Did Life on Earth Come From Outer Space? 

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The main problem with panspermia is that life had to first arise somewhere. Panspermia doesn't solve any problems about how life arose, it just kicks the can further down the road.

Carl Sagan: "The lives and deaths of the stars seem impossibly remote from the human experience. And yet we're related in the most intimate way to their life cycles."

There are at least 2 very good reasons that life on Earth is not a result of directed panspermia: 1. Deep sea vents. Some of the earliest life on Earth arose from deep sea vents. These would be very difficult to seed from a spaceship, as opposed to land or the shallows. 2. Mitochondria. Mitochondria arose later than early life, meaning the first life forms probably did not have access to the ATP cycle, and used the lactic acid cycle or an analogue. If aliens introduced life on Earth, it is unlikely they would have neglected to add ATP synthesis into the DNA of their seed batch, because it is 15x more efficient than the lactic acid cycle. It would have made their seed batches horribly inefficient if the goal was to spread life through the galaxy if they had "forgotten" to include such a critical pathway to mulitcellular life.

Obviously a ton of work and research into this. Nice work...really solid stuff, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

I cannot recommend this channel highly enough. The narration, subjects and pacing are almost perfect.

I can't belive how your documentaries have so little views... there's allot of work put into these...

The problem with panspermia is, it still doesn't answer the question, "How did life begin?" it just moves where it happened. Life began on Earth almost as soon as it could begin. So I think that abiogenesis will happen anywhere that conditions make it possible. This would make it much more likely that life began on Earth because the number of "lucky things" that have to happen is so much lower. With terrestrial abiogenesis all you need to do is have conditions that make it possible exist, and conditions that make life possible need to continue. For panspermia you still need the same things to happen in some other location, but you also needs some event so violent it launches a life form into interplanetary space, but not so violent it kills the life form (this is quite a tall order). Then that life form needs to survive in space for quite some time, then it needs to survive entry into Earth's atmosphere and landing on Earth and finally, it needs to land in a place where it and it's descendance can survive and evolve. Occam's Razor states that the simpler answer is usually the correct answer. Panspermia is the opposite of Occam's Razor.

8:49 - always wondered why this is thought of without the consideration that lots of stars had to die to make complex elements that are required for complex tech. Like gold, iron, etc It seems more likely we are one of the first given the timeline we know (n=1)

Reminds me of an ancient Sanskrit proverb. "Be humble for you are of the Earth, but so to be Noble for you are of the Stars". Also, it's five days into 2021. I hope somebody looks back at this comment in a few years and is like, "don't worry kid it gets better."

We're probably some alien kid's science fair project that probably got a C+ at best

7:05 'SOFT PANSPERMIA' "accidental transmission of life" - sounds wrong... Kind of like didn't wear protection and forgot to pull-out type of scenario.... 😐

i really love this channel.. nice presentation and narration -- it is very easy to understand.. probably my new fav channel!!

I like the idea of the simple life form arriving in rocks from space. Then the mixing of chemicals over milllions of years in the oceans until the right combination of chemicals formed and an organism replecated.

"Another planet could hold the key that makes the spontaneous creation of life much more likely." PENGUINS! A highly advanced society of penguins, working diligently in their laboratories...

Low ads for such great content!!! Hats off to you my good Sir!!

Really enjoying this channel and all the hard work and love that is obviously put into each video. Count me in to keep watching for years to come.

Took preety long to load a video I was eagerly waiting for it . Other great video this time explaining Panspermia. Heard about it today I got to know lot about it. Keep up the good work. Love your work and explanation. Looking forward for next video. Please upload soon. Take care Bye

I think of Carl Sagan's quote about anthropocentric conceit and provinciality when I hear people take a skeptical standpoint on even the physical possibility of panspermia........... ""We seem to crave privilege. Merited not by our works, but by our birth. By the mere fact that, say, we're humans, and born on earth. We might call it the anthropocentric, the human centered, conceit. This Conceit is brought close to culmination in the notion that we are created in god's image. 'The creator and ruler of the entire universe, looks just like me. My, what a coincidence. How convenient and satisfying.' The sixth century B.C. greek philosopher, Xenophanes, understood the arrogance of this perspective, here is what he said. "The Ethiopians make their gods black and snubbed nosed, the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yes, and if oxen and horses, or lions had hands and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do. Horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses and oxen like oxen'."

