Basic
Worldview:
103
Science, the Bible,
and Creation
Origins
- Section Three:
Evolution, Another Planet
Origins - Section One: Introduction
and the Basics
Origins - Section Two: Premature
Dismissals
Origins - Section Two: Application
of the Basics
Origins - Section Three: Creation
Origins - Section Three: Evolution,
Origin of Life
Origins - Section Three: Evolution,
Environment for Life 1
Origins - Section Three: Evolution,
Environment for Life 2
Origins - Section Three: Evolution,
Another Planet
Origins - Section Three: Evolution,
Origin of Species
Origins - Section Three: Evolution,
Speciation Factors
Origins - Section Three: Evolution,
Speciation Rates
Origins - Section Four: Time and
Age, Redshift
Origins - Section Four: Philosophical
Preference
Origins - Section Four: Cosmological
Model 1
Origins - Section Four: Cosmological
Model 2
Origins - Section Four: Dating Methods,
Perceptions, Basics
Origins - Section Four: Global Flood
Evidence
Origins - Section Four: Relative
Dating
Origins - Section Four: Dating and
Circular Reasoning
Origins - Section Four: The Geologic
Column
Origins - Section Four: Radiometric
Dating Basics
Origins - Section Four: General
Radiometric Problems
Origins - Section Four: Carbon-14
Problems
Origins - Section Four: Remaining
Methods and Decay Rates
Origins - Section Four: Radiometric
Conclusions, Other Methods
Origins - Section Five: Overall
Conclusions, Closing Editorial
Origins - Section Five: List
of Evidences Table
Origins Debate Figures and
Illustrations
Evolution
on the Origin of Life:
Relocating the Origin of Life to another Planet
All
the factors outlined in the previous segment, including the
arrival of the necessary chemical components, energy, and
a safe environment, are why the origin of life without foresight
is sometimes regarded as a highly unlikely or improbable event
by evolutionary scientists themselves. And it is precisely
these factors and the improbabilities that they create, which
prompt evolutionary scientists to relocate the origin of life
to some other planet besides earth. For this reason, it will
be important to begin this segment by establishing the improbability
of the origin of life by automatic, routine processes. It
is also important to demonstrate, not only that evolutionary
scientists assert this theory of life originating on another
planet, but also that this theory is demonstrated to be unfeasible
by evolutionary scientists as well. As in our previous segments,
it will be important to establish these facts from secular
sources, evolutionary scientists, and mainstream scientific
magazines in order to demonstrate that the inclusion of this
“off-world” hypothesis is not a biased description
on our part but instead it is indeed a defining component
of modern evolutionary theory.
Concerning
the fact that evolutionists themselves regard the origin of
life as highly improbable, Discover
magazine and Britannica Encyclopedia provide the following
quotes.
“The
origin of life depended on all sorts of accidental circumstances.
Proving how it happened will take another
piece of luck.” – “How Did Life Start?,”
by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992,
Biology & Medicine
“Life,
The origin of life, Hypotheses of origins – Most
of the hypotheses of the origin of life will fall into one
of four categories: …[4]
Life arose on the early Earth by a series of progressive
chemical reactions. Such reactions may have been likely or may
have required one or more highly improbable chemical events.”
– Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
Likewise,
the quote below indicates that even if an RNA molecule came
about that was capable of self-replication, without the right
“circumstances” (energy, components, environment)
and “a long time” even this “chance combination”
necessary to produce this RNA world “simply is not tenable.”
"The
Beginnings of Life on Earth, Origin and Evolution of the RNA
World – On the other hand, it is also surprising
since these must have been sturdy reactions to sustain
the RNA world for a long time. Contrary to what is sometimes
intimated, the idea of a few RNA molecules coming together
by some chance combination of circumstances and henceforth
being reproduced and amplified by replication simply is not
tenable. There could be no replication without a robust
chemical underpinning continuing to provide the
necessary materials and energy. The development of RNA
replication must have been the second stage in the evolution
of the RNA world. The problem is not as simple as might appear
at first glance. Attempts at engineering--with considerably
more foresight and technical support than the prebiotic world
could have enjoyed--an RNA molecule capable of catalyzing
RNA replication have failed so far." – “The
Beginnings of Life on Earth,” Christian de Duve, American
Scientist, September-October 1995
Merriam-Webster’s
Collegiate Dictionary defines “tenable” as “capable
of being held, maintained, or defended” and “reasonable.”
"Tenable
– Function: adjective: capable
of being held, maintained, or defended: defensible, reasonable."
- Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
In
other words, the “chances” for an RNA first theory
are so improbable that this theory is not able to be “held,
maintained, or defended” without “a lot of time”
in the right environment with the right components and sufficient
energy. In fact, according to the quote above, the occurrence
of even one step toward the origin of life, the arrival of
a molecule capable of self-replication, is so improbable that
attempts to recreate this event in the lab using automatic,
routine processes have failed even while employing “considerable
amounts of foresight.”
The
quote below indicates the improbability of the origin of life
by stating that there had to be “billions of unsuccessful”
attempts for life to originate before life actually occurred.
“Cell, The evolution of cells –
It is highly unlikely
that scientists will ever re-create the crucial
“experiment” that led to the origin of life.
Billions of unsuccessful experiments must
have been carried out in countless ponds and marshes before
life first evolved, and these
experiments lasted for hundreds of millions of years.
During this period, conditions on Earth were different from
those today.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
That
means billions of failures for even 1 successful attempt,
which creates a probability of billions to 1. A probability
of a billion to 1 should not be brushed over quickly. This
improbability is significant because events with odds of a
billion to 1 are admittedly “impossibilities”
according to evolutionary scientists. As we will see later
on, when commenting on the possibility of life originating
in another galaxy and then migrating to earth, Discover magazine refers to the odds of such an event as “one
in a billion,” a probability which is quickly characterizes
by saying, “Given those odds, the probability is virtually
nil.”
“Still,
migrating microbes
face significant obstacles. Until recently, no researchers
had evaluated every stage of the scenario. Then a Swedish
scientist rounded up a team to do just that…They soon
found that panspermia seems viable only within our own solar system. One hitch
in the old theory, he explains, was that interstellar nomads would face lethal radiation from cosmic rays, which
strike far more frequently beyond the sun's magnetic shield.
Even more important, Mileikowsky's team has calculated
the probability of ejected planetary material reaching Earth
from elsewhere in the Milky Way or from another galaxy. ‘It
is one in a billion,’ says Mileikowsky. Given
those odds, the probability is virtually nil that even one
ejecta from the galaxy with still-viable microorganisms on
board could have arrived on Earth during its first 500 million
years. So Mileikowsky concludes, ‘Our ancestor cell
must have been created
within our own planetary system or in a nearby sister system
born at the same time.’”
– “Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by
Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
So,
as we can see, when evolutionists admit that the probability
of life originating on earth by automatic, routine processes
is a billion to 1, they are in fact affirming its virtual
impossibility and placing it within an improbability range
that, effectively, necessitates intelligent foresight.
In
addition, the quote from Britannica also denotes that the
origin of life on earth would require countless attempts lasting
“hundreds of millions of years” and “under
conditions” that “were different” than the
modern earth.
“Cell, The evolution of cells –
It is highly unlikely
that scientists will ever re-create the crucial
“experiment” that led to the origin of life.
Billions of unsuccessful experiments must
have been carried out in countless ponds and marshes before
life first evolved, and these
experiments lasted for hundreds of millions of years.
During this period, conditions on Earth were different from
those today.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
These
different conditions relate to the reasons for suggesting
a more ideal environment on another planet. The basis for
both suggestions is the same: the fact that the known environment
on earth throughout its history provides significant obstacles
to the origin of life by automatic, routine processes.
Furthermore,
this timeframe of hundreds of millions of years for the unsuccessful
attempts at life to eventually succeed is crucial. In terms
of the human life span, hundreds of millions of years might
seem like an enormous amount of time and opportunity for life
to originate. But in geological terms it isn’t. To contrast
how short of a time period “hundreds of millions of
years” is for the “billions of unsuccessful”
attempts at life, consider the following quotations concerning
Jupiter.
“Life,
Extraterrestrial life, Venus and the superior planets
– A similar speculation can be entertained with regard
to the lower clouds of Jupiter. On Jupiter the atmosphere is composed of
hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia, and probably neon and
water vapour. But these are exactly those gases used in primitive-Earth
simulation experiments directed toward the origin of life…There
is also an apparent absorption feature near 2,600 Å, in the
ultraviolet spectrum of Jupiter, which has been attributed
both to aromatic hydrocarbons and to nucleotide bases. In any event it is likely that organic molecules
are being produced in significant yield on Jupiter; it is possible that Jupiter is a vast planetary
laboratory that has been operating for 5,000,000,000 years
on prebiological organic chemistry.” – Encyclopaedia
Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
“Jupiter,
The outer layers, The atmosphere, Other likely atmospheric
constituents –
The
initial chemical processes
leading to the formation of living organisms on the Earth
may have occurred in transient microenvironments that resembled
the present chemical composition of Jupiter—without
the enormous amount of hydrogen and helium. The
active Jovian cloud system is known to be a source of lightning
discharges, while solar ultraviolet radiation, precipitation
of charged particles, and the internal energy of the planet
are also available to drive chemical reactions in the Jovian atmosphere. Thus, Jupiter may well represent an enormous natural
laboratory in which the initial steps toward the origin of
life are being pursued again and again. – Encyclopaedia
Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
As
the quotes above describe, Jupiter’s atmosphere is considered
to be similar to that of the primitive earth at the time that
life would have had to originate on earth. Jupiter is considered
to have similar energy sources to fuel the origination of
life. The phrase “likely that organic molecules are
being produced in significant yield on Jupiter” indicates
that Jupiter is considered to have critical pre-biotic compounds
such as “nucleotide bases” in enough quantities
to mark a notable “absorption” feature in its
enormous atmosphere.
Yet
despite these similarities and perhaps as much as 4 billion
years more time, Jupiter’s similar conditions are said
to be stuck as “the initial steps toward the origin
of life are being pursued again and again” but without
success so that Jupiter has remained in a “prebiological”
stage for its entire 5 billion year existence. Even if we
assume only 1 chance at the origin of life taking place every
year in the presence of nucleotide bases and similar atmospheric
conditions, that would be literally near 4 or 5 billion failed
chances for life to emerge on Jupiter. If we assume 10 chances
a year, that’s 40 or 50 billion failed chances for life.
However, the article makes it sound as though these conditions
are a frequent and ongoing aspect of Jupiter’s enormous
atmosphere, implying that these chances for life are occurring
all the time all over the atmosphere of Jupiter, which would
result in literally trillions of failed attempts at life.
This
gives us some insight into why evolutionists consider the
“hundreds of millions of years” of time available
for life on earth to be “too short” particularly
in light of the complexities and obstacles outlined above
for the origination of life on earth. These complexities and
improbabilities are usually offset by the inclusion of additional
time, which provides additional opportunities, thus reducing
improbability. But due to the short time period available
on earth as we saw already above, some evolutionists subscribe
to the necessity for life not to have originated on earth
but to have been transported to earth after first originating
on some other planet where there was more time and fewer obstacles.
“That’s
worried people for the last 10 to 15 years, says Christopher
Chyba, a planetary scientist based at NASA’s Ames
Research Center,
south of San Francisco.
There seems to be a
contradiction between the fact that we’re here and evidence
that early Earth was not very hospitable to the formation
of organics. How do you resolve the dilemma? One way is
to take advantage of
the fact that asteroids and especially comets are rich in
organic compounds. Maybe there was a way that those organics
reached early Earth intact. In other words, maybe the
beginnings of life came from interstellar space.”
– “How Did Life Start?,” by Peter Radetsky,
DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992, Biology & Medicine
“At
this point in Friedmann’s conjectures, another planet--Mars,
of all places--becomes convenient for completing the tale.
