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Many of you have probably heard about asteroid 2005 YU55, the massive rocky body that tomorrow night will collide with Earth in a ball of flames pass the planet safely, albeit closer than any asteroid in the last 35 years. More »
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We've often found trace evidence of DNA on meteorites, but it wasn't clear whether these DNA pieces originated in space, or were accidental byproducts of contamination by scientists. Now we have our best evidence yet that they actually come from space. More »
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The argument that life on Earth may have been seeded from the stars just received a major boost, as scientists have found the building blocks of life inside a meteorite that landed in British Columbia in 2000. More »
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Meteors may have seeded the planet with life-giving ammonia. More »
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Every time we send spacecraft to explore the solar system, we send along lots of tiny microbes. In fact, we may have deposited a trillion microbial spores on Mars. How will we ever discover alien life through all that haze? More »
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Sure, that's maybe the most ridiculous question we've posed. But a new theory suggests life's building blocks did originate in outer space, although they couldn't have survived traveling to Earth. And with an awesome name like necropanspermia, it's worth considering. More »
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A basic property of Earth's organic molecules could be caused by supernova explosions. That means massive stellar explosions indirectly governed the building blocks of life on Earth...and could be doing it elsewhere in the cosmos. More »
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My short story "The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model" is up now at Tor.Com. Aliens come to Earth with a very intriguing business proposition... but unfortunately, it's not quite so lucrative for the human race. More »
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Is it possible to send starter kits of Earth life to other worlds in the hopes of triggering terraforming processes all over the galaxy? Not only is it possible, argues Michael Mautner, but we have an obligation to do it. More »
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Score another point for exogenesis, the idea that life on Earth has extraterrestrial origins. For the first time, NASA has identified amino acids in a sample of material from a comet, suggesting a comet may have brought proteins to Earth. More »
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Critics of exogenesis note that the proper conditions to maintain life are rare in the universe, and would not likely survive the trip inside Earth's atmosphere. But new data on comets offers evidence that our ancestors were, indeed, extraterrestrial. More »
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Planet Earth might be home sweet home, but is it really humanity's birthplace? We explore science fiction stories where humans come from everywhere but Earth, be it by colonization, alien experiments, or good old-fashioned panspermia. More »
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Did life on Earth originate when burning meteorites full of carbon molecules or single-celled organisms crashed to our planet and scattered their seeds? It's very possible, according to proponents of the theory of "panspermia." And now a group of researchers have proven that panspermia is technically possible, after a series of experiments that involved attaching bacteria-infested rocks to the front of a space capsule. More »
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We usually think of asteroid impacts as harbingers of mass extinction, but they might be the reason life exists on our planet at all. It's possible for bacteria to hitch rides on rocks ejected by space impacts and move from planet to planet. We know that certain Earth bacteria are capable of surviving the hostile conditions of space, but could they survive the impacts themselves? A group of scientists put them to the test, and we've got the results for you. More »
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There is an organism living on this planet who can travel through space without a suit. Cute, unassuming little invertebrates, these organisms are called tardigrades, or water bears, and usually spend their days crawling around on a piece of nice wet moss in a forest, or meandering through our vast oceans. They only grow to be about 1.5 millimeters long, but over 1,000 species of them inhabit the planet, and they all have a superpower unmatched by any other species on Earth. No now knows why, but tardigrades can withstand temperatures as cold as liquid nitrogen, radiation doses that would kill a human 100 times over, thrive in an outer-space-like vacuum, and survive without water for years. More »
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How life got started on Earth is still a big problem for scientists. The story goes something like this: "Well, there was this primordial soup of amino acids and stuff, then maybe there was some lightning, or something, and then ::mumble, mumble:: and then we had life." Awkward! But that awkwardness may be over: Research on the Murchison meteor, which landed in Australia in 1969, has found that the rock carried the building blocks of DNA on board. The finding puts panspermia firmly in the spotlight as a possible origin for life on Earth, and makes a lot more sense than that old tale of thunderstorms and arm-waving. More »
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Life on Earth might actually be Martian — or Europan, or Titanese. Or maybe our ancestors came from outside our solar system, flung up from a distant planet (perhaps Caprica?) billions of years ago and migrated to Earth. It all sounds far-fetched, but new research suggests microbes can survive an asteroid impact big enough so send them into space, making panspermia — the idea that we're all really aliens at heart — a real possibility. More »
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It's high time Earth got smacked with a comet. These firey globs of doom tend to come in cycles, raining down on our planet about once every 36 million years. Using a computer simulation of how our solar system moves through the Milky Way, astrobiologists at the UK's Cardiff University found that we pass through the densest part of the galaxy every 35 to 40 million years — they call it a "bounce." It turns out that comet impacts on Earth follow a similar cycle, increasing in frequency just about every 36 million years, give or take. More »
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