It's neither new nor is it news.

The idea of panspermia's been around for a long time.

And doesn't dispose of abiogenesis. It just pushes it back in time and elsewhere.

Nobody disputed that things from other star systems could transit ours. It's just the first that's seen, and that was reported what, a couple of months ago? It's always been considered to be fantastically likely, in fact, that bits of other systems have wandered through, and some may have stayed. It's certainly not the first seen, just the first that's been identified. For all we know, some of the other, already identified bits of flotsam are from other systems and we just can't tell from their motion that this is so.

Alien "seeding" of habitable planets could well explain how life got here. Alien interference in "the Earth Experiment" would explain a lot of Old Testament miracles as well. It would be nothing, technologically speaking, for an interstellar travelling species to hover in some clouds and issue commands to scared humans in a booming voice with an impressive display of lights, and performing other such feats as lighting a bush on fire, etc. We have lasers capable of that now.
Indeed, much like how we separate two pet dogs if they're fighting, such interference could be interpreted as an act of kindness and love. If we weren't yet advanced (and still aren't, apparently) enough to stop killing each other, a visit or two with some form of rules devised to keep us thriving (i.e. The Ten Commandments) would not only be warranted but just good stewardship. Beings capable of this level of interaction would have likely done the same elsewhere, probably many times before, and tend to know what would work and be useful with an up and coming sentient race.
Such a race could possibly be MUCH closer to what we call "God" than we'll ever be. Descriptions of "angels" from antiquity also bear more than a striking resemblance to alien beings as well.
Current UFO visitations could be chalked up as "taking end of experiment notes". We're advanced enough to be able to detect and possibly intercept alien craft at this point. Humanity may have been written off as one of possibly many failures due to our inability to cohesively come together to solve our problems, or alien observers may just wish to interact after we've resolved our own issues. Hard to say either way but it's worth thinking about.

I don't know why people seek a more complicated and unlikely explanation.

It could have been just that. cosmic building blocks.

This is nothing more than a 'what if'.

An object from outside of our solar system came through our region of space. There is no evidence or suggestion in this finding that life forms were transported here like seeds. That is quite a leap.

How do you know you don't already have "the truth", but are setting it aside because you want a more fanciful answer?

It is possible that life came from outside our solar system, but the simpler explanation is that it arose and evolved here. If actual evidence led elsewhere, I would be happy to explore the idea further, but right now it seems like a waste of energy.

"I want to believe."

Even without alien visitations or seeding from roaming asteroids, the currently accepted model of the origin of the earth is said to be the conglomeration of dust and debris coalescing around some central attractor. What was it in that mix that brought together the ingredients for life? What was the origin of that material? And what made it possible for its chemistry to support life on a planet? The complexity of material substances was already significant before this solar system was formed. At this point we can only speculate on the origins and history of the source material. But no doubt it's fascinating.

Carbon is formed in aging stars. It and all the other elements we have here on this planet came from the Big Bang, older stars, and supernova explosions. There is nothing different or new in other solar systems. We all have the same elements (minus a couple that are not found on Earth), albeit in different proportions.

If life formed somewhere else, it would likely have the same carbon-based structure. There is no other element that can do what carbon does. We had all the ingredients here: the primordial soup with water and a concentration of carbon compounds, a little bit of oxygen, and several possible energy sources.

The odds are that there are other planets elsewhere that have these same ingredients, but it's hard to imagine how any living organism could survive travelling through outer space on an asteroid.

That is sort of a garbled description of planet formation, not abiogenisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

In any event, "alien seedpods" explains exactly nothing with respect to abiogenisis as it does not explain how the alien life in the pods developed. Absent any actual evidence to support it, it should be rejected simply because it adds complication and explains nothing.

Last edited Sat Dec 16, 2017, 11:31 AM - Edit history (1)

Life in our solar system might be of local origin. I remember reading articles in the last few years hypothesizing that the earliest life might have formed on Mars, where conditions were even better for microbial life than Earth billions of years ago. There was a lot of meteoritic bombardment during the Hadean period, some Earth meteorites DID come from Mars, some Earh microbes are still hardy enough to survive crashing through our Atmosphere, so it’s conceivable that some microbes may have hitched a ride way back when.

Of course early Mars was far different from what it is now. Mars looks like a lousy place to look for life these days, but some of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons may have “seeded” by other hitch-hikers on other meteoroids, so who knows?

....but it doesn't tell us how life began wherever this postulated asteroid came from.

Kind of like the big bang theory...how the universe began, but what about before that?

Kind of like "God created the universe." Who created God?

So far, the human mind does not seem to be able to entertain that even our best and brightest don't know anything, really, about the ultimate origins of anything, and we settle for answers that only go half-way, and think we know something. Psychologically, we need to believe we know something.

"We are Stardust" were just words in a song?

that originated in the supernova of long ago star. In the beginning there were only hydrogen, helium along with trace amounts of lithium and beryllium. Heavier atoms such as carbon and oxygen are only produced the nuclear reactions inside stars and by the forces of a supernova.

The lyrics do not suggest that life itself originated elsewhere, but the the building block of life did.

As such it is useless as a theory for the origin of life.

But what are the odds of a form of life being able to survive on Earth even it it are able to survive eons in space? I believe Occam's Razor would favor the theory that life began on Earth because if it originated here it would by definition be adapted to life in this particular environment.

By the way, aerobic bacteria would not have been able to survive in the atmosphere that existed when life first appeared on Earth.

is flung out into space to wander until it finds somewhere else to plant its informational seed. Some a near miss. Some to wander for the remainder of eternity in empty space.

And someday, we return.

A billion years? Two billion?

A long time for cells to be in hibernation and still viable enough to multiply in an alien atmosphere.