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One of the fundamental issues in astrobiology is to determine the origin and distribution of life in the cosmos. As part of this, the field also looks at how life can be transferred from one planetary system to another. Recent research could shed light on how we can identify traces of this fascinating process in the future.
Florida Tech Assistant Professor of Astrobiology Manasvi Lingam, together with researchers from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland and the University of Rome in Italy, recently completed the article “Feasibility of Detecting Interstellar Panspermia in Astrophysical Environments”, which will be published in the Astronomical Journal was approved.
The research analyzes the process of how planets are bombed by rocks and how life-bearing microbes that can be found on these rocks spread from one planet to bring life to another. Life on planets may have been initiated by panspermia, a millennia-old theory that microbes living in the midst of space dust, comets and asteroids are transferred to the planet when these objects collide with its surface. In their work, Lingam and his team present a sophisticated mathematical model that takes into account how long microbes survive, what speed the particles disperse, and how quickly ejecta – the material that is pushed out due to impact – the prospects for detection of interstellar panspermia.
The work shows that the correlations between pairs of life-bearing planetary systems can serve as an effective diagnosis of interstellar panspermia, provided that the velocity of the microbial ejecta is greater than the relative velocities of the stars. The team made practical estimates of the model parameters for various astrophysical environments and concluded that open clusters and globular clusters (i.e., densely grouped environments) are the best targets for assessing the viability of interstellar panspermia.
Like a chain reaction in a nuclear reactor, life on planets can be triggered by the collision of a life-bearing object that hits (thereby seeding) a planet, and the microbe-bearing objects on that planet are then ejected into space and then spread across several planets in the region. In addition to this mechanism of panspermia, scientists believe that life can also be created from non-living systems in a process known as abiogenesis. By studying biological signatures on planets, Lingam and his team conducted studies that show how far and how effectively panspermia can reach neighboring planets.
“What we showed is that there were certain settings where panspermia is more conducive and other settings where it is less,” Lingam said. “The second thing we showed is that the distinction between the two hypotheses (panspermia and abiogenesis) can be made using a mathematical quantity known as a pairwise correlation function. If you have a non-zero function, that would mean it that panspermia is functional and if you have a null function it means that life on worlds is created independently. “
For Lingam, the paper could give way not only to an understanding of which planets are affected by the journeys of living organisms, but also to a better understanding of how these on earth can be biologically connected to other life forms in our solar system. For example, the microbes on Mars may possibly come from panspermia, which Earth is involved in in some way.
“If we were to discover life on Mars, we would have to develop good diagnostic tools to understand whether this life is really a second genesis, completely separate from life on Earth or from life on Earth.” Lingam said. “There is evidence that early Mars was very habitable, had running water, and the temperatures were possibly warmer too. In principle, life could have originated on Mars first, then died out, or went underground, but then would have life could spread to earth, in which case we would have a Martian descent. “
Lingam’s research on panspermia led him last year to be commissioned by Cambridge University Press to write a comprehensive book on the subject as part of their prestigious Cambridge Astrobiology series. The book is slated to come out sometime in 2022 or 2023.
Interstellar seeds could create oases of life
More information:
Feasibility of detecting interstellar panspermia in astrophysical environments. arXiv: 2105.03295v1 [astro-ph.EP] arxiv.org/abs/2105.03295 Provided by the Florida Institute of Technology
Quote: Research Can Help Shed Light on the Origins of Life on Earth (2021, May 24), released May 24, 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2021-05-illuminate-life-earth.html were retrieved
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