Panspermia, Octopuses, and Comets 6/6

An eternal and uncreated Universe

Everything is possible if time is endless

So is this the definitive answer of panspermia’s advocates to the problem of the origin of life? A biological big bang made plausible by the HGD cosmological model? Not necessarily.

According to Wickramasinghe, even the smallest structures that regulate the chemistry of living beings are so complex that it is extremely unlikely that they were formed by abiogenesis. For example, he calculates that the probabilities that ribozymes, filaments of RNA capable of catalyzing chemical reactions such as enzymes, were formed by trial and error from a substrate of non-living matter are not more than 1 in 10¹⁸⁰. This means that it would take a sequence of at least 10¹⁰⁰ Big Bang of a Universe regulated by the very favorable HGD cosmology to allow such a tiny probability to be realized.

Ultimately, the birth of life from non-living matter is so absurdly improbable — Wickramasinghe believes — that only two viable hypotheses remain, to explain how that infinitesimal probability has occurred at least once (which must have happened, given that we are here at talk about it):

• we live in a **Multiverse** and, by pure chance, we happened to be born in one of those Universes, perhaps the only one ever, in which the unlikely event of the emergence of life from non-living matter occurred;
• we live in an open Universe, eternal and infinite, according to the cosmological model called the quasi-steady state.

Of the two possibilities, Wickramasinghe preferred the second, and not by chance. The quasi-steady-state cosmological model was proposed by his lifelong colleague Fred Hoyle and Halton Arp in 1990. Then, it was further developed in a 1993 study, the result of a collaboration between Hoyle, Geoff Burbidge, and Jayant V. Narlikar.

The quasi-steady-state model is a sort of upgrade of the cosmological principle favored by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, namely the steady-state cosmology. According to this model, the Universe is eternal, uncreated, and infinite. The expansion law discovered by Hubble was explained by the continuous creation of new matter so as to keep Universe’s average density stable. The model became unsustainable after the discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and after deep telescopic observations had shown that early galaxies were very different from galaxies seen in the Local Universe, an undeniable proof that the Universe is not static but evolves over time.

The quasi-steady-state cosmology solves the problems of the previous model, modifying the very concept of the Big Bang. It is no longer considered a unique event, in which the whole Universe comes into existence once and for all, but a recurring event, which periodically supplies the Universe with new matter:

The model is based on the idea that creation takes place in little big bangs each involving about 10¹⁶ solar masses distributed over all space and time, the universe itself being without a beginning. [F. Hoyle et al., Astrophysical Journal, 410, 2, 1993]

Here is the keystone that solves all the problems of panspermia! In a Universe that had no beginning but existed eternally, time is not an obstacle. Eternity is long enough for even the absurdly improbable to occur. In a pool of hot water rich in all the necessary nutrients, on some unknown planet lost in the mists of time, all the “gears” of the “machine” of life were finally arranged in the right order, starting a process that has never stopped since then and colonized every place in the cosmos, moving from comet to comet, from planet to planet. Or perhaps the “miracle” was repeated several times, and several times the life cycle was interrupted and then started again. Who knows? After all, everything is possible if the time at our disposal is endless.

Now the idea of ​​panspermia begins to show its deepest nature. Beyond the search for a viable cosmological model and plausible scientific evidence to support the hypothesis, there are a philosophical principle and an almost religious sentiment:

Somewhere among the infinite amount of material in an open cosmology even a superastronomical improbability will occur, and spread to become an ever-present and integral component of the cosmos. Effectively, then there was no time before which there was no life. Intuitively we may think there must have been, but if we do our instinctive supposition is cultural. A Buddhist for example, might think instinctively that life has always existed for an eternity. [C. Wickramasinghe, “The search for our cosmic ancestry”, 2014, page 28]

What Chandra Wickramasinghe meant in the quoted passage is that, in an eternal Universe, the cosmological time that separates the first appearance of life from our present is in all likelihood so inconceivably long that it loses meaning. It is as life existed forever, even if, on an intellectual level, we have to admit that there must have been a time when it did not exist. From the perspective of panspermia, life has always existed, and it has always reproduced itself only starting from a previous life, never from pure non-living matter.

Conclusive remarks

At the end of this long journey through the Universe as seen by panspermia’s advocates, it is worth noting that the whole theoretical framework on which the theory is based is full of controversial assumptions and highly questionable interpretations of data. The evolution of octopuses driven by extraterrestrial viruses and interstellar clouds rich in icy and desiccated colonies of Escherichia coli are just two of the many possible examples.

However, the panspermia hypothesis has been passionately cultivated by powerful and creative minds, which have produced a myriad of theoretical insights over many decades, worthy of being explored or at least known.

We will probably never know when and how the first living organism was born. After all, even the supporters of abiogenesis, much more numerous than those of panspermia, do not have the definitive answer to the problem of the origin of life.

And precisely because no one has this answer, it is necessary to consider at least possible what the supporters of panspermia think is even inevitable, i.e., a radical change of the dominant paradigm within the scientific community, with the abandonment of the theory of abiogenesis in favor of cosmic panspermia.

E. J. Steele and colleagues, authors of the compendium study on panspermia to which a large part of this story has been dedicated, are convinced of this:

It is important that we not allow Science to be stifled by a reign of dogmatic authority that strives to restrict its progress along narrow conservative lines. The current situation is strikingly reminiscent of the Middle Ages in Europe — Ptolemaic epicycles that delayed the acceptance of a Sun-centred planetary system for over a century. The current evidence suggests we came from space, we are made of viral genes, and eventually our evolutionary legacy would in full measure return to space. This will then complete the second and final phase of the Copernican revolution that was started over half a millennium ago. [E.J. Steele et al., “Cause of Cambrian Explosion — Terrestrial or Cosmic?” (2018)]

The cover of a music album inspired by the panspermia hypothesis

Read the other parts of this story

• **1/6* — The origin of life on Earth is unknown. In the scientific field, two theories try to explain the mystery: Abiogenesis, preferred by most scientists, and panspermia, defended by a small but fierce circle of scholars*
• **2/6* — Comets as vectors of life*
• **3/6* — Evolution driven by retroviruses and extraterrestrial octopuses*
• **4/6* — Interstellar bacteria and mass extinctions*
• **5/6 *— The biological Big Bang*