I have been watching your uploads almost all day. I am a new subscriber. You are awesome

When i hear the term panspermia I have a picture, in my mind's eye, of James T Kirk trying to spread his seed with every alien female he comes across.

Please never stop making these!

I have only just come across your program and now I just can’t stop watching, it’s brilliant as others have said the amount of work and research gone into this production is absolutely amazing. Thank you for a great program.

Origin stories are always more complex than expected. :)

Very well done. Thank you. If everything in the Universe is made of and from the same basic ingredients does there really need to be a 'somewhere'? Life seems to me to be inevitable given the right circumstances and those can probably vary. Given the size of just our galaxy life could be continuously evolving elsewhere in it and we'd never know. Amino acids in comet tails gives rise to deep thought.

thank you for the great documentaries, your narration is on a par with sir David Attenborough. And the quality of the c.g is amazing,

I miss your videos! Glad to see a new one. I really love your job!

Seems to me that advanced intelligent life must be a relatively recent event, as the universe would have had to age enough for the right conditions to be set and to have gone through several stellar generations to create the required heavy elements. Some building blocks of life may have come from extraterrestrial sources, but most likely just minimally adding to what was already present. The simplest solution is usually the correct one.

Thank you for putting so much work into these amazing videos. It really shows and I love every video you've put out lol

Loved it. Some quality at last - (and it only took 4.5 billion years. Lol) Keep it up, GREAT

The samples collected from the comet's tail ( e.g.amino acids) , is extremely exciting..🌌

I’ve watched these documentaries many many times, they are so well put together, BRAVO!!

Just incredible...your effort shows clearly well done sir !!! Thank you for making learning fun instead of a grind

Your channel is now my favourite, meticulously researched and delivered in a fascinating, clear way, slowly so there's time to digest what's being said. I feel we are children of the earth. I have no scientific basis for that, I just feel it within me.

A new year, a new discovery! What a channel! Amazing job guys!

The best channel on RU-vid! Thank you and congratulations.

Magnificent channel thank u for this marvelous work and best of luck for the future

I've always thought that tardigrades indicate to us that life having come to Earth from space is definitely feasible because those things can survive so many different extreme environments.

Thank you History of the Earth. I find this series to be at the level of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" and consequently much better that NDT's "cosmos". (now I'll copy this comment to all episodes...)

One of the best night time channels.

The theory of panspermia is interesting and not impossible but where did the life, which was transported by whatever means, come from? There needs to be an ultimate origin of life whether it was on a planet or in some other way. I had been wondering when you were going to do a new video. Thank you. This one was, as expected, worth the wait.

Is this series going to stop when humans enter the scene, or is is going to continue into human history?

Fantastic video as usual. I love The History Brothers.

I wouldn't have thought this to actually be possible, but David Kelly might indeed be a more than adequate substitute for Sir David Attenborough to narrate documentaries! Did you already hand in your application at the BBC? ;)

I would like to see some speculation and artwork about what earth would have been like with fewer or no extinction events.

I swear I'm not getting notifications to watch these.. Loving the series, however!

If you think about it for a second, it’s clear that everything came from space. The water, the chemicals, everything. We’re just quibbling over timing it seems.

The statement that some of the ingredients for life came from space is kind of a cop out to shoehorn in soft panspermia. All of the ingredients came from space, that organic molecules could have rained down in comets and meteors is pretty much a given considering that we find these molecules in molecular clouds in star forming regions, but it's still just chemistry not life at this point. The earth has processes that could have generated these molecules independently.

