Prof. Milton Wainwright of the University of Sheffield said, “This looks to be a first on Earth.”
When a planet containing life gets hit by a small moving object like an asteroid or comet, some of the planet’s microscopic life forms may become trapped within the debris. If they went into a latent state, they could be able to endure long trips into space.
The tiny passengers will reactivate if any of this debris collides with a planet with the right conditions for life. In this way, a lifeless planet may be seeded.
This notion isn’t all that far-fetched, even if it is surprising. Last year, sea plankton was found on the International Space Station’s exterior, and no one knows how it got there.
Extremophiles are hardy bacteria that exist on the surface of our planet. They may thrive in some of the most severe conditions, such as near hydrothermal vents on the ocean bottom or in very acidic environments, as their name suggests.
Experiments carried out by Japanese scientists found that some species may not only survive but thrive under extreme gravity. One species has managed to survive being exposed to 400,000 times the gravity on Earth.
Extremophile organisms can endure temperatures far below freezing as well as high radiation doses.
The most important portion, though, is that scientists found living spores that are 40 million years old. In a word, they have the ability to live anywhere and for very long lengths of time.
As a consequence, it’s reasonable to assume they’d survive a collision that destroyed their home planet, a cosmic travel, and another collision that put them on another globe. Life on Earth might have originated somewhere in the universe.
Then there’s the breaking news.
A group of experts from the Universities of Buckingham and Sheffield found a little but fascinating object a few years ago. They used balloons to collect dust and particle samples at a height of 16 miles (27 kilometers). One of them returned with a pleasant surprise.
This is a spherical metallic sphere at the tiny level.
A small metal sphere the size of a human hair impacted with the surface of the sampler attached to the balloon, leaving a minor crater. This shows that it was traveling at a rapid velocity. Professor Wainwright goes on to say:
“An impact crater was generated when the sphere hit with the stratospheric sampler, a small replica of the large impact crater on Earth caused by the asteroid that is claimed to have killed out the dinosaurs.”
“This impact crater shows that the sphere was coming from space; a creature from Earth would not be able to do such destruction if it returned to Earth.”
According to X-ray inspection, the sphere was made of titanium with traces of vanadium. With a high melting point, titanium is one of the most powerful metals known to man. This led Wainwright and his team to believe the sphere was a fake, maybe of extraterrestrial origin. Hold your horses, things are about to get weird.
The sphere’s surface was covered in a “fungus-like interwoven mat-like coating,” and a biological liquid was “oozing from its core.” These chemical compounds have baffled scientists. Scientists feel their discovery was polluted by particles from Earth, despite the fact that it is interesting.
The samples will be further investigated by the team. They also anticipate NASA’s own stratospheric balloon, which is set to fly in the near future, to validate their findings. If NASA detects similar particles and establishes that they are of extraterrestrial origin, the scientific community will be forced to contemplate panspermia.
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, the director of the Buckingham Center for Astrobiology and a Wainwright colleague, has long been a proponent of this theory.
“Opposition to theories that expound these conceptions has been tough in the past, but evidence from meteorites, bacteria samples from space, and space observation is making it more difficult.”
“Proving that the Earth is continually exchanging material with the broader cosmos would have repercussions not only for human identification, but also for alien illnesses that may be crucial for our group identity, development, and existence itself,” he told the Daily Express.
According to Wainwright, the sphere might be evidence of directed panspermia, or the deliberate spread of life across the universe. Before rejecting him as “far off,” consider that Francis Crick, the Nobel Laureate for co-discovering the structure of the DNA molecule, shared similar beliefs.
Humanity may begin launching its own life capsules into suitable planets in the near future in order to safeguard and extend life in space. Carrying a cargo of hardy microorganisms linked to a solar sail might become a scientific fact in less than a century, even if it is still science fiction.
However, it’s possible that we’ve already unintentionally unleashed germs. There’s no way of knowing for sure whether any extremophiles traveled to Mars with the rovers. Perhaps they’ve already begun reproducing and establishing colonies, but that’s just speculation.
The notion of guided panspermia raises a number of major issues. Is it possible that life on Earth was purposely introduced? Was it supplied more than three and a half billion years ago, when our planet was young and sterile, by an intelligent civilization? What would our response be if we were asked this question?
Since the early 1980s, several publications have suggested that the deliberate seeding of life might be shown if the genetic coding of the first germs on Earth included a “distinctive signature message,” analogous to a calling card left by the engineers.
We’ll just have to wait and see which way the little, apparently alien sphere rolls until further evidence emerges.
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