Bryan Zepp Jamieson
April 23rd 2025
www.zeppscommentaries.online
I sent a link to a recent Guardian article titled “‘It blew us away’: how an asteroid may have delivered the vital ingredients for life on Earth” to Peter Cawdron, the noted science fiction author who specializes in First Contact stories. I wrote in the post “The Panspermia theory, the idea that life, or at least the building blocks of life, piggybacked to Earth in an asteroid or comet, has been around since the 1960s. There was concern that OSIRIS-REx was contaminated to begin with with home-grown microbes, but this is solid evidence that backs Panspermia.”
Yes, I’m the sort who would try to explain long division to Isaac Newton. Why do you ask?
Cawdron, who describes himself as firmly in the Panspermia camp, sent back a link to a 2017 article of his on his website titled “Did Life Arise Before Earth Formed?” Cawdron based his article in large measure on a 2013 paper by Alexei A. Sharov and Richard Gordon titled “Life Before Earth” The paper is only 26 pages long, and doesn’t require a degree in molecular biology to follow. It focuses on the genes known as non-redundant functional nucleotides. These are the genes—some 16,000 in all—that all forms of life need to function as life. On this level, there is absolutely no difference between an amoeba and Liv Truss. All the other genes are just window dressing.
Sharov and Gordon examined the known increase in complexity of such genes and then, finding that they all correlated fairly closely to a logarithmic scale. Moore’s Law, that computers double in speed and complexity every twenty years, is a good example of a logarithmic scale.
Sharov and Gordon then extrapolated backwards to determine when these vital genes might have developed, and came up with a stunning answer: 9.7 billion years ago, give or take 2.5 billion.
That seems a rather long time to build a Liv Truss.
On the short end of that estimate, the Milky Way galaxy was just beginning to develop its current form. At the long end, the period of rapid expansion of the universe was ending and the first stars were igniting.
Then there’s the problem that the Earth itself is only about four and a half billion years old.
Straight line extrapolations make good indicators, but inevitably end in a logical flaw—the zero point. Track human population backwards, and statistically you end up with two humans, and the annoying question, “where did THEY come from?” We now suspect that humans came from several different lines of hominids who could interbreed, and being hominids, did.
The same theory pertains to Earth life. We suspect that the first prokaryotes not only appeared in various disparate parts of the planet, but did so over and over, most dying out, some not. That would suggest seeding as a possibility, wouldn’t it?
We’ve been able to trace life signs going back to a bit over three billion years ago. Cyanobacteria, a relatively advanced life form, turned up less than half a billion years later. As far as existing life was concerned, this new kid on the block wrecked the place, dumping out copious amounts of corrosive and poisonous oxygen with this newfangled photosynthesis. Most of Earth’s life retreated to below the surface, where to this day they make up the majority of life, in both mass and numbers.
They live in conditions we associate with other planets, such as immense pressure and heat, and with no oxygen or light. They are the original Earthlings, and we are the alien mutants.
Most anaerobic life, and even some surface forms, are exophiles, happy to live in temperatures far below freezing or hot enough to melt lead. Viruses can exist in vacuum and are unfazed by massive bursts of radiation. Life is incredibly adaptable.
We’ve known for some 50 years that the mass in the universe is mostly CHON—Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. These are all elements that are of keen interest to all known life forms, as without them we couldn’t exist.
Between remote probes such as OSIRIS-REx and the array of space telescopes with their spectography, we have learned that the universe is rich in the constituent building blocks of life—amino acids, ammonia, formaldehyde and sodium carbonate compounds, which only form in brine.
“Scientists also described exceptionally high abundances of ammonia in the Bennu samples. Ammonia is important to biology because it can react with formaldehyde, which also was detected in the samples, to form complex molecules, such as amino acids – given the right conditions. When amino acids link up into long chains, they make proteins, which go on to power nearly every biological function–and all five nucleobases that life on Earth uses to store and transmit genetic instructions in more complex terrestrial biomolecules, such as DNA and RNA, including how to arrange amino acids into proteins.”
Reet Kaur at watchers.news reports just today that “A new study from the University of Oxford shows that Earth’s building blocks contained sufficient hydrogen to form water internally, challenging the prevalent theory that water was delivered mainly by asteroids or comets[…]A study published this month in Icarus, by researchers at the University of Oxford, identifies pyrrhotite, an iron sulfide mineral, as the primary host of hydrogen in enstatite chondrites (ECs).”
While water is present in asteroids, meteorites and comets, the ratio of deuterium (D20) to light water (H20) is not the same as what is found on Earth, further strengthening the notion that water—or at least hydrogen and oxygen–was present from the time of Earth’s original formation. We know Mars had and probably still has a lot of water, so it’s not too much of a stretch to assume that water—essential to all known life—is present in most, if not all rocky planets.
The James Webb telescope can analyze the atmospheric composition of planets in other star systems, and examined a red dwarf’s planet, K2-18b, some 124 light years away and discovered dimethyl sulfide, dimethyl disulfide, or a possible combination of the two. On Earth, these are only produced by life, particularly by marine microbes.
A few years back, methane pockets were observed on Mars. Methane can come from only two sources—tectonic activity, or microbial life. Mars doesn’t have a molten core, but it does have some very slight seismic activity due to tidal stresses. And on Mars, the environment at a kilometer below the surface, probably isn’t that much different from Earth at a kilometer below the surface. So there’s that.
This is all persuasive, but not compelling. The evidence, however, is mounting, and on a logarithmic scale.
Sharov and Gordon’s time scale of non-redundant functional nucleotides remains—for now—in the realm of conjecture. But I’m convinced that we will find proof of life outside of Earth, probably in this next decade, and when we do, we’ll find it’s related to us. And at that point, Panspermia will move solidly toward an equal footing in scientific lore with the evolution of Earthly life that ensued.
