ASTROGENESIS
By William F. Hamilton
Introduction: It has been the contention of evolutionary biologists that
life on earth started in some prebiotic mixture of organic elements in the
clays, tide pools, or seas of earth. By
the mechanism of natural selection, factors both in the environment and organism select
genotypes that have inherited new traits to increase their population, perhaps
even replacing older genotypes. Changes
in environment may select new traits to be expressed in the gene pool insuring
survival of a species against new challenges.
Most theories on the origin of life have been restricted to particular
environmental niches that scientists believe would be most conducive for the
production of organic molecules and the eventual synthesis of RNA and DNA.
Examination and analysis of the
probability of the synthesis of biochemicals from an abiogenetic beginning
seems unlikely when the mathematical probabilities are elucidated according to
some authors. Essentially, the objection
to the origin and evolution of life is aimed at the short time period for
chance combinations of organic chemicals to form a living biochemistry. More stalwart scientists who are satisfied
with the current geogenesis of life have invoked new arguments to defend their
turf. These new arguments involve the
concepts of self-organization and even chaos theory. As a counter-point, those scientists who are
still in the minority, do not find sufficient information complexity to
initiate the self-organization of living molecules and thus have extended the
growing debate.
Complicating the issues involved in
post-Darwinian views is the crystallization of two new factions in the
anti-Darwin controversy. One is the
Intelligent Design movement which has been linked to former Creationist who
take a theistic “life is a miracle wrought by a Creator” view and those who
have resurrected the theory of Panspermia, the Origin of Life from space.
I see valid arguments and invalid
arguments in all these points of view, but will present what I believe is a
paradigm shift away from a geocentric start to life to what I would term
Astrogenesis, that the elements of life were born in space, and, finding
suitable environments where they could propagate and evolve, have seeded the
earth and other planets with these elements which have
been programmed to evolve into diverse forms of plant, animal, insect, and
microbial life. The thesis here is that
the genetic code constitutes a program and a message which is transferable from
one generation to the next.
Albeit, the idea of a genetic
program infers intelligence and teleological orientation toward a plan or a
goal. This alone invokes the concept of a Creator
or Cosmic Mind that programmed life into existence. This has been refuted by those who see this
DNA as decoded information only with no evidence of encoding by some Cosmic
Mind. Some do not see information theory
as relevant to the origin of life, just chemistry. This seems to be a regressive argument as
chemical processes are information processes.
That the encoder is not seen constitutes a problem that might be solved
with a new approach. One cannot decode
what is not first encoded. It is not so
much the sequence of the DNA molecules that determine the meaning in the
message, but the meaning that can be determined by codons. In other words, we need to translate the
meanings much like using a dictionary to determine the usage of words.
Panspermia: An idea whose
time has come.
On
“In two separate studies, scientists mimicked conditions of outer space, doused frozen interstellar cocktails with ultraviolet radiation and created amino acids, which are critical components of life. The work shows that amino acids could be created around many developing stars, which emit high doses of UV radiation, and that life would have had just as good a chance of forming on planets that might exist around those stars as it did here on Earth. The studies also support a growing expectation among many scientists that life on Earth may have been seeded from space, rather than having been forged only from raw materials that developed on Earth.” This story went on to say: “Already, scientists have found amino acids in meteorites -- chunks of asteroids or comets that landed on Earth. Amino acids, though not life itself, may have jumpstarted life on Earth with their arrival, some scientists have long suspected. Another theory has held that life on Earth developed out of a soup of lesser materials. Remarkable as it might be to think of life's ingredients arriving on a space rock, researchers have sought to show that amino acids might also form in interstellar space and thus be ubiquitous. If so, then the raw material of terrestrial life would date back to an earlier time, before comets and asteroids were born. "Amino acids are literally raining down out of the sky," said one of the team's leaders, Max Bernstein of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center The laboratory experiments, one conducted by Bernstein's U.S.
