The Proxima Hypothesis – Life Around Every Star

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubbles-new-shot-of-proxima-centauri-our-nearest-neighbor/

Proxima Centauri is a small red dwarf star located just 4.25 light years away. It is slightly closer to Earth than the famous binary pair of Alpha Centauri A and B.  There is an exciting new discovery of a planet around it called Proxima B with a mass of roughly 1.3 times that of Earth. It exists in a temperature zone that has possibility of liquid water on it. See this report:

http://gizmodo.com/watch-live-meet-proxima-centauri-home-to-our-newest-e-1785821939

Earliest posts of this blog have described how, if, temperatures are right for water to exist on a planet, life emerges automatically given enough time. Even the presence of water and oxygen is not necessary to begin with since cyano bacteria can create it before oxygen breathing life emerges. The mechanisms as proposed were an extension of the Panspermia hypothesis and it was dubbed as Pansemeria.

A new hypothesis is now proposed based largely  on an intuitive deduction that is not possible to delineate here,

“Every star in the universe in its prime has at least one planet that exists in a temperature zone to permit existence of liquid water and it is likely that life exists, albeit merely bacterial one, around every star in the universe during its prime.”

The prime of a star implies the stages after birth of a star and before it begins to die. The precise mechanism for this hypothesis is not  known but the proposal is that it is inherent in the very mechanism that creates stars. If this hypothesis be true, then discovery of Proxima B is not at all surprising and many more such shall be made with time. The presence of life however does not imply advanced life necessarily. It may be merely at the bacterial level or it may be advanced depending upon the life of the planet and its precise circumstances. The author has interests in both physical sciences as well spiritual ones and the intuitive part is a consequence of the latter.

New Evidence form Rosetta Mission Supports Pansemeria Hypothesis

Discovering signs of life on a comet

How life came to Earth

Some of the earliest posts of this blog dating back to 2006 suggested that seeds of life were brought to earth by comets. The theory can be reached quickly by clicking archive links in the side bar. The theory named Pansmeria, an adaptation and detailing of the Panspermia hypothesis, then went on to develop a model of how life emerged on Earth and how it may emerge similarly on other habitable planets of the universe where temperature is in the range to permit presence of liquid water, sunshine conducive for photosynthesis and gravity sufficient for holding an atmosphere. Some of the precise details of the theory may need slight revision but this blogger stands by the overall picture as originally presented. Every new evidence that has emerged from science since has supported it.

Now new evidence from the Rosetta mission support the founding principle of the hypothesis of eight years ago, that comets can bring life to Earth. See this report from CNN,

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/30/world/rosetta-mission-discovery/index.html?sr=cnnitw

To quote from this report,

The European Space Agency (ESA), which is leading a consortium that includes NASA, announced that the mission to explore Comet 67P has discovered 16 organic compounds, described as "carbon and nitrogen-rich."

The agency says on its website that the discovery, made by the Philae lander includes four compounds that have never before been detected in comets.And it adds that some of the compounds "play a key role in the prebiotic synthesis of amino acids, sugars ... the ingredients for life."

"For example, formaldehyde is implicated in the formation of ribose, which, ultimately features in molecules like DNA. "The existence of such complex molecules in a comet, a relic of the early Solar System, imply that chemical processes at work during that time could have played a key role in fostering the formation of prebiotic material," it says.

However it seems that the scientists are still off key on the precise mechanisms as evident from the following comment in the same report,

Commenting on the findings, lander system engineer Laurence O'Rourke told CNN it was an important discovery. "If you apply energy to such organic compounds ... like a comet hitting a planet ... it could lead to the creation of amino acids which make up proteins, which are the basis of life itself," he said.

The more precise mechanisms are explained in this blog in the indicated early posts that can all be found at the following archive link:

http://alienaccount.blogspot.in/2006_09_01_archive.html.

Just take care that the posts are presented in reverse chronological order on this page.

Image developed from a NASA image at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/rosetta/20141107/rosetta20141107-16.jpg

Comets are not Vagabonds

Comet Lovejoy image from NASA (modified before use here)

Those who believe in a supreme Universal Intelligence believe that nothing major happens in the universe unless the Universe wills it. While scientists recognize the supreme organization in planets, stars and galaxies, some regard comets as wayward objects. However, there are others who see this as a necessity of the overall design. An earlier post (see here) in this blog described how comets may be regarded as the spaceships of God. Their icy interiors can bring genes of life stored in bacteria, the only form of life that survives hibernation over millions of years, acting as the seeds of life on new planets, where they awaken with the scent of moisture and a conducive climate. The genes of all life forms including humans are carried in bacterial genes. There is much more of that in earlier posts of this blog. Presently the earth is witnessing the spectacular comet Lovejoy in its vicinity.

