#panspermia

[raointean]

From chapter 8 of Andy Weir's "Project Hail Mary"

[k25ff]

d100 relatively useless starting equipment

Roll and consult the list. Humans get to roll twice and take both.

Crippling debt (1d20x10 silver)

Stone with a hole in it.

Wanted poster (bad mediocre caricature)

Prewritten formal apology. Unsigned.

Ancient coin of ‘no value’.

A bitter rival.

Two false moustaches

Grubby jar of ointment “for horses”.

Letter opener. Mother-of-pearl handle.

Assorted pamphlets for various deities.

Seventeen copper pieces in a sock.

Scowling cameo portrait. Unknown subject.

Clay pipe, unused.

Dried lizard on a string. A charm, according to the seller.

d6 assorted pretty marbles.

Flint arrowhead you found in a ditch.

Dented pewter cup.

Twelve feet of coiled twine.

Fossilised pyrite coiled shell.

Handkerchief embroidered with an unpronounceable name.

Small pouch of a half-dozen nails.

Lock of hair tried with a ribbon. Unknown source.

Heavy book (unknown language) for pressing flowers.

Glass eye.

Small wheel of hard cheese, weighted to throw.

Sarcastic ex.

Set of dentures.

Unmatched ball of socks.

Corked bottle of ‘holy air’.

Promissory note for ‘a favour’, signed by you.

Three dice, one loaded. You don’t remember which.

Pack of grubby playing cards.

Ledger of minor debts you’re owed.

Tightly folded paper with a note – ‘NOT YET’.

Small porcelain egg, painted with an image of an unknown beast.

Skeleton key that doesn’t open any lock you’ve tried yet.

Stick of faintly luminescent chalk

Small flask of vinegar labelled ‘not vinegar’.

A hat that’s a size too large.

Hereditary curse of slugs.

Signet ring bearing a crest you don’t recognise.

Small pewter figurine of a bear wearing a hat.

Bottle of very strong perfume. A little goes a long way.

List of names you don’t know. Most are crossed out.

Signed affidavit confirming you exist. Notarised.

Bundle of ten candles, one blue.

Get-rich-quick scheme.

Baby shoes, never worn (not tragic).

Square of cloth, dyed an ambitious yet doomed shade of purple.

Unpleasant tallow soap.

Tooth of the Questing Beast (cursed).

Small raincloud, trained to return to a waxed bag.

Flask of bad but very strong rum.

Defunct hereditary title (Underwarden of the Eel Ponds).

Blood pact with someone you met once on a ferry.

Bag of dried leaves. Save vs Poison when smoked.

Some stones – maybe good for skipping?

Mystery Jerky – probably edible.

Small knife, only usable for fruit.

Thimble-sized drinking horn made from the tusk of a sabre-toothed mouse.

Portable kettle shaped a bit like a dragon.

Map to buried treasure, drawn from a dream.

Fancy napkin (stolen).

Pending lawsuit – hazy on details.

String of bone prayer beads – carved with unknown symbols.

A grudge, nursed for years, against someone who doesn’t know who you are.

Monogrammed clothing. All of it.

Paranoid suspicion that you’re being followed.

Nice hat, sought by many.

Concerning rash.

Allergy to dust and heresy.

Special carafe that makes potions taste better (false).

Vague prophecy that’s probably about you.

Thesis advisor. Will need updates eventually.

Jarred silence, wax-sealed. ‘75 vintage.

Neatly-folded flag of a foreign nation. You’re fairly sure which one.

Inconvenient, distinctive smell.

Bottle of birdsong, pickled in vinegar.

Pair of batons, knowledge of semaphore.

Embarassing tattoo.

Book of Wylde Beafts – you’ve ticked off the ones you’ve seen.

Family heirloom that several relatives believe was promised to them.

Themed set of cutlery.

Crumpled invite to a very exclusive club.

Tiny vial of deadly snail venom (handle with care).

Snowglobe-sized terrarium containing a ‘bonsai eon’ (roughly five minutes).

Decoy coinpurse for pickpockets. Contains a small lead weight and a rude note.

Double-headed coin.

Jury duty.

Half a map of an unknown location. Poorly-drawn, badly-stained.

Running tab in a bar – not local, but not as far away as you want it to be.

Pocket moondial – only works on nights when all three moons are visible.

A jacket that’s been repaired so much it’s wholly patches.

Tiny commemorative spoon. Date embossed on it means nothing to you.

A heartfelt letter of recommendation. The signatory's name is illegible.