Svante Arrhenius
is one of the major figures in physical chemistry and had a major role in the
development of ideas about ions, solutions, acids and alkalis, and rates of
reactions. His recognition of the role of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
has perhaps been neglected as this problem is considered to be a late twentieth
century phenomenon. Arrhenius conjectured that
bacteria may be able to survive the cold of space and survive heating as they
entered earth’s atmosphere from space.
This revived the old concept of panspermia. Svante Arrhenius theorized that
bacterial spores propelled through space by light pressure were the seeds of
life on Earth.
This idea was further expanded on by
Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe who
reintroduced the idea of panspermia as an alternative
theory on the origin of life. Since
Hoyle believed that life could not have arisen on earth by chance, that
evolution was not the product of chance, he advocated a strong theory of panspermia. Some
scientists have united this theory of panspermia with
James Lovelock’s teleological theory of earth as Gaia and call the new theory Cosmic Ancestry (1).
Some of the findings of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are quoted here:
“In 1968, polycyclic aromatic
molecules were detected in interstellar dust. In 1972, convincing evidence that
the dust contained porphyrins was obtained. Then in
1974 Wickramasinghe demonstrated that there are
complex organic polymers, specifically molecules of "polyformaldehyde"
in space. These molecules are closely related to cellulose, which is very
abundant in biology. By 1975, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe
were convinced that organic polymers were a substantial fraction of the dust.
This line of thought was considered wildly speculative at that time. Now,
however, that organic polymers in space are abundant and may be necessary for
life is well accepted. Today we often see stories about things like vinegar
among the stars, or "buckyballs" from space
as "the seeds of life". To that extent the scientific paradigm for
the origin of life on Earth has already shifted. “.(1)
The means by which spores, microbes,
and other biochemical matter arrives on earth is principally through the agency
of meteorites and comets that frequently impacted the earth in its youth. Bacteria has been
detected in the highest regions of the atmosphere where some scientist suppose
it arrived from space.
There is even some indication that
microbes have been found in lunar soil.
Another form of panspermia
is ballistic panspermia. This refers to debris being knocked off a
planet like Mars, reaching escape velocity, and entering the atmosphere of
another planet with passenger microbes intact.
The ALH84001 Martian meteorite found in
Benjamin Weiss is a
graduate student in planetary science at the California Institute of Technology
and Joseph Kirschvink is Professor of Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology and
they had this to say about tests conducted on the Martian meteorite:
“Confirming
Evidence
These results demonstrate that ALH84001 had not been
heated to even 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) since before leaving
the Martian surface, confirming Melosh's theory that
rocks could be ejected off the surface of Mars without being heat sterilized.
At such temperatures,
prokaryotes (simple, one-celled organisms without well-defined nuclei) and even
many eukaryotes (organisms with well-defined nuclei) like fungi or plant seeds
might survive the launch. Unfortunately we cannot constrain the formation
temperature of the carbonate globules-although we think the observed magnetization
originated on Mars, we don't yet know exactly when that took place.
(Constraining the temperature at which the carbonate globules in ALH84001
formed would help settle the debate over possible life traces in the meteorite.
A high temperature could rule out life as we know it in the rock; a low
formation temperature would be conducive to life.)
Although it's unlikely
that ALH84001 itself brought Martians to Earth (it spent nearly 15 million
years wandering through cold, airless space), it is not unreasonable to assume
that if there were life on Mars, other rocks have already transferred it here.
Computer dynamic simulations suggest that about a billion tons of Martian rocks
have landed on Earth since the solar system formed, and every million years
about a dozen fist-size rocks are transferred from Mars to Earth in just a
couple of years. In fact, one in ten million of the arriving Martian rocks
could have been transferred in less than a year!
Other researchers have
brought back living bacterial spores from an orbiting satellite where they
spent more than five years bathed in strong ultraviolet light in a deep vacuum.
We know, too, that such bacteria can survive the high pressures and shock they
might encounter during ejection. Evidently, it is likely that if there were
Martian microorganisms, they have been transported to Earth throughout most of
our planet's history. Maybe, then, we don't need to go all the way to Mars to
find Martians.” (2)
There is even a society
for launching our own seeds into space and populating other worlds with life
from earth.