If 'life' could evolve elsewhere, why not here on Earth - chemistry + billions of years

Fascinating indeed! I am always amazed by but what we don’t know, but can guess at.

One of your best so far.

"Panspermia" meaning "All seeds" in ancient Greek doesn't make full sense to me, I think in this context it means "seeds everywhere". Because all seeds still doesn't say much.

Guys... turns out aliens did visit Earth after all! But it was our distant, DISTANT ancestors! We were the aliens all along! 😱 Lol, jokes aside, panspermia is something I'm not sure if we'll be able to prove or disprove in either direction. But it is fun to think about, and I thoroughly enjoyed how it was presented here. I'm hooked on the content of this channel!

I'm wondering if we now know enough about cellular biology, genetic engineering, and the attributes of Venus and Mars to create lifeforms that can live on them? What may strike us as inhospitable is like a spa weekend to the right exophile. Or do we even need to engineer such? Some of the coldest and driest parts of the world are in Antarctica, and yet I'd suppose we'd find thousands of bacteria per milliliter of crushed rock there. Perhaps they'd only need minor modification to deal with lower atmospheric availability of nutrients?

love this series!

At about 15:00 you brought up the point I use whenever someone says life came here from somewhere else or our universe sprang from the remnants of a previous universe. Both merely avoid addressing the question of how they began.

everything came from space, even earth. so technically yes it did

In the immensity of the universe, it would be almost absurd to think that the only place where the conditions for life existed is our planet. That said, I find it very hard to believe that the basis of life that evolved here has "survived" the more than extreme conditions involved in wandering through space and then impacting on Earth.

I love this series too much

Love your channel so thought provoking thx

My question is if panspermia is true what was the first reaction to start it? Since if life is being moved around the cosmos it all must’ve started somewhere and how did that life start?

Anyone else still pissed that RU-vid moved the comment section?

Man I wish I could experience a day with you and your crew. Rock on brother, killin it.

Fantastic work!

think about it, EVERYTHING came from space

I wonder if life originally forms in a nebula or other non traditional environments.

More good work by Leila Battison. Keep up the good work together.

Thank you. Refreshing.

Awesome video. Thought provocting. I would say, if we are children of the Earth, we would also be children of the universe. After all, Earth is a child of the universe 💗

Hmm... seems unlikely, at least for what we would consider life as we know it. It's my understanding that DNA itself even if perfectly preserved otherwise would break down over these sort of time scales, taking into account the half-life of atoms and whatnot.

I think they forget the amount of heat and force that would happen to launch the microbs into space in the first place. After that, entry really isn't a challenge. That's why transpermia is very unlikely

The new thing, I have learned today. Superb.

I have been enjoying the series. This one felt like it was lacking some. Possibly it was my bias that I think the idea of an alien spacecraft flying around dumping material is foolish and annoying. I think that I am just frustrated you spent so much time on that part. But besides that, this series is still draws me in with it's visuals. I look forward to the next one.

Panspermia could be possible. But on the other hand, the evidence pointing to Panspermia might also be evidence for something very else: Abiogenesis might be easy, given the right conditions, as most building blocks for Life, including certain types of sugar, amino acids and other organic molecules seem to form spontaneously everywhere, as we even found them in comets and other types of Space dust. And that is the elephant in the room. Panspermia tries to avoid the possibility of Abiogenesis and replaces it by an "It's turtles all the way down" approach. Live on Earth came form somewhere else, and there it came from some other elsewhere, and there it was brought from some other place etc.. Panspermia has another argument against it: Time. Life on Earth is possible because Earth is rich in elements like Carbon, Oxygen, Sulfur, Nitrogen and Iron. Those have to be created by nuclear fusion in stars and stellar explosions, and they are generated only in small amounts each star generation. Astronomers talk about the metallicity of stars and stellar clouds, meaning the relative content of elements heavier than Hydrogen and Helium. It increases with time. Life on Earth is probably older than 3.5 billion years, and the metallicity of Earth hasn't changed much since 4.5 billion years. That's less than 9 billion years after the Big Bang. If sentient beings have sent out alien sperms to inject Life on other planets, they would have been formed on planets even closer to the Big Bang, meaning their home worlds had only half the metallicity of ours, making Life on them even less probable than on ours. So why should barren land bear the seeds to Life and spread it across the Universe, if later much more fertile ground is available for Life to form spontaneously there?