Indirect evidence for life on Earth (organic compounds
preserved in rocks, produced only by life) goes
back at least 3.8 billion years. Yet
life could not have appeared on the planet’s surface,
most agree, before about 4 billion years ago, when heavy meteorite
showers were still vaporizing the oceans. As
proof for the existence of full-blown cellular life keeps
pushing closer to 4 billion years, evolutionary biologists
wonder if there was enough time for such life to arise from
basic organic molecules. Perhaps
life only arrived on the surface of Earth after it originated
somewhere else. It’s been suggested that it started
deep in Earth, where it is still abundant, and later moved
up to the surface. Another suggestion, which Friedmann favors, is that it arrived ready-made
from another planet. Mars is smaller than Earth and farther
from the sun. Therefore Mars
cooled down earlier. Probably the conditions suitable for
life to arise happened earlier on Mars than on Earth, says
Friedmann. And because the gravity of Mars is weaker than Earth’s, it is much
easier for something to travel from Mars to Earth than
the other way--something like a meteor, chipped off the surface.
So if we assume that life originated on Mars and came to Earth, Friedmann
continues, then we
gain more time to explain the origin of life.” –
“Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places,” by
Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy
& Physics
Besides
addition time, the quote below demonstrates another benefit
to relocating the origin of life from earth to another world.
When conditions favorable to pre-biotic chemistry used in
“successful” experiments are shown to be incompatible
with earth’s early history (such as the Miller-Urey
experiment), those experiments can remain relevantly insightful
for the origin of life if we assume those favorable conditions,
although not present on earth, were present on another world.
“The
first hints that this might be so came from the laboratory,
before evidence for it was found in space, through the historic
experiments of Stanley Miller, now recalled in science textbooks…Although the primitive atmosphere is no
longer believed to be as rich in hydrogen as once thought
by Urey, the discovery that the Murchison meteorite contains
the same amino acids obtained by Miller, and even in the same
relative proportions, suggests strongly that his results are
relevant.” – “The Beginnings of Life
on Earth,” Christian de Duve, American Scientist, September-October
1995
Consequently,
relocating the origin of life to another world not only yields
more time but also a
more hospitable environment for the origin of life than
the early earth.
It
is also important to note that this theory relocating the
origin of life to another world is not limited to “fringe”
or “uneducated” evolutionists but includes prominent
scientists in the evolutionist camp such as Carl Sagan, Francis
Crick, and Fred Hoyle.
“Elsewhere,
Chyba is collaborating
with Carl Sagan and others in an attempt to nail down the
possible link between extraterrestrial objects and the origin
of life.” – “How Did Life Start?,”
by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992,
Biology & Medicine
“On
the other hand, it is believed that our young planet, still in the throes of volcanic
eruptions and battered by falling comets and asteroids, remained
inhospitable to life for about half a billion years after
its birth, together with the rest of the solar system,
some 4.55 billion years ago. This leaves a window of perhaps 200-300 million years for the appearance
of life on earth. This
duration was once considered too short for the emergence
of something as complex as a living cell. Hence
suggestions were made that germs of life may have come to
earth from outer space with cometary dust or even, as proposed
by Francis Crick of DNA double-helix fame, on a spaceship
sent out by some distant civilization.” – “The
Beginnings of Life on Earth,” Christian de Duve, American
Scientist, September-October 1995
“Bacterial
Evangelists – The eminent British astronomer Fred Hoyle and his former student astrophysicist Chandra Wickramasinghe
of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology
in Wales
promote a far-reaching— and, to
most scientists, far-fetched— view
of panspermia. They believe that microbes
migrate within comets and their dusty remnants.”
– “Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by
Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
This
theory that life on earth came here from another planet or
place in the universe is called “panspermia.”
“The
idea of life vagabonding through the cosmos has been around
for millennia, but scientists first considered it seriously
in the mid-19th century. In 1871, British physicist William
Thomson Kelvin told his colleagues in Edinburgh:
‘We must regard it as probable in the highest degree
that there are countless seed-bearing meteoritic stones
moving about through space. If at the present instant no life
existed upon this earth, one such stone falling upon it might
. . . lead to its becoming covered with vegetation.’
Three decades later, Swedish chemist and Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius agreed, but he took
issue with part of Kelvin's scenario. The fiery trauma of
a meteoroid ejected from a planet or out of the solar system,
he argued, would incinerate any cells it harbored. Instead
of hitching rides within rocks, Arrhenius said, life could travel unaided. In 1903, he proposed that spores of plants and germs might drift through
space propelled by the gentle pressure of starlight. He called
this idea panspermia (from the Greek for ‘seeds
everywhere’).” – “Did Life on Earth
Come From Mars?,” by Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22
No. 08, August 2001
“When
astronomers later grasped the true distances between stars
and the vast size of the Milky Way, panspermia fell out of favor…Now panspermia is gaining credence
again, but with more caveats. Planetary geologist Jeffrey
Moore of the NASA Ames
Research Center
says that if panspermia
simply means exchanges of life among bodies in our solar system,
Kelvin's ‘seed-bearing meteoritic stones’ could
be spot on. ‘Panspermia redefined is perceived as reasonable
by virtually everybody,’ Moore
explains. ‘Say you have several places in the solar
system where organisms could multiply. Once one gets it, all
the planets and moons with suitable environments come down
with life. It's the day-care effect. They infect each other.’
The inner solar system, he adds, with its friendly temperatures
and hard surfaces, is the most likely place for such exchanges.”
– “Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by
Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
“Life,
The origin of life, Hypotheses of origins – Perhaps
the most fundamental and at the same time the
least understood biological problem is the origin of life.
It is central to many scientific and philosophical problems
and to any consideration of extraterrestrial life. Most
of the hypotheses of the origin of life will fall into one
of four categories: [1] The origin of life is a result
of a supernatural event; that is, one permanently beyond the
descriptive powers of physics and chemistry. [2] Life-particularly
simple forms-spontaneously and readily arises from nonliving
matter in short periods of time, today as in the past. [3]
Life is coeternal with matter and has no beginning; life arrived on the Earth at the time of the origin of the earth or
shortly thereafter. [4] Life arose on the early Earth
by a series of progressive chemical reactions. Such reactions
may have been likely or may have required one or more highly
improbable chemical events…Toward the end of the 19th century Hypothesis
3 gained currency, particularly with the suggestion by
a Swedish chemist, S.A. Arrhenius, that
life on Earth arose from panspermia, microorganisms or spores
wafted through space by radiation pressure from planet to
planet or solar system to solar system. Such an idea of course
avoids rather than solves the problem of the origin of life.
In addition, it is extremely
unlikely that any microorganism could be transported by radiation
pressure to the Earth over interstellar distances without
being killed by the combined effects of cold, vacuum, and
radiation.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004
Deluxe Edition
The
quote below includes panspermia under its heading of “Modern
theories” and a “major theory of the origin of
life,” right alongside “chemical evolution.”
Here panspermia is described more generally as spores landing
on earth from some other part of the universe, without stipulating
how they traveled.
“Life,
The origin of life, Modern theories – Scientists think that life probably arose on Earth more than 3 1/2 billion
years ago, and
so they cannot base their understanding of that event on direct
observation. As a result, their understanding of how
life began is far less certain than their knowledge of such
subjects as cell structure and biochemistry. Scientists construct
explanations of the origin of life. They base their explanations
on their knowledge of living things and on their understanding
of the early physical conditions on Earth. Scientists have proposed two major theories
of the origin of life. They are (1) the theory of panspermia and (2) the theory of chemical evolution.
The theory of panspermia states that spores from some other
part of the universe landed on Earth and began to develop.
However, some scientists
doubt that spores could survive a journey through the harsh
conditions of outer space. Even
if the theory is true, it explains only the origin of life
on Earth and not how life arose in the universe.”
– Worldbook, Contributor: Harold J. Morowitz, Ph.D.,
Robinson Professor of Biology and Director of Krasnow Institute,
George
Mason University.
Notice
that both of the 2 last quotes above correctly asserts that
panspermia “avoids rather than solves the problem of
the origin of life” explaining “only the origin
of life on Earth” and not “how life arose in the
universe.” The reason for these comments is simple.
Even if life traveled to earth from somewhere else, it would
still be necessary to understand how it originated originally. This fact is also attested
to in the following quotes from American
Scientist and Discover
magazines.
“Even
if life came from elsewhere, we would still have to account
for its first development. Thus we might as well assume
that life started on earth.” – “The Beginnings
of Life on Earth,” Christian de Duve, American Scientist, September-October
1995
“Knowing
that some microbes easily hopscotched from planet to planet
doesn't necessarily bring us any closer to pinpointing the
fountainhead of life.” – “Did Life on
Earth Come From Mars?, by Robert Irion,” DISCOVER, Vol.
22 No. 08, August 2001
Notice
also that many of the quotes above state that the possibility
is doubted by some scientists due to the harsh conditions
of traveling through space. The quote below also indicates
that this idea has been resisted, even previously by the author
himself.
“There
is little doubt in my mind that our oceans and our atmosphere
were delivered on the
backs of comets that bombarded the newly formed Earth in its
first few hundred million years. What is more, the comets
also appear to have brought prebiotic molecules—organic
building blocks that could be used to get life started.
These ideas have a fairly long history but have been resisted for various reasons over the decades.
I have been studying the chemistry of comets for more than
50 years, and I admit
that early in my career I too was reluctant to accept the
possibility that comets had played such a crucial role in
our planet’s history. But the evidence has continued to accumulate over the decades, and
it now seems irrefutable.
Here I provide an overview of the reasoning behind this extraordinary
idea.” – An Argument for the Cometary Origin of
the Biosphere, Armand H. Delsemme, American Scientists, Volume
89, 2004
As
we these quotes assert, panspermia fell out of favor historically
and remained so into recent times due to the improbability
of organic molecules surviving travel through space.
“When
astronomers later grasped the true distances between stars
and the vast size of the Milky Way, panspermia fell out of favor…Now panspermia is gaining credence
again, but with more caveats.” – “Did
Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by Robert Irion, DISCOVER,
Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
“Life,
The origin of life, Hypotheses of origins – Perhaps
the most fundamental and at the same time the
least understood biological problem is the origin of life…Most
of the hypotheses of the origin of life will fall into one
of four categories: …[3] Life is coeternal with
matter and has no beginning; life arrived on the Earth at the time of
the origin of the earth or shortly thereafter…In
addition, it is extremely unlikely that any microorganism
could be transported by radiation pressure to the Earth over
interstellar distances without being killed by the combined
effects of cold, vacuum, and radiation.” –
Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
“Life,
The origin of life, Modern theories – Scientists have proposed two major theories of the origin of life.
They are (1) the theory
of panspermia and (2) the theory of chemical evolution.
The theory of panspermia states that spores from some other
part of the universe landed on Earth and began to develop.
However, some scientists doubt that spores could
survive a journey through the harsh conditions of outer space.”
– Worldbook, Contributor: Harold J. Morowitz, Ph.D.,
Robinson Professor of Biology and Director of Krasnow Institute,
George Mason
University.
Yet
despite these former rejections and the improbabilities involved,
the idea of panspermia is gaining some acceptance now, quite
simply because the geological history of earth is proving
to be so prohibitive to the origin of life that panspermia
is the only remaining alternative for evolutionary theory.
The sheer number of quotes below from American Scientist, Discover, and even Microsoft Encarta
are intended to demonstrate the extent to which panspermia
has gained popular acceptance within the evolutionary community.
“A
World Without Water, Figure 2. Evolutionary highlights
of the Earth’s biosphere can be described by a few crucial
events in its 4.6 billion-year history. The process begins
with the settling of dust in the accretionary disk of the
protosolar system (a). The dust accretes into ever larger
pieces, eventually forming a hot, but dry, rock—the
protoearth—after 40 million years (b). When
the system is merely 50 million years old, a grazing collision
between the protoearth and a Mars-sized body results in the
Moon’s formation and the loss of all volatiles and water
brought by an early cometary bombardment (c). The heavy bombardment continues for at least
the next 600 million years, with comets bringing water, atmospheric
gases and prebiotic organic molecules to our planet (d).”