To put all of this in
perspective, the idea that genetic information which developed and evolved
elsewhere in the universe and planted itself on earth through panspermia so as to evolve organisms that are similar to
organisms that have already evolved on other planets might be the reason why
intelligent, artifact-making lifeforms elsewhere may
be as human as those on earth.
In fact neuroscientist
and astrobiologist Dr. Rhawn
Joseph makes this bold statement on panspermia:
“The genetic seeds of life swarm throughout the cosmos, and these
genetic "seeds," these living creatures, fell to Earth, encased in
stellar debris which pounded the planet for 700 millions years after the
creation.
And just as DNA contains the genetic instructions for the creation
of an embryo, neonate, child, and adult, and just as modern day microbes
contain "human genes" which have contributed to the evolution of the
human genome, these "seeds," these living creatures, contained the
DNA-instructions for the metamorphosis of all life, including woman and man.
DNA acts to purposefully modify the environment, which acts on
gene selection, so as to fulfill specific genetic goals: the dispersal and
activation of silent DNA and the replication of life forms that long ago lived
on other planets. “
Intelligent
Design: This bold new movement is said to originate from Creation Science
though a few of its proponents deny this.
Fred Hoyle was certainly not a Creationist and yet he determined that
the vast range of biochemicals and RNA/DNA could only
be the work of design.
One of the new concepts to emerge from this movement is that of irreducible complexity as introduced by
biochemist Michael Behe who expounded on this concept
in his book,
Another scientific advocate of ID is
William A. Dembski who states: “Today, however, chance and necessity have proven
insufficient to account for all scientific phenomena. Without invoking the
rightly discarded teleologies, entelechies, and vitalisms of the past, one can still see that a third mode
of explanation is required, namely, intelligent design. Chance, necessity, and
design—these three modes of explanation—are needed to explain the full range of
scientific phenomena. “(4)
The battle between
Darwinists and the Designer group has heated up and the debates rage on as the
Darwinist try to quash the anti-scientific notion that a superintelligent
being designed the elements of life. If
the idea of a designed biological system is proven through information theory
and mathematics, it will constitute a revolution that will certainly change
scientific thought for ages to come. Is
this likely? Probably
not in the immediate future.
Semiotics and Information Theory:
Another contingent in
the biological sciences deals with information theory, self-orgnanization,
and the science of signs (semiotics).
Here is a diagram
constructed of an analog process by Hubert Yockey, a physicist who worked under Robert
Oppenheimer and worked on the Manhattan Project (production of the first atomic
bomb). In the fifties he published about effects of radiation on living systems
and started to work on the application of information theory to genetics and
evolution. Yockey published 7 articles in the Journal
of Theoretical Biology from 1974 - 1995 and was organiser
of the Symposium on Information Theory in Biology. (5)
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These diagrams indicate
that DNA is an analog of a computer instruction set that triggers a message to
build proteins of specific varieties that eventually grow into a living organism.
There is no doubt that
the information complexity in biological entities is very high and that the
probability of random mutations leading to more highly structured life forms
has the appearance of being impossible.
Astrogenesis: The real paradigm shift
is to consider that the Universe as a whole is a life-producing nursery and
that the genesis and evolution of life is not earth-centered but rather is
distributed among the stars of the galaxies.
This idea can be developed into a viable theory as studies in panspermia and astrobiology continue.
The real vision this
offers is a way to reconcile the possibilities of ancient and recent visitors
to earth who appear to be humanoid with an overarching theory that explains the
existence of cosmic cousins. Not only
may we find humanoid life forms on other worlds, but perhaps we may find
creatures that closely resemble our horses, dogs, tigers, elephants, and cats
as well as birds and reptiles and flowering plants and trees whose genetic
patterns are universal and repeated unerringly in all friendly environments and
abodes of life throughout the cosmos.
(1)
http://www.panspermia.org/
(2)
http://www.planetary.org/html/news/articlearchive/headlines/2000/Panspermia.htm
(3)
http://www.iscid.org/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=000010;p=
(4)
http://www.origins.org/ftissues/ft9810/articles/dembski.html
(5)
http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho33.htm