Panspermia

Panspermia is the hypothesis that the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the universe, and furthermore that life on Earth began by such seeds landing on Earth and propagating themselves. The idea has its origins in the writings of Anaxagoras, but was first proposed in its modern form by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1879. Panspermia can be said to be either interstellar (between star systems) or interplanetary (between planets in the same solar system). There is as yet no compelling evidence to support or contradict it, although the consensus view holds that panspermia?especially in its interstellar form?is unlikely given the challenges of survival and transport in space.

External links

• Evolution of Life: A Cosmic Perspective, by N. Chandra Wickramasinghe & Fred Hoyle
• Life from Space: An Emerging Paradigm, by N. Chandra Wickramasinghe
• versus Darwinism: A third alternative , by N. Chandra Wickramasinghe & Brig Klyce
• The Orgueil meteorite hoax
• About stromatolites
• http://www.panspermia.org/ - Modern panspermia advocates. This site claims cosmic ancestry; not only that life on Earth originated in space, but that life has existed since the beginning of time, as well as an alternative explanation of evolution.
• http://www.iscid.org/brig-klyce-chat.php - cosmic ancestry
• http://www.nature.com/nsu/040216/040216-20.html
• http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/849 - Panspermia criticism from the intelligent design community
• Francis Crick's handwritten notes (PDF) for a lecture on Directed Panspermia, dated 5 November 1976.
• http://www.tonderai.co.uk/earth/origins.php#limits