– “An Argument for the Cometary Origin of the
Biosphere,”Armand H. Delsemme, American
Scientist, Volume 89, 2004
“The
Primeval Biosphere, Figure 11. The
primeval biosphere awoke to a tempestuous world of intermittent
comet impacts, a steaming-hot ocean, a very thick atmosphere
and torrential acid rains. Giant comet impacts would have ejected large amounts of material into
space and spun off violent
hurricanes and tornadoes…Prebiotic
organic molecules, delivered by the comets, would have provided
the ‘seed’ for the evolution of the first life.”
– “An Argument for the Cometary Origin of the
Biosphere,” Armand H. Delsemme, American
Scientist, Volume 89, 2004
“Figure
1. The young Earth appears to have been bombarded by comets
for several hundred million years shortly after it was formed.
This onslaught, perhaps involving hundreds of millions of comet impacts,
is currently the best explanation for the origin of the Earth’s
oceans, atmosphere and organic molecules. Although historically
a controversial idea, there is now a considerable amount of
physical and chemical evidence supporting the theory.”
– “An Argument for the Cometary Origin of the
Biosphere,” Armand H. Delsemme, American
Scientist, Volume 89, 2004
“The
evidence suggests that a rain of comets brought the Earth
its water, its organic molecules and its atmosphere—key
ingredients for life’s beginnings.” –
“An Argument for the Cometary Origin of the Biosphere,”
Armand H. Delsemme, American
Scientist, Volume 89, 2004
“In
January the Stardust spacecraft cruised by Earth
and tossed down a 95-pound
canister packed with comet particles and interstellar dust,
souvenirs scooped up during its seven-year journey past comet Wild 2. The bits are
probably more than 4 billion years old, dating to an era when
comets spread the chemistry of life among the planets…Stardust’s
sample may be enough to reconstruct how material
shuttled from planet to planet and even from star to star
as Earth took shape 4.6 billion years ago.” –
“Star Dust Memories,” by Susan Kruglinski, DISCOVER,
April 2006
“Geological
Germination – As
the basic molecules of life move from space to a planetary
environment, they begin to interact and undergo chemical reactions
that produce larger and more complicated molecules. These
larger molecules will ultimately become the building blocks of the earliest life-forms.”
– “What Came Before DNA?,” by Carl Zimmer,
DISCOVER Vol. 25 No. 06, June 2004, Biology & Medicine
“Comets
crashing into Earth more than 4 billion years ago may
have delivered much of the water that makes life here possible,
Yeomans says. Those impacts may also have seeded Earth
with carbon-rich components, possibly creating the chemical
conditions that led to the origin of life.” –
“To Catch a Comet,” by Robert Irion, DISCOVER,
Vol. 24 No. 10, October 2003
“Chunks
of planets were flying all over the place when the solar system
was young— and some may have carried hitchhikers…Microbiologists
Rocco Mancinelli and Lynn Rothschild have a thing for salt.
Jagged hunks of it crowd the shelves of the couple's offices
at the NASA Ames
Research Center
in Mountain View, California.
Their favorite pieces are laced with translucent reds and
greens that look like algae in a neglected pool. These crystals
harbor colonies of hardy, salt-loving microbes called halophiles,
a class of bacteria that can thrive in very nasty settings.
So impressive are the survival skills of these single-celled
organisms that Mancinelli and Rothschild suspect
the microbes might be able to survive long journeys through
the vacuum and radiation of space. And that possibility, in
turn, could help explain how life began on Earth. So impressive
are the survival skills of these single-celled organisms that
Mancinelli and Rothschild
suspect the microbes might be able to survive long journeys
through the vacuum and radiation of space. And that possibility,
in turn, could help explain how life began
on Earth.” – “Did Life on Earth Come
From Mars?,” by Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No.
08, August 2001
“Mancinelli
and Rothschild belong to a cadre of researchers who are reviving
an old idea that seems straight out of science fiction: Organisms
might have hopped from planet to planet, spreading life far
beyond their birthplace. The scenario is simple. When
our solar system was young, comets and asteroids crashed into
planets and moons, which blasted surface rocks back out into
space (a few such impacts still happen today). If the space-bound rocks harbored lifeforms, they might migrate to other
planets. Recent lab tests suggest that bacteria can withstand
the shocks of such blasts. And decent-sized rocks could shield
the ejected cells from radiation in space. What's
more, some studies suggest that sheltered microbes can survive
tens or hundreds of millions of years of dormancy, plenty
of time to drift to a new home. Add it all up and you've
got a case that life
could have drifted to Earth from someplace like Mars.”
– “Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by
Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
“They
are Earth's pariahs: microbes that just barely survive, in the least hospitable places on
the planet. And yet they, or something much like them, could
seed the universe with life.” – “Looking
for Life in All the Wrong Places,” by Will Hively, DISCOVER,
Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
“Exobiology,
II THE PROBABILITY OF LIFE IN THE GALAXY – During
the 1920s Russian biologist Alexander Oparin and British biologist
J. B. S. Haldane proposed that life could have arisen as a
consequence of the physical and chemical formation of Earth...Forming
organic materials in
this way is only one possibility for the origin of the first
building blocks of life. Other scientists have shown how organic
compounds could have come to Earth from space in cosmic dust
particles, asteroids, comets, and meteorites. The chemistry
of deep sea hydrothermal vents is another possible source
of life. Many potential sources of organic material exist
on Earth and possibly on other planets.” – "Exobiology,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
“Exobiology,
V PROSPECTS FOR DISCOVERY – Current exobiology research focuses on understanding how life arose on Earth
and discovering potential life-supporting environments
other than Earth. Scientists now believe that life on Earth
dates back to at least 3.85 billion years before present,
so living organisms have populated Earth for more than 80
percent of its history...Meteorites from Mars and studies of the
interchange of materials blasted into space by large asteroid
impacts suggest that some life forms may have traveled in
space over billions of years.” – "Exobiology,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
“Advanced
forms of life existed on earth at least 3.55 billion years
ago. In rocks of that age, fossilized imprints have been
found of bacteria that look uncannily like cyanobacteria,
the most highly evolved photosynthetic organisms present in
the world today…On the other hand, it is believed that our young planet, still in the
throes of volcanic eruptions and battered by falling comets
and asteroids, remained inhospitable to life for about half
a billion years after its birth, together with the rest of
the solar system, some 4.55 billion years ago. This leaves
a window of perhaps 200-300 million years for the appearance
of life on earth. This duration was once considered too short
for the emergence of something as complex as a living cell.
Hence suggestions were made that germs of life may have come to earth
from outer space with cometary dust or even, as proposed by
Francis Crick of DNA double-helix fame, on a spaceship sent
out by some distant civilization…But it seems very
likely that the first
building blocks of nascent life were provided by amino acids and other small organic molecules such as are known
to form readily in the laboratory and on celestial bodies.
To what extent these substances arose
on earth or were brought
in by the falling comets and asteroids that contributed to
the final accretion of our planet is still being debated.”
– “The Beginnings of Life on Earth,” Christian
de Duve, American Scientist,
September-October 1995
“The
first hints that this might be so came from the laboratory,
before evidence for it was found in space, through the historic
experiments of Stanley Miller, now recalled in science textbooks…Although the primitive atmosphere is no
longer believed to be as rich in hydrogen as once thought
by Urey, the discovery that the Murchison meteorite contains
the same amino acids obtained by Miller, and even in the same
relative proportions, suggests strongly that his results are
relevant.” – “The Beginnings of Life
on Earth,” Christian de Duve, American
Scientist, September-October 1995
And,
as indicated by the quote below, not only are meteorites being
sought as the source of basic organic compounds and amino
acids but also as the source of membranes as well.
“Astronomers
and geologists were discovering that Earth had a violent infancy--hundreds
of millions of years after the planet had formed, giant asteroids
and comets still crashed into it, burning off its young atmosphere
and boiling away its oceans. In the process, they also destroyed
all the chemicals that researchers assumed were in liberal
supply on the early Earth, including the building blocks
of lipids…Research
now suggests that the source was extraterrestrial. Comets and meteorites evidently brought seeds of creation to replace
the ones they had destroyed, in the form of hundreds of
different organic carbon molecules synthesized when the solar
system was a swirling disk of gas and dust. After
the last atmosphere-killing impacts--about 4 billion years
ago--smaller comets, meteorites, and dust from space could,
in the space of a few hundred million years, have brought
enough organic carbon to cover the planet in a layer ten
inches deep. Deamer wondered whether space could also supply
him with his membranes; specifically, he wondered whether
he could dig them out of a 200-pound meteorite that had fallen in
Murchison, Australia, in 1969 and that
was positively tarry with organic carbon. In 1985 he traveled
to Australian National University in Canberra to study it…Deamer
was encouraged by this work--he had found hints
that meteorites supplied material to form membranes that could
have enclosed complex genetic molecules and could have trapped
energy.” – First Cell, by Carl Zimmer, DISCOVER,
Vol. 16 No. 11, November 1995, Biology & Medicine
Consequently,
it would seem that solutions to all the problems and irreducibly
interdependencies components facing evolutionary processes
on earth, are being sought in space and from other planets.
Two
means of transportation have been suggested. The first alternative,
reflected in the quotes above, is transportation by meteorite
or comet. The second alternative is transportation in a space
ship by intelligent life forms.
“This
duration was once considered too short for the emergence of
something as complex as a living cell. Hence suggestions were made that germs of life
may have come to earth from outer space with cometary dust
or even, as proposed by Francis Crick of DNA double-helix
fame, on a spaceship sent out by some distant civilization.
No evidence in support of these proposals has yet been
obtained.” – “The Beginnings of Life on
Earth,” Christian de Duve, American
Scientist, September-October 1995
Timing
is also crucial to this theory. It is important to note that
the timing for when the meteorites and comets might have brought
the pre-biotic compounds or even life itself to earth is identified
as around 3.5-3.9 billion years ago.
“Exobiology,
V PROSPECTS FOR DISCOVERY – Current exobiology research focuses on understanding how life arose on Earth
and discovering potential life-supporting environments
other than Earth. Scientists now believe that life on Earth
dates back to at least 3.85 billion years before present,
so living organisms have populated Earth for more than 80
percent of its history...Meteorites from Mars and studies of the
interchange of materials blasted into space by large asteroid
impacts suggest that some life forms may have traveled in
space over billions of years.” – "Exobiology,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
“Advanced
forms of life existed on earth at least 3.55 billion years
ago…On the other hand, it is believed that our
young planet, still in the throes of volcanic eruptions and
battered by falling comets and asteroids, remained inhospitable
to life for about half a billion years after its birth, together
with the rest of the solar system, some 4.55 billion years
ago. This leaves a window of perhaps 200-300 million years
for the appearance of life on earth…But it seems
very likely that the
first building blocks of nascent life were provided by
amino acids and other
small organic molecules such as are known to form readily
in the laboratory and on celestial bodies. To what extent these substances arose on earth or were brought in by the falling comets and
asteroids that contributed to the final accretion of our planet
is still being debated.” – “The Beginnings
of Life on Earth,” Christian de Duve, American
Scientist, September-October 1995
Likewise,
specific meteorites that have been found on earth have been
dated to this timeframe of around 3.6 billion years ago, at
the “tail end” of meteorite bombardment of the
earth. This is specifically significant because of its potential
as a means of explaining how life might have traveled to earth
at around the right time when life is believed to have began
on earth 3.8 billion years ago.
“Life,
The search for life on other planets – In 1976,
two United States space probes, Viking
1 and Viking 2, landed on Mars and performed several experiments
to test for life. These experiments indicated chemical activity
in Martian soil, but failed to detect any living organisms.
In 1996, scientists claimed they found evidence of Martian life from
a meteorite discovered in Antarctica.