Without comets, perhaps there would have been no life on earth. It is also true that some comets bring destruction to a planet. Without some earlier ones that destroyed the dinosaurs perhaps human life would not have emerged. Some predict some more such destructive collisions in future and there might be a purpose behind it too that is not fully comprehensible to the finite mind of humans.Regarding some speculated destructions in the near future see:
http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2015/01/apocalypse-during-2025-2050.html

Men came from Mars and Women from Venus

There were reports in the media recently that conditions were conducive for creation of life on Mars at one time and that life may have come to earth from that planet. I was reminded of the old adage that Men are from mars and the Women from Venus. However, it is not necessary to limit one’s imagination to just Mars or Venus once one has read and understood the theory of Panspermia (or its modification Pansmeria) described in several posts of this blog. The posts describe in detail how it is possible for bacteria in hibernation to arrive on Earth from virtually any part of the universe, from far away galaxies and even other galaxies over millions and billions of years. Within these bacteria are the genetic codes for all life forms that exist on earth and those that are yet to appear. Bacteria even carry the gene of advanced life forms on a planet because they can be infected by viruses carrying break away genes from advanced life forms. 

The genetic make up of bacteria is such as can be modified easily, and once modified replicate as they multiply by duplication rather than sexual reproduction that tends to eliminate such modification during reproduction. It does seem that it is at the level of bacteria and viruses that creation of new life forms takes place and it is an ongoing process, with most new variation rejected but few becoming a part of the genetic pool of life in the universe. It is only when a gene is integrated in a higher life form that it can be perpetuated near endlessly because of a continuous rejection of erroneous mutations through the process of sexual reproduction

Life Everywhere

The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years in diameter. The universe as we know contains about a 1000 billion galaxies. From time to time large objects from space hit all planets as well as the Earth. Small objects fall to Earth quite often, we call then shooting stars or meteorites, and they are just tiny asteroids. Some are made of rock and others are lumps of iron. Comets come from deep space and are frozen lumps of rock and ice. They have cool cores of ice and it is these that bring new genetic codes to earth from the cosmos on a regular basis, just as they do to other planets. When large comets hit a planet some material splashes out to create new objects in the heaven. Some of these carry away genetic codes to the cosmos. Thus we end up with a universe that has the code of life everywhere in the cosmos, ready to spring to life with the scent of moisture.

How can you prove that the universe is filled with this code of life? One may deduce that easily from the spectrum of light absorbed and scattered by interstellar dust. One can prove this from the fossils of comets too. Amino acids were found in samples returned by every one of the Apollo missions that landed on the moon. Elaborate precautions taken on one mission enabled NASA to rule out contamination. A number of balloon flights were made in the US during the middle-1960s, extending up to 25 miles, not to the top of the stratosphere but well up into it. In all cases, to the surprise of the experimenters themselves, living bacteria were found.

When life comes from space, it has to travel over distances measured in light-years. This travel could take millions of years, even billions of years. For this to be possible, the traveling cells would have to be able to survive for that long. They would have to be immortal and bacteria are immortal. Even 600-million-year-old halophiles locked in salt crystals remain viable. In fact, the apparent immortality of bacteria, even without freezing, is widely known. And with freezing, as occurs in space, the immortality of bacteria is ensured.Genes needed for evolutionary progress are imported to planets in bacterial spores. After arrival, these genes reside in bacteria, as silent DNA, before installation into the species where they will ultimately become useful. That is, bacteria contain silent genes that they do not need, but that higher forms of life do need. Are there any examples of this on earth?

In August 1996, Science carried a write-up by the group of scientists who had just obtained the complete sequence of the genome of the archaebacterium. Among the surprises contained in the genome of M. jannaschii were five genes for histones. Histones are essential proteins used by eukaryotic cells to help form their complex chromosomal structure. Neither eubacteria nor archaebacteria are known to use histones. Two of the five histone genes are not part of the main circular chromosome, but are carried on a much smaller "extra chromosomal element, because viral genomes must temporarily become a kind of extra chromosomal element before the process of transduction from one cell to another. Two of the histone genes in this archaebacterium are ready to be transducted to a higher form of life where they can be useful.

To quote Chandra Wickramasinghe from a trial in Arkansas,

“In studying the spectral behavior of micro-organisms in the laboratory we next noted that a diagnostic thumbprint of biology existed over the 3.4 micrometer waveband as shown in Exhibit 2. We then compared laboratory data with the observed behavior of infrared absorption for a star at the center of our galaxy and found the remarkably close correspondence between microbiology and astronomy. Bacteria seemed therefore to be present on a galaxy-wide scale. These identifications are, in the view of Sir Fred Hoyle and myself, as decisive as any that could be obtained from a comparison between laboratory data and astronomical observations. The failure on the part of most scientists today to recognize such obvious facts owes in large measure to the early indoctrination in Darwinism.”

Thus it is that life arrives on planets from space in genetic codes carried by bacteria. These are transferred to life forms through viruses that emerge from these bacteria. It is the reason that insects respond to ultraviolet light of wavelengths too short to be found on our planet, now or at any time in the past when life was possible. They carry genes useful on other planets.

NEXT: https://alienaccount.blogspot.com/2006/09/microbes-beginning-of-life.html