[meteorite-list] Did Life Arrive Before the Solar System EvenFormed?

[Francis Graham]

--- Marc Fries <m.fries at gl.ciw.edu> wrote:

> it does is add a few million to billions of years of
> travel in the
> cold, dry, radiation-hard vacuum of space to the
> journey.  That, plus
> you've got to crush/heat it in a violent,
> solar-system-ejecting imact
> and then crush/heat it again on the recieving end. 

  There are parasites that must pass through as many
as 5 hosts to complete their life cycle. The reason
they are not extinct or that they evolved at all is
because they produce prodigious offspring. If you look
at a parasite (I have a slide collection of all sorts
of them) most of their anatomy is devoted to
reproduction. En masse. 
  Likewise, although the chance of any given organism
making it from planet to planet is vanishingly small
(as it is for a single parasite egg to make it back to
the host as an adult to lay eggs again) there are
enormous opportunities.  
  If life was on Mars, anything other than an absolute
total unarguable zero chance of transit would mean it
made it to Earth, and possibly vice-versa, given the
enormous numbers of impacts and microbes in geological
time. 
  As I look at my parasite slides I remember that the
organism evolved to go through up to 5 hosts because
it was actually more advantageous to the survival of
the species than remaining free-living. Likewise
thermophiles are held to be the most common genetic
ancestor of all existing life on Earth (as genetic
studies have verified) because they are evolved to be
resistant to impact phenomena and transit.

Francis Graham


		
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