← all shorts

Concept

Panspermia

A spacecraft resembling a virus with tentacle-like appendages is depicted in space, surrounded by celestial bodies, symbolizing the concept of panspermia.

The hypothesis that life, or its precursors, can travel between planetary bodies inside meteoroids or cometary debris ejected by impacts. The idea dates to the nineteenth century and has been seriously revisited as extremophiles like tardigrades and radiation-resistant bacteria turn out to survive conditions once thought sterilising. Panspermia is not a claim that life originated elsewhere, only that it could plausibly move.

Mentioned in 2 articles