This meteorite, over 3.6 billion years old, contained objects
resembling fossils of bacteria. It also contained compounds
that are produced by living organisms on Earth. The question
of life remains unsettled, but most scientists consider it
very unlikely.” – Worldbook, Contributor: Harold
J. Morowitz, Ph.D., Robinson Professor of Biology and Director
of Krasnow Institute, George
Mason University.
“Exobiology
– In 1976, two United States Viking space probes landed
on Mars and conducted experiments. But these experiments did
not uncover any living organisms. In
1996, scientists claimed they found evidence of Martian life
from a meteorite discovered in Antarctica. This meteorite, which scientists believe came
from Mars, is over 3.6 billion years old. It contained objects
resembling fossils of bacteria. The meteorite also contained
compounds that are produced by living organisms on the earth.
Although the question of life on Mars remains unsettled, most
scientists consider it very unlikely.” – Worldbook,
Contributor: Tobias C. Owen, Ph.D., Professor of Astronomy,
Institute for Astronomy, University
of Hawaii, Honolulu.
As
stated above, the timing of these meteorite impacts is the
same time when the most primitive life forms would have had
to be present on earth in order for them to evolve into the
earliest organisms in the fossil record around 3.5 billion
years ago. As stated in an earlier segment, the earliest fossils
date to 3.4 billions years ago.
“Earth
[planet], History of Earth, Life on Earth – Fossils
help scientists learn which kinds of plants and animals lived
at different times in Earth's history. Scientists who study
prehistoric life are called paleontologists. Many scientists believe that life appeared
on Earth almost as soon as conditions allowed. There is
evidence for chemicals
created by living things in rocks from the Archean age, 3.8
billion years old. Fossil remains of microscopic living things
about 3.5 billion years old have also been found at sites
in Australia and Canada.” – Worldbook,
Contributor: Steven I. Dutch, Ph.D., Professor, Department
of Natural and Applied Sciences, University
of Wisconsin, Green
Bay.
“Exobiology,
V PROSPECTS FOR DISCOVERY – Scientists
now believe that life on Earth dates back to at least 3.85
billion years before present, so living organisms have
populated Earth for more than 80 percent of its history.”
– "Exobiology," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia
99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
“Evolution,
I INTRODUCTION – The
earliest known fossil organisms are single-celled forms resembling
modern bacteria; they date
from about 3.4 billion years ago.” – "Evolution,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
Consequently,
the arrival of life or at least essential pre-biotic chemicals
by means of meteorites and comets has gained favor in the
evolutionary community because it solves 3 critical problems
facing evolutionary theory. First, it resolves the problem
created by the bombarding of the earth and actually turns
that problem into a solution by asserting those meteorites
and comets were the source of the organic material. Second,
it resolves the timing problem caused by the need for more
primitive to have existed for the few hundred million years
necessary for them to evolve into the earliest, yet still
highly complex organisms found in the very first part of the
fossil record. Third, it resolves the problems raised by other
environmental hazards by relocating the origin of life to
a more idealized environment on another world.
However,
it is important to note that, despite the advantages this
scenario infuses into the meteorite bombardment period of
early earth history, the meteorite bombardment period is not
an artificial construct created merely to facilitate these
advantages. Instead, it must be stated that the understanding
that the earth was bombarded by meteorites until about 3.9
billion years ago is based upon independent
geological considerations, such as the number of craters on
the moon and mars.
“Earth,
geologic history of, The pregeologic period – The
history of the Earth spans approximately 4.6
billion years. The oldest known rocks, however,
have an isotopic age of only about 3.9 billion years. There
is, in effect, a stretch of 700
million years for which no geologic record exists, and
the evolution of this pregeologic period of time is not surprisingly
the subject of much speculation. To understand this little-known
period, the following factors have to be considered: the age
of formation at 4.6 billion years ago, the processes in operation until 3.9 billion
years ago, the
bombardment of the Earth by meteorites, and the earliest
zircon crystals…It is known from direct observation
that the surface of
the Moon is covered with a multitude of meteorite craters.
There are about 40 large basins attributable to meteorite
impact. Known as maria, these depressions were filled
in with basaltic lavas caused by the impact-induced melting
of the lunar mantle. Many of these basalts have been analyzed isotopically and found to have
crystallization ages of 3.9 to 4 billion years. It can be
safely concluded that the Earth, with a greater attractive
mass than the Moon, must have undergone more extensive meteorite
bombardment. According to the English-born geologist Joseph
V. Smith, a minimum of 500 to 1,000 impact basins were formed
on the Earth within a period of about 100 to 200 million years
prior to 3.95 billion years ago. Moreover, plausible calculations
suggest that this estimate represents merely the tail end
of an interval of declining meteorite bombardment and that
about 20 times as many basins were formed in the preceding
300 million years. Such intense bombardment would have covered
most of the Earth's surface, with the impacts causing considerable
destruction of the terrestrial crust up to 3.9 billion years
ago. There is, however, no direct evidence of this important
phase of Earth history because rocks older than 3.9 billion
years have not been preserved.” – Encyclopaedia
Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
Thus,
even if panspermia is false, scenarios locating the origin
of life to earth itself still have to contend with the prohibitive
obstacle posed by the massive meteorite and comet bombardment
of the earth during the very timeframe when life would have
needed to originate here.
Now
that we understand what the theory of life from outer space
involves, what its advantages are, how much it has been accepted
in evolutionary theory, and why it has been accepted, we can
move on to discuss the problems and barriers facing this scenario.
The
first complication to this scenario is that meteors would
have to be within a certain size range and might even have
to break up in the atmosphere in order for organic molecules
to complete the journey to earth.
“During
the solar system’s infancy, when huge meteorites were
regularly smashing into the planets, a fair amount of Mars
could have made its way to Earth in a matter of months, and
some of it could have been infected with Martian microbes…Bacteria on small meteorites would die as their spaceships burned up
in Earth’s atmosphere, while large meteorites would
detonate on impact. But a medium-size one would be braked
gently by the atmosphere, would not get too hot in its core,
and would hit the ground relatively softly. Bacteria riding these impactors might well
survive the landing: such meteorites also have a habit of breaking up while still in the air, and the fragments would
disperse microbes over a large surface area, like interplanetary
seedpods.” – “Looking for Life in All
the Wrong Places,” by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18
No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
And,
even if we assume meteors within the proper size range, evolutionary
scientists themselves continue to debate the feasibility of
key compounds in meteorites surviving the heat of both exit
and entry impacts, the speed of exit, the cold of space, and
the violent break-up that occurs upon entry and impact. In
the quotes below, evolutionary scientists affirm the obstacle
posed by heat.
“In
1871, British physicist William Thomson Kelvin told his
colleagues in Edinburgh: ‘We must regard it as probable
in the highest degree that there are countless
seed-bearing meteoritic stones moving about through space.
If at the present instant no life existed upon this earth,
one such stone falling upon it might . . . lead to its becoming
covered with vegetation.’ Three decades later, Swedish chemist and Nobel laureate Svante
Arrhenius agreed, but he took issue with part of Kelvin's
scenario. The fiery trauma of a meteoroid ejected from a planet
or out of the solar system, he argued, would incinerate any
cells it harbored. Instead of hitching rides within rocks, Arrhenius said, life could travel unaided. In 1903,
he proposed that spores
of plants and germs might drift through space propelled by
the gentle pressure of starlight. He called this idea panspermia
(from the Greek for ‘seeds everywhere’).”
– “Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by
Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
“However,
says Chyba, it’s likely that most organics aboard meteorites and comets never
made it to Earth. At these velocities, at least 10 to 15 miles
per second, the
temperatures you reach on impact are so high that you end
up frying just about everything. And those organics that survived
would probably have been too few and too scattered to evolve
into life.” – “How Did Life Start?,”
by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992,
Biology & Medicine
Nevertheless,
despite these objections from some evolutionary scientists
concerning prohibitive temperatures, other scientists point
to evidence as indicating it is possible that certain parts
of asteroids or comets might not even reach such damaging
temperatures at all, making survival possible.
“Another
anticipated hurdle would be the intense heat at launch from
one planet and the heat at impact on another. Yet last
year a team led by graduate student Benjamin Weiss of the
California Institute of Technology found that the inside of
a Martian meteorite
(ALH84001, made famous by researchers who believe that it
contains clues of ancient life) never
grew hotter than a summer day in Palm Springs. The team
figured this out by analyzing faint traces of a magnetic field
preserved within the meteorite. When researchers heated a
small slice of it to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, the rock's magnetic
signature— imprinted during its early days on Mars—
vanished. That meant the meteorite's interior had
never exceeded that temperature, not even during its odyssey
to Earth.” – “Did Life on Earth Come
From Mars?,” by Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No.
08, August 2001
Furthermore,
the break-ups that occur at impact are believed to be an obstacle
that would destroy any important compounds in the meteorite.
And once again, despite this concern, other evolutionary scientists
assert that meteors and any pre-biotic compounds they contained
would survive the break-ups that occur upon impact as well.
“In
the 1980s, new evidence turned up. Analysis of trace gases
within meteorites found on Earth revealed that some had originated
on Mars or on our moon. ‘That changed everything,’
says Jay Melosh, an astronomer at the University of Arizona.
‘Suddenly, interplanetary transfer was feasible.’ It turns
out that a high-speed impact on a planet's surface doesn't
pulverize all the rock on the ground below. Instead, some
rocks at the edge of the impact get lofted into space at tremendous
speeds and remain intact.” – “Did Life
on Earth Come From Mars?,” by Robert Irion, DISCOVER,
Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
And
the speed of escape velocity is also seen as a significant
obstacle to the survival of any relevant pre-biotic compounds.
Nevertheless, despite this objection, other evolutionists
assert there is evidence that this issue is not really a problem.
“The
team's work established that a transfer of rocks could occur
easily and often between planets in the inner solar system.
The next question: Could
microbes aboard survive ejection and impact? To
escape a planet's gravity, a rock must accelerate from zero
to at least 11,500 miles per hour in a thousandth-of-a-second
jerk so intense it would liquefy a human. But when Jay
Melosh and his colleague Rachel Mastrapa loaded bacteria into
bullet casings and shot them into cold plastic modeling clay,
they found that most bacteria survived.
Mileikowsky, too, has tested this idea by firing cannon shells
stuffed with pebbles holding hundreds of millions of ordinary
bacteria. Again, most of the cells lived.” –
“Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by Robert
Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
Conversely,
those evolutionary scientists who still regard the heat and
break-up at impact to be prohibitive assert an alternative
wherein pre-biotic compounds or even living microbes themselves
could waft gently into earth’s atmosphere in the form
of dust from comets rather than impacting meteorites.
“The
Primeval Biosphere – At the same time, some of the organic
molecules delivered by the comets may have had a few interesting
chemical interactions of their own—actually giving
a “jump start” to the first life on our planet.
Although some have questioned whether organics
could survive the heat of an impact, the issue now seems to
be resolved. The survival of 74 different amino acids
(most of which are not known on the Earth) on carbonaceous
chondrites, such as the Murchison meteorite, suggest that organics could at least
survive a minor impact. And recent studies by Elisabetta
Pierazzo, of the University of Arizona, and Christopher Chyba
of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, suggest
that some amino acids could even survive the shock heating
of kilometer-sized cometary impacts. In any case, Anders
and I have, independently, argued that an
extremely large flux of interplanetary dust particles (derived
from the tails of comets that missed the Earth during its
first 600 million years) could have salted the young Earth
with enormous quantities of prebiotic molecules. Indeed,
in 1985 Don Brownlee of the University of Washington, Seattle,
showed that cometary dust grains, captured in the upper
atmosphere, contain undamaged organic molecules.”
