2024-01-16 00:37:24
Is the probability that life came from space 1 in 100,000? American research
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Interstellar objects are objects that come into the solar system from outside the solar system, and ‘Oumuamua, discovered in 2017, was the first such object. The discovery of a second interstellar object, Comet Borisov, just two years later made interstellar objects commonplace. It would not be surprising if a part of this interstellar object somehow fell on Earth, and this brought the material that could be the origin of life to Earth. In fact, in 2014, it was revealed that a meteorite believed to be an interstellar object (CNEOS 2014-01-08) collided with the Pacific Ocean.
Since the discovery of interstellar objects, there has been increasing momentum to verify the validity of the hypothesis that life on Earth originated from outer space (panspermia theory), and recently a research paper showing the probability of this in concrete numbers has been published in science. Published on the paper server arxiv. This paper is currently under peer review for publication by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and although it has not been officially approved for publication, its contents are very interesting and suggestive.
This research was carried out by scientists from the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology and George Mason University in the United States, and found that interstellar objects (including small objects such as meteorites) have affected the earth’s environment for about 800 million years since the earth’s birth. ) and showed that the probability that the material that is the origin of life was brought from space is 1 in 100,000.
Using simple calculations, if there were 100,000 Earths, it would mean that life that arose on one of them would have originated from outer space, but behind this number there are approximately 4 billion billion Earths in the galaxy. What is hidden is the fact that there are 10,000 planets in the habitable zone, and that there are as many as 10,000 planets with life on them. Even if the probability that the panspermia hypothesis is correct is 1 in 100,000, it is significant that it is not zero.
The most widely accepted idea in the panspermia hypothesis is that the universe is full of RNA. The idea is that RNA came to Earth from space and eventually changed into DNA, leading to the birth of life. Even if the panspermia hypothesis is correct, the fact remains that the number of stars on which life can originate and evolve is extremely small compared to the total number of stars in the universe.
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