoalves
Even if organisms got ejected with rocks, wouldn't they just die frozen or
from radiation on the long journey thru the vacuum?

~~~
arbuge
....or from the rock they're in burning up in reentry.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Mars' atmosphere is much thinner, I don't think a 3m thick boulder would burn
up (impact, though, would be, uh, energetic, however).

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toblender
What if life on earth was also just a fragment of another past planet?

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MartinCron
For anyone who is interested in the Dinosaur asteroid, may I suggest listening
to or watching the latest RadioLab, which went into some interesting
(speculative) depth about what may have happened.

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ZoFreX
This article is ridiculous. They have a theory and a model that says, for
example, that 6 chunks of rock hit Europa. Of course we don't know that they
did! This is unfalsifiable twaddle.

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Houshalter
How likely is it for these organisms to survive ejection in the first place? I
thought asteroid impacts were incredibly hot and violent.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Rocks make great insulators though, which just leaves acceleration as an
issue, though microbes handle high acceleration just fine.

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InclinedPlane
This is interesting primarily because we know a decent amount about the nature
of the Chicxulub impact event, so we can model it. And in doing so we've found
that it should be possible for microbial life deep inside Earth rocks to end
up in heliocentric orbits and to be protected from space radiation long enough
to have a reasonable chance of surviving until the rock they are in hits
another planetary body in our Solar System.

What this actually means, though, is that likely many other impact events in
Earth's history could have done the same thing. Even going back billions of
years. Which means that the probability of Earth life having landed on Mars,
Venus, or Europa in a way which might have seeded locations favorable to life
is very much non zero.

This sort of thing has been speculated about before but never modelled so
rigorously using real-world impacts as examples.

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ayubskhan
I don't believe this story! Why don't we find those rocks ejected during the
impact on Moon?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Are you asking why we never found a small number of Earth rocks scattered over
the entire surface of the Moon during a period of only a few hours total of
lunar exploration? The answer should be obvious.

~~~
josefresco
To be fair...the surface of Earth's moon has been much more extensive than
just physical lunar surface exploration.

It's also a fair question, have we seen evidence from this on our moon? And if
not is it really because of the limited exploration or some other factors?

~~~
ayubskhan
Thank you josefresco!