– “An Argument for the Cometary Origin of the
Biosphere,” Armand H. Delsemme, American
Scientist, Volume 89, 2004
“But
interplanetary dust
particles (IDPs for short) are another matter. In contrast
to their larger cousins, these
particles, tiny specks no larger than .004 inch across, routinely
reach Earth. They get slowed way up in the atmosphere,
says Chyba. Then they remain floating around for months, even years, before they
come down. NASA samples IDPs directly in the atmosphere
with modified U2 spy planes fitted with adhesive collectors
on the wings. What researchers have found is that IDPs also
contain organic material--although only about 10 percent worth.
Perhaps, then, dust
seeded early Earth with the stuff of life.” –
“How Did Life Start?,” by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER,
Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992, Biology & Medicine
It
should be pointed out that this cometary dust scenario (as
opposed to meteorite impact) only averts problems upon arrival
in earth’s atmosphere and would still retain the interplanetary
survival problems and the exit impact problems that would
arise earlier in the journey. As the quotes below attest,
evolutionary scientists still debate and object to the possibility
that either life or pre-biotic compounds could survive the
sheer amount of time they would be in space. It is generally
agreed that any life forms could not survive more than a half
a dozen years in space at the most. This is important because,
as the last quote below states, crossing from one planet to
another requires multiple decades or millennia (for even the
shortest hypothetical trips between earth and Mars) to the
more normal millions of years. This makes the travel time
prohibitive to any pan-spermia theory.
“In
order to make the journey, a microbe would have to be a rugged
generalist. Being tough,
it would last for months in space, and once dropped onto
a new planet, a generalist could thrive almost anywhere. If
specialists survived the ride, by contrast, they would quickly
die unless they were lucky enough to land on a spot to their
liking.” – “Looking for Life in All the
Wrong Places,” by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18 No.
05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
“Microbial
havens could, therefore, survive the trip between planets.
‘The only question is the lifetime of the bacteria,’
says Mileikowsky. ‘It is the aspect that must be tested
more than anything else.’ A few experiments show that bacteria can
persist in space for at least a few years. Microbiologist
Gerda Horneck of DLR, the German space agency, found that
out when she sent organisms into a six-year orbit on a NASA satellite in the
1980s. The star performer was Bacillus subtilis. When
deprived of nutrients, these bacteria form spores, hardened
nuggets that protect each cell's vital components. Horneck
found that although ultraviolet radiation killed all the spores
in a top layer, the dead spores formed a protective shield
for those beneath. Many survived the vacuum, cold, and lack
of water, including about 30 percent of those embedded in
salt.” – “Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,”
by Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
“Two
years ago, Rocco Mancinelli
followed up by sending his salt-loving microbes into space
for two weeks on BioPan, a European satellite. Mancinelli showed that halophiles also survive, but they don't make
spores. His result may mean that many ordinary, non-spore-forming
microbes could travel within meteoroids. Horneck
and Mancinelli acknowledge that short satellite flights can't
compare with the millions of years required for most interplanetary
crossings, or even the decades to millennia required for fast
transfers between Earth and Mars.” – “Did
Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by Robert Irion, DISCOVER,
Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
As
indicated by the next quote, one of the obstacles faced during
long interplanetary travel is the extreme cold of space. However,
as the additional quotes below demonstrate, extreme cold is
a factor even during trips with short duration.
“Bacteria
forced into subfreezing habitats usually become dormant:
they slow their metabolic activity to a very low level. Years
later, many can revive if thawed. But not after millions of
years.” – “Looking for Life in All the
Wrong Places,” by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18 No.
05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
Although
the following quotes specifically refer to why life could
not be present on Mars, one reason for why life could not
be present is extreme cold, colder than any bacteria have
survived in on earth. This would apply to any primitive life
form on a meteor, comet, or asteroid as well, particularly
since, like Mars, they have no atmosphere to help trap and
retain heat for the long durations between exit and impact.
“As
far as his own research went, the stories were reasonably
accurate: he had shown that the microbes were certainly alive,
although at that point he knew almost nothing about how they
managed to survive in frozen rock. But the
stories also suggested, wrongly, that such microbes could
still be alive on Mars today. In fact the
Martian atmosphere vanished almost completely billions
of years ago, along with liquid water on the surface, and
the climate over most
of the planet became colder than Antarctica. Cryptoendoliths
may once have lived on Mars, but they
would now be long gone.” – Looking for Life
in All the Wrong Places, by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18
No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
“Bacteria
forced into subfreezing habitats usually become dormant:
they slow their metabolic activity to a very low level. Years
later, many can revive if thawed. But not after millions of
years.” – Looking for Life in All the Wrong
Places, by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997,
Astronomy & Physics
““During
the solar system’s infancy, when huge meteorites were
regularly smashing into the planets, a fair amount of Mars
could have made its way to Earth in
a matter of months, and some of it could have been infected
with Martian microbes…Assume, for a moment, that microbes
are riding one of those rocks, possibly inside it. Little
DNA would be damaged in such a
short period of time, and so they could simply turn off
their metabolic engines in the
cold vacuum of space.” – Looking for Life
in All the Wrong Places, by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18
No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
“One
hitch is that Martian permafrost temperatures average about
100 degrees below zero, which is quite a bit colder than the
-16 degree soils that Friedmann probed in Antarctica.
Another hitch is that such microbes would be required to survive
3 billion years rather than 3 million.” – Looking
for Life in All the Wrong Places, by Will Hively, DISCOVER,
Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
According
to Worldbook Encyclopedia, the average temperature on Mars
is -195 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit (-125 to 20 degrees Celsius).
As indicated by the last quote above, that is “quite
a bit colder than the -16 degrees” of soils in Antarctica.
According to Britannica, the average temperatures on Antarctica
range from -4 to -94 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter (-20
to -70 degrees Celsius) and from -31 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit
(-35 to 0 degrees Celsius) in the summer.
“Antarctica,
Physical geography, The land, Climate – Mean temperatures of the coldest months are −4 degrees to −22
degrees F (−20 degrees to −30 degrees C) on the
coast and −40 degrees to −94 degrees F (−40
degrees to −70 degrees C) in the interior, the coldest
period on the polar plateau being usually in late August just
before the return of the sun. Whereas midsummer temperatures
may reach as high as 59 degrees F (15 degrees C) on the Antarctic
Peninsula, those elsewhere are usually much lower, ranging
from a mean of about 32 degrees F (0 degrees
C) on the coast to between −4 degrees and −31
degrees F (−20 degrees and −35 degrees C) in the
interior.”
Given
that the temperature in Antarctica is uninhabitable to most
life and the temperature on Mars is completely uninhabitable,
what is the temperature of space?
To answer this question, we need to learn a little bit about
how the temperature of space is described and measured. In
terms of fundamentals, heat is a form of energy that is measured
by temperature.
“Heat,
Heat/What heat is – Heat
is a form of energy.” – Worldbook, Contributor:
Ared Cezairliyan, Ph.D., Former Research Physicist, National
Institute of Standards and Technology.
“Heat
– energy that
is transferred from one body to another as the result of a
difference in temperature.” – Encyclopaedia
Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
“Heat,
I INTRODUCTION – Heat, in physics, transfer of energy from one part of a substance to
another, or from one body to another by virtue of a difference
in temperature. Heat
is energy in transit; it always flows from a substance
at a higher temperature to the substance at a lower temperature,
raising the temperature of the latter and lowering that of
the former substance, provided the volume of the bodies remains
constant..” – "Heat," Microsoft® Encarta®
Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.
Additionally
fundamental is the fact that space is a vacuum. That is not
to say that space is completely empty but only that it is
far, far closer to an actual vacuum than can be achieved on
earth (or even at all under any conditions.)
“Spaceflight,
The space environment – The
space that separates cosmic objects is not entirely empty.
Throughout this void, matter—mostly hydrogen—is
scattered at extremely low densities. Nevertheless, space
constitutes a much greater vacuum than has been achieved on
Earth.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe
Edition
“Human-factors
engineering, Applications of human-factors engineering, Space
suit – The designing of a much more complicated
device, such as a space suit, presents more intricate problems.
A space suit is a complete miniature world, a self-contained
environment that must supply everything needed for an astronaut's
life, as well as comfort. The suit must provide a pressurized interior, without which
an astronaut's blood
would boil in the vacuum of space.” – Encyclopaedia
Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
“Extinction
– Space actually contains very little matter, making
it almost a vacuum. The average density of matter in the
space between stars is about 10-24 g/cm3, and most of this
matter is made up of atoms of gas. Dust particles only make up 1 percent
of the total interstellar matter.” – "Extinction
(astronomy)," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. ©
1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
“Vacuum
– Vacuum, defined
strictly, space that has all matter removed from it. It is impossible to create a perfect vacuum in the laboratory; no
matter how advanced a vacuum system is, some molecules are
always present in the vacuum area. Even
remote regions of outer space have a small amount of gas.”
– "Vacuum," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia
99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The
last fundamental problem deals with the modes of heat transfer.
As the quotes below describe, “there are three modes
of heat transfer,” conduction, convection, and radiation.
Of these 3, the first 2, conduction and convection, require
material carriers whereas only radiation can exist in a vacuum
such as space where there is no particles to function as a
material carrier.
“Heat,
Heat transfer – Because
heat is energy in transition, some discussion of the mechanisms
involved is pertinent. There
are three modes of heat transfer, which can be described
as (1) the transfer of heat by conduction
in solids or fluids at rest, (2)
the transfer of heat by convection
in liquids or gases in a state of motion, combining conduction
with fluid flow, and (3)
the transfer of heat by radiation, which takes place with no material
carrier.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004
Deluxe Edition
“Radiation
– either the
process by which energy is emitted from a source and propagated
through the surrounding medium or the energy involved
in this process.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004
Deluxe Edition
“Heat,
VII TRANSFER OF HEAT – The
physical methods by which energy in the form of heat can be
transferred between bodies are conduction and radiation. A
third method, which also involves the motion of matter, is
called convection. Conduction requires physical contact
between the bodies or portions of bodies exchanging heat,
but radiation does
not require contact or the presence of any matter between
the bodies. Convection occurs when a liquid or gas is
in contact with a solid body at a different temperature and
is always accompanied by the motion of the liquid or gas.
The science dealing with the transfer of heat between bodies
is called heat transfer.” – "Heat,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
“Heat,
Heat/How heat travels – Heat
passes from one object or place to another by three methods:
(1) conduction, (2) convection, and
(3) radiation…Radiation. In conduction and convection,
moving particles transmit heat. But
in radiation, heat can travel through a vacuum, which has
no particles.” – Worldbook, Contributor: Ared
Cezairliyan, Ph.D., Former Research Physicist, National Institute
of Standards and Technology.
“Radiation
– Radiation,
in physics, process of
transmitting energy through space.” – "Radiation,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
Consequently,
when discussing the temperature of space, scientists use phrases
such as “background radiation temperature.” According
to the evolutionary, Big Bang theory, originally the universe
was very hot and background radiation is the left over energy
from that Big Bang. After billions of years of expansion,
the universe has cooled, which is reflected in the current
background radiation. The temperature of the current background
radiation is 3-5 degrees, not above zero, but above absolute
zero.
“Cosmos,
Other components, Microwave background radiation –
Beginning in 1948, the American cosmologist George Gamow and
his coworkers, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, investigated
the idea that the chemical elements might have been synthesized
by thermonuclear reactions that took place in a primeval fireball. The high temperature
associated with the early universe would give rise to a thermal
radiation field, which has a unique distribution of intensity
with wavelength (known as Planck's radiation law), that
is a function only of the temperature. As the universe expanded,
the temperature would have dropped, each photon being
redshifted by the cosmological expansion to longer wavelength,
as the American physicist Richard C. Tolman had already shown
in 1934. By the present epoch the radiation temperature would have dropped to
very low values, about 5° above absolute zero (0 K, or -273°
C) according to the estimates of Alpher and Herman.”
– Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
"Background
Radiation, I INTRODUCTION –
Background radiation represents energy left over from the
"big bang," the explosion at the beginning of the
universe (see Big Bang Theory)...The big bang theory of
the beginning of the universe holds that the
universe was extremely hot and dense in its first moments
and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Models
of the early universe and its evolution predict that some of the radiation caused by the extremely
high temperature of the early universe will still be present,
but that it will exist at a much lower temperature because
the universe has expanded so much. Scientists can measure
the intensity of the background radiation at infrared, microwave,
and radio wavelengths to determine how the intensity of the
radiation relates to its wavelength. Planck's law, developed
in the early 1900s by German physicist Max Planck, predicts
the curve of intensity versus wavelength for the radiation
of an object of a given temperature. The
curve that results from measurement of the background radiation
matches exactly the curve predicted for a body radiating energy
at a little less than 3 K (a little less than -270° C, or
about -450° F).” - "Background Radiation,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
"Penzias,
Arno Allan – a German-born American astrophysicist,
discovered and studied cosmic microwave background radiation...In
the early 1960's, while observing radio emissions from a ring
of gas surrounding the Milky Way galaxy, Penzias and Wilson
noticed a uniform background static suggesting that
there is a residue of heat energy in the universe corresponding
to a temperature of about 3° Kelvin above absolute zero (-273.15°
Celsius or -459.67° Fahrenheit). This faint warmth is
now generally held to be the result of the remaining background radiation
resulting from the explosion in which the universe is
thought to have been created. See COSMOLOGY (The big
bang theory)." – World Book 2005 (Deluxe)
"Wilson,
Robert Woodrow – is an American radio astronomer.
He shared half of the 1978 Nobel Prize for physics with fellow
American Arno Penzias for their discovery and study of cosmic microwave
background radiation...In the early 1960's, while observing
radio waves emitted by a ring of gas surrounding the Milky
Way galaxy, Wilson noticed a uniform background static suggesting that
there is a residue of heat energy in the universe corresponding
to a temperature of about 3 degrees Kelvin, 3 degrees above
absolute zero (-273.15° Celsius or -459.67° Fahrenheit).
Many scientists believe that this faint warmth is the result of the remaining
background radiation resulting from the explosion in which
the universe was created. See COSMOLOGY (The big bang theory)." – World Book 2005 (Deluxe)
"The
expression "the temperature of space" is the title
of chapter 13 of Sir Arthur Eddington's famous 1926 work.
[4] Eddington calculated the minimum temperature any body
in space would cool to, given that it is immersed in the radiation
of distant starlight. With
no adjustable parameters, he obtained 3 K (later refined
to 2.8 K [5]), essentially the same as the observed, so-called
"background," temperature.” – “The
top 30 problems with the big bang,” Apeiron, April 2002,
Copyright 2002 C. Roy Keys Inc
"We
are indebted to Assis and Neves (1995) for much of the following
discussion calculating the 'temperature of space', and the
figure arrived at was 5.6 K. A similar black-body calculation
was given by Eddington in 1926 (reprint 1988), and he arrived at the figure 3.18
K, calling it explicitly the 'temperature of interstellar
space'.” – “A fractal universe with
discrete spatial scales: in memory of Toivo Jaakkola. D.F.
Roscoe,” Apeiron, July-Oct 1996, Copyright 1996 C. Roy
Keys Inc.
Consequently,
at around -450 degrees Fahrenheit (-270 degrees Celsius),
the temperature of space is double the lowest average temperatures
of Mars (-195 to
79 degrees Fahrenheit, -125 to 20 degrees Celsius) and perhaps
anywhere from three to ten times as low as the average temperatures
in Antarctica (-94 degrees Fahrenheit, -70 degrees Celsius
in the winter to -31 degrees Fahrenheit, -35 degrees Celsius
in the summer). These temperatures are simply prohibitive
to the idea of any organism making any interplanetary journey
that lasts for more than a few years, which rules out any
interplanetary journey on a comet or meteorite, since such
journeys take thousands, or more typically, millions of years.
Furthermore,
exposure to almost absolute zero temperatures is not the only
barrier to organisms or even pre-biotic compounds surviving
an interplanetary journey. As the following quote describes,
prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation is another significant
obstacle.
“Even
if frozen, Friedmann says, microorganisms cannot survive forever.
Radiation--either from
radioactivity in rock or from cosmic rays falling from the
sky--will damage bacterial DNA and over millions of years
will almost certainly kill a microbe. Another risk involves changes in the structure
of amino acids, a kind of spontaneous twisting known as
racemization. Amino acids can exist in either left- or right-twisting
versions, but living cells use only left-twisting ones. If a cell becomes completely dormant, it cannot repair proteins that
spontaneously flip to the right-twisted form, and these harmful
errors can build up. After 3 million years, a revived bacterium
would find itself with proteins that no longer function.”
– “Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places,”
by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy
& Physics
Despite
the rejection of the idea by some evolutionary scientists,
as seen in the quote above, other evolutionary scientists
are willing to entertain the idea that microorganisms might
survive radiation exposure in space. As the next quote indicates,
there are some microorganisms with a better chance of surviving
radiation than others. But this is still far from certain.
Scientists open to this possibility only regard such microbes
as having a “decent chance.”
“BACILLUS
NEALSON II – A double-spore coating makes this bac-terium
especially resistant to gamma
radiation, one of the chief obstacles to any potential life
on Mars. B. nealsonii, a new species, is particularly
well adapted to the dry environment of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory SAF, where it was first discovered…As Venkat
discovered, the second spore coating also offers a secondary
benefit: It makes the organism unusually resistant
to gamma rays, a form of cosmic radiation that, in large doses,
is fatal to men and microbes alike. (Earth’s
atmosphere screens out most gamma radiation; Mars, in contrast,
is a gamma-ray frying pan.)…But what’s notable,
Venkat says, is that the very traits that render these bugs
impervious to decontamination also grant them a
decent chance of surviving
the radiation shower they would encounter en route to and
on the surface of a place like Mars.” – “Seeding
the Universe,” by Alan Burdick, DISCOVER, Vol. 25 No.
10, October 2004, Astronomy & Physics
Yet
even with a “decent” chance of surviving radiation,
such microorganisms would still face a hostile environment
if they managed to survive the cold of space, the sheer acceleration
of ejection speeds, and the dangers of impact and somehow
reach the earth. Not just any microorganism would survive
on earth to grow and reproduce for evolution. Only a particular
type of microorganism would survive on its new home. And it
would also have to arrive at just the right environmental
spot on earth as well (and at just the right time).
“The
Primeval Biosphere – About 3.5 billion years ago large
cometary impacts would have become increasingly rare, but
when they did occur, they produced enormous cataclysms. The
oceans would have boiled near the impact site, causing
hurricanes and gigantic waterspouts with fantastic ejections
of gas and water into space. Under these
chaotic and seemingly inhospitable conditions, a phenomenon
occurs that is going to have astonishing consequences: Bacteria
begin to multiply in the hot waters of the first oceans.”
– “An Argument for the Cometary Origin of the
Biosphere,” Armand H. Delsemme, American Scientist, Volume 89, 2004
“There’s
another possible drawback to the notion of an extraterrestrial
origin of life, acknowledged by Chyba himself. The
surface of early Earth would have been a very hostile place,
he says. The biggest impacts would have generated
enough heat to evaporate the entire ocean, probably several
times. And leaving the biggest impacts aside, the
upper tens of meters of the oceans would routinely have been
evaporated and the surface of Earth sterilized by these giant
impacts.” – “How Did Life Start?,”
by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992,
Biology & Medicine
“In
order to make the journey, a microbe would have to be a rugged
generalist. Being tough, it would last for months in space,
and once dropped onto a new planet, a generalist could
thrive almost anywhere. If specialists survived the ride, by contrast, they would quickly die
unless they were lucky enough to land on a spot to their liking.”
– “Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places,”
by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy
& Physics
In
fact, landing on just the right spot on the otherwise inhospitable
planet is regarded by some evolutionists as quite a difficult
prospect. According to some scientists, the only feasible
place for survival in this hostile world would have been the
hydrothermal vents in the depths of the oceans.
“The
biggest impacts would have generated enough heat to evaporate
the entire ocean, probably several times. And leaving
the biggest impacts aside, the upper tens of meters of the
oceans would routinely have been evaporated and the surface
of Earth sterilized by these giant impacts. Where, then, in such a nightmarish environment, could emerging life
have been sufficiently protected? The only safe place--safe,
at least, after the last total evaporations
were over and done with--would have been in the deep ocean. And that, says Jack
Corliss, is where hydrothermal
vents come into the picture.” – “How
Did Life Start?,” by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol.
13 No. 11, November 1992, Biology & Medicine
This
brings up another unsolved obstacle in the current evolutionary
scenario for the origin of life from another planet. While
the quote above states that in order to survive the journey
through space and survive on the hostile environment of earth’s
past, a microorganism would have to be “a rugged generalist.”
By contrast, the quote states that if the organism were “a
specialist,” it wouldn’t survive the journey through
space and, even if it did, it would likely die rather quickly
on earth due to the improbability of it finding just the right
spot that it is “specialized for.” However, the
quote immediately above states that “the only safe place”
in earth’s hostile environment would have been the deep
sea hydrothermal vents. The problem is that the microorganisms
that live near the hydrothermal vents are decisively “specialists”
not “rugged generalists.” This fact is stated
directly in the following article by Discover, which describes the organisms
capable of populating hydrothermal vents as “extremophiles,”
organisms suited to particular, extreme environments rather
than “medium conditions.”
“Friedmann
keeps a large collection of such death-defying organisms in
his lab and studies them between treks to exotic environments. Over the course of his career he has become
a connoisseur of extreme
habitats--the worst on Earth. If
you think you know what extreme means, think again. Friedmann
has been mulling the concept for decades. It is not easy to
define an extreme environment, he says. It is simply different
from ours-- what we ourselves do not like. Among the denizens of the extreme are thermophiles
that love water so hot it would kill us, psychrophiles
that thrive in places so cold, halophiles in salt brine so
strong, and barophiles under pressure so high that we’d
expire. Together, such microbes are sometimes called extremophiles, as opposed to mesophiles--creatures,
like us, that prefer medium conditions. Of course, from
an extremophile’s point of view, we are the ones who
live at extremes…Meanwhile
deep-sea thermophiles have been found near vents at temperatures
as high as 230 degrees.” – “Looking
for Life in All the Wrong Places,” by Will Hively, DISCOVER,
Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
Consequently,
the only microorganisms that are likely to survive the interplanetary
journey are rugged generalists. But the only organisms that
could survive after the journey in the hostile environment
of the earth at the time are extreme specialists. Effectively,
there is no compatible scenario and no working or accepted
explanation for panspermia within the evolutionary community.
Furthermore,
not only would panspermia require an organism that is somehow
simultaneously both a generalist and a specialist, but as
we have already seen, such an organism would have to arrive
at just the spot where it was specialized to live and at right
time in earth’s history, after the last of “ocean-evaporating”
impacts.
“In
order to make the journey, a microbe would have to be a rugged
generalist. Being tough, it would last for months in space,
and once dropped onto a new planet, a generalist could
thrive almost anywhere. If specialists survived the ride, by contrast, they would quickly die
unless they were lucky enough to land on a spot to their liking.”
– “Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places,”
by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy
& Physics
“The
biggest impacts would have generated enough heat to evaporate
the entire ocean, probably several times. And leaving
the biggest impacts aside, the upper tens of meters of the
oceans would routinely have been evaporated and the surface
of Earth sterilized by these giant impacts. Where, then, in such a nightmarish environment, could emerging life
have been sufficiently protected? The only safe place--safe,
at least, after the last total evaporations
were over and done with--would have been in the deep ocean. And that, says Jack
Corliss, is where hydrothermal
vents come into the picture.” – “How
Did Life Start?,” by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol.
13 No. 11, November 1992, Biology & Medicine
The
need for just the right kind of organism to arrive at just
the right time and make it to just the right environment on
an otherwise hostile earth, further adds to the extreme improbability
of the panspermia scenario. Specifically, the quote above
states that the only time that would have been safe for interplanetary
migration to occur was after the last ocean-boiling impacts.
