JOIN USA team of scientists, including one of Indian-origin, has discovered that microorganisms which crashed to earth embedded in the fragments of distant planets might have been the sprouts of life on our planet.
Researchers from the Princeton University, the University of Arizona and the Centro de Astrobiologia (CAB) in Spain found that there is a high probability that life came to earth - or spread from earth to other planets - during the solar system’s infancy when earth and its planetary neighbours orbiting other stars would have been close enough to each other to exchange lots of solid material.
The findings provide the strongest support yet for ‘lithopanspermia’, the idea that basic life forms are distributed throughout the universe via meteorite-like planetary fragments cast forth by disruptions such as volcanic eruptions and collisions with other matter.
Eventually, another planetary system’s gravity traps these roaming rocks, which can result in a mingling that transfers any living cargo.
Previous research on this possible phenomenon suggests that the speed with which solid matter hurtles through the cosmos makes the chances of being snagged by another object highly unlikely.
However the new research reconsidered lithopanspermia under a low-velocity process called weak transfer wherein solid materials meander out of the orbit of one large object into the orbit of another.In this case, the researchers factored in velocities 50 times slower than previous estimates, or about 100 metres per second.