Did Aliens Seed Life On Earth? | Unveiled

Did Aliens Seed Life on Earth?

The debate on “where humans came from” has raged for centuries, with even the standard theory of evolution still labelled as just that - a theory. But there are also much stranger ideas about the origins of life on our planet.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; Did aliens seed life on Earth?

The Panspermia Hypothesis says that if life really does exist throughout the universe, then perhaps the key elements and resources that we need to cultivate life on Earth came from outer space originally. It works closely with the Fermi Paradox, which questions why aliens, assuming they exist, haven’t made contact with us; and the Drake Equation, which estimates how densely populated by alien races our galaxy actually is.

Panspermia - which translates as “all seed” - comes in a couple of different types, including accidental and directed panspermia. The first suggests that the supposed “seeds for life” were distributed by chance, while directed panspermia proposes that an alien race spread their seed deliberately. The general theory of human life having an extra-terrestrial backstory has only attracted serious scientific attention in the last two-hundred years, but many well-known scientists have lent their voice to it, including Stephen Hawking who believed that panspermia was certainly possible.

So, just how viable is it? Importantly, decades of experimentation have shown us that space doesn’t have to be void of all life. There are some organisms that we already know about that can survive the extreme, freezing temperatures, lack of oxygen, and high radiation levels. For example, a team of British scientists in 2013 discovered a new type of algae that might feasibly survive space travel if trapped inside space debris like a meteorite. After shooting frozen pellets of the algae into water at 4.31 miles per second (which is roughly the speed of a meteorite impacting with Earth), they found that a small percentage of the organisms could survive. In the grand scheme of human evolutionary history this might’ve been all it took to start an entire ecosystem.

Other real-world asteroid strikes provide further evidence that panspermia is at least “not impossible”… such as the Murchison meteorite, which landed in Australia in 1969 containing vital organic compounds including amino acids - the building blocks of life on Earth. Other, similar asteroids have shown up all across the globe, with NASA scientists speculating that the amino acids they carry could well have been made in space since the only elements required are nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide – none of which are especially rare.

So, plain ol’ panspermia is a possibility. Directed panspermia adds another crucial factor, though; a race of unknown, hyper-intelligent alien creatures with some kind of agenda for planet Earth. It’s a sizeable leap, but what would it mean if true?

General suggested reasons for directed panspermia include it being an elaborate, fairly ominous alien experiment to grow and study life on Earth - treating our particular planet as though it’s a giant petri dish. Failing that, the alien overlords are painted as gods, divinely spreading life throughout the universe simply because they can, and they feel like it’s the right thing to do. Growing stuff for the sake of growing it could well sound strange, but it’s actually what humans are in the early stages of trying to achieve right now - by pitching plans to terraform Mars. So, take that kind of ambition and place it onto an all-powerful, intergalactic race of creatures, and directed panspermia starts to make some sense.

Advocates for the theory claim there’s circumstantial evidence for directed panspermia much closer to home, too; in the shape of some diseases and allergies. Humans suffer more health ailments than any other species, with any one person falling ill dozens or even hundreds of times in their lifetime. And some of those illnesses are arguably “triggered” by the living conditions on Earth, and therefore point to us not necessarily belonging on this planet - or, so the theory goes.

Hay-fever is usually put forward as a prime example, since a pollen allergy is exceptionally inconvenient on a planet that needs pollination to live. Then there are the various health complications that can arise after over-exposure to the sun - again fairly inconvenient given how prominent the sun is in our lifestyles. But theorists have even gone so far as far to suggest that major disease outbreaks in the past – including mad cow disease and polio – were linked to alien microbes, though these particular claims have been debunked as having no real evidence behind them.

Other suggested motives for directed panspermia move away from human life being an alien experiment, though. Instead, it could simply be a method of intergalactic colonisation. Again, humans have aims to move to other planets, so why not aliens - especially ultra-advanced aliens? Along these lines, perhaps the reason we don’t see extra-terrestrials everywhere is that they’re also not capable of large-scale interstellar travel, so purposefully sending tiny seeds is their best and only way to spread out.

The panspermia seeds may have been the last remnants of an ancient, dying civilisation sent out in the hope that they’d find a home elsewhere in the universe… and lo and behold they ended up on Earth. If that’s true, then perhaps humans today are even identical or very similar to those creatures of the past, aliens who lived a long time ago in a galaxy far beyond our reach. In fact, in 2015, scientists discovered a tiny metal structure in space reportedly full of biological material, and it was again put forward as possible evidence of panspermia - or at least of attempted panspermia.

As arguments for panspermia have gained traction in recent years, we’ve started to see human initiatives based on the principles of it. The Breakthrough Starshot Project is planning to send small “nanocraft” probes, travelling at one fifth of the speed of light, towards Alpha Centauri. While these probes won’t contain biological materials (they’re more focussed on simply understanding the closest star system to our own), they do pave the way for similar missions with a focus on panspermia in the near future.

Of course, such a move would compromise Earth’s long-standing, international planetary protection rules, which prohibit the biological contamination of space. And so, if aliens did seed life on earth, and directed panspermia is a real phenomenon, then that alien race can’t have had comparable legislation. Either that, or they chose to overrule it… Which, given our ever-growing focus on Mars, the wider solar system and other galaxies in general, feels like a decision that humankind will also encounter at some stage. At that point, we’d be the aliens doing the seeding, most likely as a way for us to ensure our own longevity.

And so, if it’s reasonably imaginable that we’d one day be facilitating directed panspermia for ourselves, is it so unimaginable that some other creature could’ve achieved the same thing in the distant, distant past? Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to discover that human life came from somewhere else entirely. Far from making us doubt our own autonomy as a species, it could be seen as optimistic proof of extra-terrestrial beings and of general life’s ability to survive absolutely anything.