Excellent view of possibilities, it's so viable and makes sense! Really good film .

Love the Hokusai inspired art work

I just hope one day in my lifetime we will find the truth.

And that kids. Is how I met your mother 4.5 billion years later.

4:43 He is also the guy who discovered first Uranus and gave it his name.

Much obliged! 😁👍

"Literally everything is in space" Rick Sanchez 2020

Well, we have no evidence that Earth's life did _not_ begin via some kind of panspermia. However, panspermia is not a solution for the puzzle of abiogenesis - it just pushes it out of our planet. One can perhaps argue that some other world might have had more favorable, longer-lasting conditions for the first life to develop, but that's a pretty tenuous argument. I am still betting on indigenous life, perhaps aided by simple spaceborne organic molecules.

I like the way you explore all possibility's Thanks

I have a friend who believes we (humans) were seeded by Aliens. I tried explaining well if that's how life was created who created the Aliens who seeded us and then who seeded the Aliens who seeded them, etc ,etc all the way back to the big bang? Meaning the the big bang would of had to have created intelligent life capable of interstellar space travel and bio engineering immediately for that to be true... he still thinks Aliens made us! Bless him.

Then Jupiter should be full of life

We are an absolute fluke. And in universal time we will all pass into the nothingness that we have always been and always will be.

Not a huge fan of McKenna but his conversations with 'magic mushrooms' regarding panspermea is worth a listen.

YESSSSS ANOTHER VIDEO!!!!!

How lovely to be talked to unlike the brash American way of talking at one with out a break to draw breath..., a super production great graphics & above all food for thought. Thank you.

Thus the difference between believability and impossibility. Panspermia is not believable, the distances and timescales are too great and the plausibility of live coming into existence on Earth without outside intervention is too high. But, despite the distances, timescales, and plausibility of local invention, panspermia is unlikely to be demonstrated to be actually impossible....just adjacent to it.

the stages sounds like how babies are made, love that all life has the same journey to go through to get here

Great video

Did Life on Earth come from Space? What a stupid question, where's the Earth? IN SPACE!

We'd still be 'children of the earth'. Panspermia, has it in the name. If it's true, then it implies that Earth is the womb that birthed life. Regardless of what we discover about our origins, the earth is our mother. That is a fact. Not knowing the father, may simply have to be something we live with. Yet it's no mystery whose children we are. A planet that protects, nurtures, and thrives. With flaws, and temperaments alike. All panspermia does is point toward the fact, that the universe itself, functions very much like life itself. It would imply a much more vast concept of reproduction than I think we could ever grasp. Bonded to us, so universally to all life, with alternatives being rare exception.

You should make a video talking about all the different human civilizations and their explanation of how life began. Maybe there is something there. I wonder what ancient humans must have thought of this.

So you're saying adam and eve where born on another planet?😄

Of course life came from space. The earth came from space. Our "modern" science has only been around for a little over 100 years, so no....we do not understand everything. We have reached an impasse with particle physics and quantum mechanics. Not much will happen until we get past it. Nor, will we be able to understand our past until we do. Lots has happened people.

Astonishing, every time

Damn these videos are incredible.

Never liked panspermia, just seemed like a god of the gaps. Plausible, but only brings up more unanswered questions. And of course Occam's razor just kills it.