This “improbability” seems to turn right into
“impossibility” given the fact that, as we have
seen, “ocean-boiling” impacts only became “increasingly
rare” 3.5 billion years ago.
“The
Primeval Biosphere – About 3.5 billion years ago large
cometary impacts would have become increasingly rare, but
when they did occur, they produced enormous cataclysms. The
oceans would have boiled near the impact site, causing
hurricanes and gigantic waterspouts with fantastic ejections
of gas and water into space. Under these
chaotic and seemingly inhospitable conditions, a phenomenon
occurs that is going to have astonishing consequences: Bacteria
begin to multiply in the hot waters of the first oceans.”
– “An Argument for the Cometary Origin of the
Biosphere,” Armand H. Delsemme, American Scientist, Volume 89, 2004
Current
evolutionary theory requires that life was present on earth
3.8 billion years ago in order to have time to develop into
the earliest organisms in the fossil record, which appear
at 3.5 billion years ago and were already “quite sophisticated.”
“Evolutionary
biologists have traced our family tree to bacteria, one-celled organisms that have been found in rock formations 3.5 billion years old. But even these primitive
creatures were already quite sophisticated. They had genes of DNA and RNA and were made
of protein, lipids, and other ingredients. Something simpler must have preceded them.” – “How
Did Life Start?,” by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol.
13 No. 11, November 1992, Biology & Medicine
“Exobiology,
V PROSPECTS FOR DISCOVERY – Scientists
now believe that life on Earth dates back to at least 3.85
billion years before present, so living organisms have
populated Earth for more than 80 percent of its history.”
– "Exobiology," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia
99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
“Earth
[planet], History of Earth, Life on Earth – Fossils
help scientists learn which kinds of plants and animals lived
at different times in Earth's history. Scientists who study
prehistoric life are called paleontologists. Many scientists believe that life appeared
on Earth almost as soon as conditions allowed. There is
evidence for chemicals
created by living things in rocks from the Archean age, 3.8
billion years old. Fossil remains of microscopic living things
about 3.5 billion years old have also been found at sites
in Australia and Canada.” – Worldbook, Contributor:
Steven I. Dutch, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Natural and
Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.
“‘Bugs
are very clever,’ Kasthuri Venkateswaran says with
affection. ‘They
started out on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, when nothing else
was here!’…Venkateswaran quietly examines
the machinery itself, searching for any clever microbes—‘bugs,’ he
calls them—that might try to tag along.” –
“Seeding the Universe,” by Alan Burdick, DISCOVER,
Vol. 25 No. 10, October 2004, Astronomy & Physics
In
short, the only feasible timeframe for life to migrate to
the earth from space is after the ocean-boiling impacts, which
ended at 3.5 billion years ago, 300 million years too late,
300 million years after the organisms would have needed to
arrive. Thus, it would appear that not only is there insufficient
time for life to originate on earth, but there also simply
isn’t any time at which microorganisms could migrate
to the earth from some space either.
We
can further understand the improbability of panspermia by
the fact that some evolutionary scientists limit such a scenario
to possible only if it occurs within the solar system.
“The
fanciful notion that life spread through space--known as panspermia--has
been tossed around for decades. Originally it was proposed
as an interstellar inoculation, but now
researchers are beginning to think seriously about a local,
Mars-to-Earth version.” – “Looking for
Life in All the Wrong Places,” by Will Hively, DISCOVER,
Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
Moreover,
as the quote below states, the odds of panspermia occurring
from outside the galaxy are “1 in a billion” and,
consequently, such a scenario is deemed impossible.
“Still,
migrating microbes
face significant obstacles. Until recently, no researchers
had evaluated every stage of the scenario. Then a Swedish
scientist rounded up a team to do just that…They soon
found that panspermia seems viable only within our own solar system. One hitch
in the old theory, he explains, was that interstellar nomads would face lethal radiation from cosmic rays, which
strike far more frequently beyond the sun's magnetic shield.
Even more important, Mileikowsky's team has calculated
the probability of ejected planetary material reaching Earth
from elsewhere in the Milky Way or from another galaxy. ‘It
is one in a billion,’ says Mileikowsky. Given
those odds, the probability is virtually nil that even one
ejecta from the galaxy with still-viable microorganisms on
board could have arrived on Earth during its first 500 million
years. So Mileikowsky concludes, ‘Our ancestor cell
must have been created
within our own planetary system or in a nearby sister system
born at the same time.’”
– “Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by
Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
As
indicated in the quotes above, the only other, more distant
possibility is that the organic molecules came from a nearby
“sister system” but that wouldn’t allow
for the necessary additional time or more favorable conditions
needed for life to originate. In evolutionary theory, planet
forming processes are automatic, routine, uniform, and universal.
Consequently, since the “sister system” would
have formed around the same time as the earth, it wouldn’t
have had a different climate or environment since it would
have been going through the same general early stages of planet
and solar system formation. Therefore, not only would the
origination of life in a “sister system born at the
same time” face the exact same environmental hazards
as the origination of life on earth, but by the time the planet-forming
processes behind those hazards subsided in order for life
to form there, earth would be at about the same point in it’s
geologic history as well, which is way too late for any interstellar
journey to be made in time to reach earth 3.8 billion years
ago. Effectively, the sister system scenario possesses neither
the additional time nor the necessary environmental conditions
that the panspermia suggestion exists to solve in the first
place. This is unavoidably the case unless we make the unscientific
and unobservable assumptions that the conditions there were
different from our own solar system and instead were, for
some unknown reason, optimum for the origin of life.
Consequently,
only panspermia within the solar system remains viable, of
which Mars is the nearest, most likely candidate.
“But
were enough rocks launched to make arrivals on the young Earth
likely?...’It's surprisingly easy to get material
from Mars to Earth,’ says Gladman. ‘If you launch
stuff off Mars, there aren't a lot of other places to go.’
He found that up to
5 percent of the rocks launched from Mars land on Earth within
10 million years. Many arrive much sooner— some within
a few years. Mileikowsky's team then deduced that 50 billion
Martian rocks landed on Earth during the first 500 million
years of the solar system. Of those, about 20,000 rocks
struck Earth within a decade…If life ever existed on
Mars, it's quite possible that it contaminated Earth repeatedly.”
– Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?, by Robert Irion,
DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
However,
panspermia scenarios in which life migrates to earth from
Mars face significant prohibition. As indicated by the quote
above, the timeframe for such a migration from Mars is identified
as the very same time periods during which the earth is being
bombarded with life-killing meteorites and comets.
“If you go to the moon, says Chyba, or look at the craters on Mars or Mercury,
what you see is that the whole inner solar system was being
subjected to a very intense bombardment from space at that
time. You can infer that the same was true for Earth.”
– “How Did Life Start?,” by Peter Radetsky,
DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992, Biology & Medicine
"Mars
[planet], Physical features of Mars, Craters and impact basins.
– Many meteoroids have struck Mars over its history,
producing impact craters. Impact craters are rare on Earth
for two reasons: (1) Those that formed early in the planet's
history have eroded away, and (2) Earth developed a dense
atmosphere, preventing meteorites that could have formed craters
from reaching the planet's surface…Evolution
of Mars - Periods of evolution. Scientists know generally
how Mars evolved after it formed about 4.6
billion years ago. Their knowledge comes from studies
of craters and other surface features...Researchers have ranked
the relative ages of surface regions according to the number
of impact craters observed. The greater the number of craters in a region,
the older the surface there...During the Noachian Period,
a tremendous number of rocky objects of all sizes, ranging
from small meteoroids to large asteroids, struck Mars. The
impact of those objects created craters of all sizes.”
– Worldbook, Contributor: Steven W. Squyres, Ph.D.,
Professor of Astronomy, Cornell University.
“Earth
[planet], History of Earth – After
the main period of planet formation, most of the remaining
debris in the solar system was swept up by the newly formed
planets. The collisions of the newly formed planets and debris
material were explosive. The impacts created the cratered
surfaces of the moon, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Earth was
also struck, but the craters produced by the impacts have
all been destroyed by erosion and plate tectonics.”
– Worldbook, Contributor: Steven I. Dutch, Ph.D., Professor,
Department of Natural and Applied Sciences, University of
Wisconsin, Green Bay
In
fact, these lethal levels of bombardment are what is supplying
the meteorites coming from Mars in the first place. So, even
if 50 billion Martian rocks landed on Earth at this time,
any organisms originating on Mars would not only face the
same lethal environments on Mars before they left but would
face them again on Earth once they arrived. Effectively, this
scenario doesn’t offer any avoidance to the problems
posed by earth’s violent early history, even though
those are the very problems it is intended to resolve.
As
we close our consideration of the possibility of relocating
the origin of life to another planet, we find the following
2 contradicting facts admitted by evolutionary scientists.
First, the factors and obstacles surrounding the prospect
of life originating on earth itself (factors and obstacles
which we’ve examined in detail) result in a probability
so low that turning to panspermia as a solution is quite necessary.
Second, the theory of panspermia itself is faced with the
following list of prohibitive obstacles and improbabilities:
the sheer amount of time involved in interplanetary travel,
the heat of escape and entry impacts, the velocity of escape
impacts, the near absolute zero temperature of space, the
radiation exposure in space, the destructive break-up that
occurs at impact, the need for any candidate organism to be
both a generalist and a specialist at the same time, the improbability
of such an organism finding survivable environment on earth
when it arrived, the fact that the only feasible timeframe
for such a migration is 300 million years too late in earth’s
history, and the lack of a suitable planetary origin either
within the solar system or in a nearby system or galaxy. And
the combination of all these obstacles together only exponentially
multiplies the improbabilities of panspermia as a feasible
explanation for the origin of life without involving foresight.
With
all of these obstacles and improbabilities, it is no wonder
that while some evolutionary scientists are asserting the
life from space scenario, other evolutionary scientists consider
this scenario, at best, an unknown speculation.
“‘We
don't have an answer yet for whether life could withstand
space travel,’ muses Mancinelli. ‘But if it
can, I wouldn't be surprised if a halophilic organism is the
first extraterrestrial we find.’” – “Did
Life on Earth Come From Mars?,” by Robert Irion, DISCOVER,
Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
“The
fanciful notion that
life spread through space--known as panspermia--has been
tossed around for decades. Originally it was proposed as an
interstellar inoculation, but now researchers are beginning
to think seriously about a local, Mars-to-Earth version…Evidence
is short for assigning life on Earth such a dramatic origin,
and Friedmann is not acting as the idea’s evangelist.”
– “Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places,”
by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18 No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy
& Physics
Moreover,
a large number of evolutionary scientists regard the suggestion
of life from spaces as outright impossible and ridiculous.
As the quotes below indicate, the famed Stanley Miller regards
any version of this theory as “garbage,” including
the criticism that even if pre-biotic material did manage
to reach the earth it would never be in sufficient amounts
to lead to bring about life on this planet. The second quote
below asserts that “mainstream astrobiologists scoff
at such ideas” as mere “wild speculation.”
“Not
surprisingly, not everyone thinks so. If
you have to depend on such low amounts of organic material
as that found in IDPs, says Miller, then from the standpoint
of making life on Earth you’re bankrupt. You’re
in Chapter Eleven. Because you just don’t have enough.
His point rests on simple
common sense: the greater the amount of organics, the
greater the possibility that they would have interacted with
one another. Too few organics, and odds are that they could never have gotten together
to begin the process of life in the first place. Organics
from outer space, Miller scoffs. That’s garbage, it
really is.” – How Did Life Start?, by Peter
Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992, Biology
& Medicine
“Bacterial
Evangelists – The eminent British astronomer Fred Hoyle and his former student astrophysicist Chandra Wickramasinghe
of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in Wales promote a
far-reaching— and, to most scientists, far-fetched—
view of panspermia. They believe that microbes migrate within
comets and their dusty remnants…Mainstream
astrobiologists scoff at such ideas. No
evidence supports the notion that comets harbor watery, microbial
havens. Nor are there distinctive signs of bacterial life
in the heavens. ‘That's wild speculation,’ says
Peter Jenniskens, a meteor specialist at the NASA Ames Research
Center.” – Did Life on Earth Come From Mars?,
by Robert Irion, DISCOVER, Vol. 22 No. 08, August 2001
Two
problems with panspermia scenarios are worth highlighting
again at the end of this segment. First, as we’ve seen
already, no matter what form it takes, panspermia simply postpones
origin of life dilemma, relocating from the dilemmas facing
such origins on earth to another world at another time.
“Life,
The origin of life, Hypotheses of origins – Perhaps
the most fundamental and at the same time the
least understood biological problem is the origin of life.
It is central to many scientific and philosophical problems
and to any consideration of extraterrestrial life. Most
of the hypotheses of the origin of life will fall into one
of four categories: …[3] Life is coeternal with
matter and has no beginning; life arrived on the Earth at the time of
the origin of the earth or shortly thereafter…Such an
idea of course avoids rather than solves the problem of the
origin of life.” – Encyclopaedia Britannica
2004 Deluxe Edition
“Life,
The origin of life, Modern theories – Scientists have proposed two major theories of the origin of life.
They are (1) the theory
of panspermia and (2) the theory of chemical evolution.
The theory of panspermia states that spores from some other
part of the universe landed on Earth and began to develop…Even
if the theory is true, it explains only the origin of life
on Earth and not how life arose in the universe.”
– Worldbook, Contributor: Harold J. Morowitz, Ph.D.,
Robinson Professor of Biology and Director of Krasnow Institute,
George Mason University.
Panspermia
may attempt to explain how life arrived on earth, but it still
does not identify or demonstrate what processes overcame the
chicken-and-egg dilemma created by the irreducible functional
interdependence of cell components. Nor does it identify or
demonstrate exactly how those processes were fueled by a sufficient
energy supply while remaining in a safe environment that would
prevent the pre-biotic chemicals from breaking down from normal,
thermodynamic processes. And so, even if despite all the obstacles
and improbabilities, some version of panspermia were true,
that still would not provide evolutionary theory with any
working scenario for how the origin of life actually came
about by automatic, routine processes that proceed without
foresight, only an explanation for how life came to earth
after that origination already occurred on some other world.
This
leads to a closely-related problem suffered by all versions
of the panspermia scenario. This last problem is, in fact,
completely disqualifying to panspermia as a scientific theory.
From an earlier section of this article series, we recall
that testability, falsifiability, and confirmation by empirical
experience are requirements for any theory if that theory
is to be considered science rather than mere pseudoscience
or non-science.
“Empiricism
– a philosophical
approach that views experience as the most important source
of knowledge. It is the philosophical outlook of most scientists.”
– Worldbook Encyclopedia, Contributor: W. W. Bartley,
III, Ph.D., Former Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University.
“Empiricism
– in philosophy, the
attitude that beliefs are to be accepted and acted upon only
if they first have been confirmed by actual experience.”
– Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
“Popper,
Karl Raimund – Popper
wanted to mark the boundary between scientific and nonscientific
accounts of the physical, psychological, and social world.
Nonscientific accounts include those offered by astrology, mythology,
and some forms of traditional philosophy and religion.
This approach connects Popper with two
overlapping philosophical movements, Logical Positivism and
Empiricism. Philosophers representing
these movements argue that meaningful scientific
accounts differ from nonscientific ones in that only the scientific
can be tested by experience.” – Worldbook,
Contributor: Ivan Soll, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, University
of Wisconsin, Madison.
“Empiricism,
Criticism and evaluation, Criticism and evaluation –
One important philosopher of science, Karl
Popper, has rejected the inductivism that views the growth
of empirical knowledge as the result of a mechanical routine
of generalization. To him it is falsifiability by experience
that makes a statement empirical.” – Encyclopaedia
Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
“Science,
philosophy of, Historical development, The 20th-century debate:
Positivists versus historians – Meanwhile, the qualified
Realism of Planck and Hertz was carried further by such men
as Norman Campbell, an English physicist known for his sharpening
of the distinction between laws and theories, and Karl
Popper, an Austro-English philosopher recognized for his theory
of falsifiability, both of whose views reflect the explicit
methodology of many working scientists today.” –
Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004 Deluxe Edition
“Science
– A theory
developed by a scientist cannot
be accepted as part of scientific knowledge until it has been
verified by the studies of other researchers. In fact,
for any knowledge to
be truly scientific, it must be repeatedly tested experimentally
and found to be true. This
characteristic of science sets it apart from other branches
of knowledge. For example, the humanities, which include
religion, philosophy, and the arts, deal with ideas about
human nature and the meaning of life. Such ideas cannot be scientifically proved.
There is no test that tells whether a philosophical system
is "right." No one can determine scientifically
what feeling an artist tried to express in a painting. Nor
can anyone perform an experiment to check for an error
in a poem or a symphony.” – Worldbook, Contributor:
Joseph W. Dauben, Ph.D., Professor of History and the History
of Science, City University of New York.
By
relocating the origin of life to an unknown world, panspermia
scenarios relegate evolutionary theories for the origin of
life directly to the realm of un-testability and un-falsifiability.
Because it is an identified location in an identified timeframe
with identified conditions, the early earth does provide at
least some measure of a test for the suggested theories of
the origin of life. Relocating the origin of life to an unknown
planet in the unknown and distant past where conditions are
unknown does 2 things. First, it allows for avoiding what
modern evolutionary science does consider to be “known
facts” pertaining to the early history of the earth
– facts against which evolutionary theories for the
origin of life could be at least partially tested. Second,
it makes testing and falsifying evolutionary theories for
the origin of life impossible because there is no way to know
what conditions were like on an unknown planet at an unknown
time so that we can check the hypothesis to see if it fits
with observable facts and evidence about such an imaginary
setting. In fact, concerning this very point, in the quote
below evolutionary scientists Imre Friedmann indicates that
origins theories, which require life to originate on another
planet, are “speculation” and are not “real”
because they are not “here” and, therefore, cannot
be “checked.”
“All
these facts about Mars--along with new data about other worlds
in our solar system and beyond--have restored the excitement
to exobiology. But for Friedmann, facts about Earth have always come first. Distant planets inspire speculation,
but so does the one planet where, for now, we can check hunches
about where to find life against nature’s actual results.
And when the search gets down to microbes, much of Earth
remains unexplored. I do believe it is better to work on terrestrial
samples, Friedmann says. Which
are real. Which are here.” – Looking for Life
in All the Wrong Places, by Will Hively, DISCOVER, Vol. 18
No. 05, May 1997, Astronomy & Physics
In
other words, panspermia theories are “un-testable”
and “un-falsifiable.” And theories relocating
the origin of life to other planets are by their very nature,
fundamentally un-falsifiable, they are not scientific and
therefore cannot help the theory of evolution if that theory
is to remain within the realm of science rather than pseudo-science.
Having
demonstrated in detail that modern evolutionary theory simply
has no working hypothesis for the origin of life, neither
from space nor on earth, neither in deep sea vents, on land,
in shallow pools, or tens of meters deep in the ocean, not
fueled by lightning, ultraviolet light, nor heat or chemical
reactions, our definition of evolutionary theory is once again
shown to be accurate rather than the product of bias. And
this fact is even more cemented by the fact that all of the
quotes and sources cited to demonstrate these claims have
been from secular sources, evolutionary scientists, and mainstream
scientific magazines themselves, not creationist sources.
4)
Various theoretical scenarios are offered for the origin of
life. And although each individual scenario is acknowledged
to be insufficient due to environmental prohibitions involving
chemicals and energy sources, the known geologic history of
the earth, and statistical improbabilities particularly those
surrounding the arrival of cellular systems that are currently
irreducibly functionally interdependent, the origin of life
is asserted to be the result of automatic, routine processes,
in a yet unobserved environment perhaps even occurring on
another planet at an unknown time in the past when conditions
and time allotments would be ideal.
For
emphasis, we close this section by once again citing evolutionists
own quotes concerning the current status of evolutionary theory
on the issue of the origin of life by automatic, routine processes
that proceed without foresight. From the beginning of evolutionary
theory, Darwin himself considered the origin of life question
to be exceedingly difficult and one that was not answered
by his evolution theory.
“The
(from life), The origin of life, Hypotheses of origins
– Although Darwin would not commit himself on the origin
of life, others subscribed to Hypothesis 4 more resolutely,
notably the famous British biologist T.H. Huxley in his Protoplasm,
the Physical Basis of Life (1869), and the British physicist
John Tyndall in his “Belfast Address” of 1874...The
primitive atmosphere – Darwin's
attitude was: ‘It is mere rubbish thinking at present
of the origin of life; one might as well think of the
origin of matter.’” – Encyclopaedia Britannica
2004 Deluxe Edition
To
this day, nothing has changed. Evolution still has no working
or accepted theory for the origin of life, except to assert
its philosophical dislike for teleology, no matter how much
the evidence indicates that intelligent foresight is necessary
to explain the extraordinary coincidence of circumstances
that are necessary for the origin of life.
“Even
if life came from elsewhere, we would still have to account
for its first development. Thus we might as well assume
that life started on earth. How this momentous event happened is still
highly conjectural, though no longer purely speculative.”
– “The Beginnings of Life on Earth,” Christian
de Duve, American Scientist, September-October 1995
“Questions
about life’s origin are as old as Genesis and as
young as each new morning. For
scientists, there are no definitive answers. But if no
one has yet pinned down the secret, it
hasn’t been for lack of trying. Those investigating the origin of life are a rambunctious, scrappy
group, in which no
two people see things quite the same way; and it doesn’t
help that it’s awfully tough to prove or disprove any particular
contention…What were those first organic compounds?
And how did they form? The questions bedevil origin-of-life
researchers. Over the years they have come up with a
host of imaginative and intensely debated possibilities.”
– “How Did Life Start?,” by Peter Radetsky,
DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992, Biology & Medicine
“Perhaps
the most influential first surfaced four decades ago, when
in a dramatic experiment a University of Chicago graduate student named Stanley Miller simulated
the creation of life in a laboratory…And the simple experiment (It’s so easy to do--high school
students now use it to win their science fairs, Miller says)
stimulated a rush of studies, with the result
that a number of other organic compounds, including adenine
and guanine, two of the ingredients of RNA and DNA, were produced
by similar procedures…Thus
emerged the picture that has dominated origin-of-life scenarios.
Some 4 billion years ago, lightning
(or another energy source, like ultraviolet light or heat)
stimulated a hydrogen-rich atmosphere to produce organic compounds,
which then rained down into the primitive ocean or other
suitable bodies of water such as lakes, rivers, or even a
warm little pond, as Charles Darwin once suggested. Once there, these simple compounds, or monomers, combined with one another
to produce more complicated organics, or polymers, which gradually
grew even more complex until they coalesced into the beginnings
of self-replicating RNA. With that came the RNA world
and ultimately the evolution into cells and
the early bacterial ancestors of life. The picture is
powerful and appealing, but not
all origin-of-life researchers are convinced. Even Miller
throws up his hands at certain aspects of it. The
first step, making the monomers, that’s easy. We
understand it pretty well. But then you have to make the first self-replicating
polymers. That’s very easy, he says, the sarcasm fairly
dripping. Just like it’s easy to make money in the
stock market--all you have to do is buy low and sell high.
He laughs. Nobody knows how it’s done. Some would say the statement applies as
well to the first easy step, the creation of simple organic
compounds.” – “How Did Life Start?,”
by Peter Radetsky, DISCOVER, Vol. 13 No. 11, November 1992,
Biology & Medicine
Having
established the accuracy of point 4 of our definition of evolutionary
theory that in the words of evolutionary scientists themselves
evolution has no working or scientifically supported explanation
for the origin of life, we are ready to move on and similarly
demonstrate the accuracy of point 5 regarding the evolutionary
theory for the origin of species.