A penpal, and a collection of correspondence from the aforementioned.

Interminable knitting project.

Poorly-calibrated compass which points Narth.

A manuscript that you’re trying to get published.

A watertight alibi. You don’t know why you need one.

[unearthlycat]

stupid scifi panspermia concept: all life on earth is descended from some alien meteor-hitchhiking microbe or whatever.... except for viruses. those guys are purely an Earth Original.

first contact happens and earth scientists and alien scientists start sharing notes and rapidly devolve into what the fuck do you mean you have an entire other type of lifeform and you just didn't think that merited mentioning

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I think that if we ever find evidence of past life on Mars, it will almost certainly have originated on Earth. There is a hypothesis called panspermia which proposes that microorganisms could survive on meteors and be carried across the reaches of space. On Earth we've found meteorites that originated on the Moon and Mars, and on the Moon a meteorite that originated on Earth (the fact that Apollo 14 just so happened to land near one suggests that they are littered all over the surface), so it's not out of the realm of possibility that we may one day find an Earth rock on Mars. Apollo 12 landed near an earlier unmanned probe, Surveyor 3, and when they brought pieces of it back to Earth they found it covered in microorganisms; the probe had not been entirely disinfected before launch, and the germs survived on the Moon for years until it was recovered. That's not to say they thrived on the surface; they didn't spread and contaminate it, they just remained dormant on the probe. I highly doubt that Earth life could have seeded Mars, but it's entirely possible that some Earth life made it to Mars and died on or shortly after impact. The conditions that allowed life to evolve on Earth appear to have occurred only once in four billion years, and the odds of it happening independently twice in the same solar system are negligible; any life on Mars or Europa or Titan or anywhere else wold have to share a common ancestor. The interstellar asteroid ʻOumuamua came from who knows how many lightyears away, hurtling through space for millions or billions of years before passing through our neighborhood; I don't think any life could survive on an asteroid for that long (no nutrients, no atmosphere, insufficient light from distant stars), but their dead remains could. Maybe there's a chunk of Earth that got blasted off 66,000,000 years making its way to Alpha Centauri with Desiccated Dino DNA.

[apollohour]

Do you believe in any of the following theories around why we have not seen evidence of alien life yet?

Alien life has already visited, [x] thing is evidence of that

The Great Filter: There is a barrier which makes life rare due to it being *

Dark Forest Theory: where space-faring civilisations do not have a reliable **

The development of life isn't rare in of itself but the sheer size/expansion ***

Aliens know about us and just avoid us because they don't like us >:(

They have a different basis of life which we have not considered looking for

Panspermia: life actually originated elsewhere, making us somewhat "alien"

We simply don't have the scientific ability to find them yet we don't have ****

Multiple of the above!

Other (tags!)

I don't believe in extraterrestrial life

Results/What is happening

Voting ended onJan 24, 2025

* practically impossible to surpass, making life (particularly intelligent life) hard to develop ** way to communicate intention, so all species function under the assumption other species are predatory and a threat to their existence. Either destroying other alien life or just staying silent. *** of the universe means that it's practically impossible to meet other species **** the ability to reliably find life yet. We struggle to correctly identify and image planets and view things in ways which is affected greatly by general relativity, who's to say we (or even they) can pin-point life yet?

<P.S. I probably made a mistake in here because I did this quickly in the middle of the night, please feel free to tag/reply with corrections or just more info! we love space here <3>

[squ1dy80]

i was thinking about the panspermia theory in project hail mary and theyre all talking about how something got to earth and erid and wherever the astrophage came from but like...

i feel like the astrophage would be the life seed. cuz they can travel 8 light years through space to lots of stars!! and theyre cells!!

i dunno my brain just thought of this

[panelswithoutpeople]

The Fossil from Weird Fantasy No. 22

by Bill Gaines, Al Feldstein, and Joe Orlando

[namonakirei]

I just finished Project Hail Mary and the amount of people who think panspermia/lithopanspermia is a wild, unrealistic hypothesis that has no basis in reality and makes the science not grounded in the book makes me think of reading old Clive Cussler books and how for the longest time people felt the same way about hypothetical pre-Columbian contact between the Americas and other continents (diffusionism, IIRC).

I feel the same way about both; Lithopanspermia is as likely in my mind as pre-Columbian intercontinental contact and travel. Far as I am concerned, they are both true to some degree.

I mean, Leif den Lykkelige having traveled to Greenland and the Northeastern Americas was considered ridiculous at some point, too, but he sure did, and I'm convinced a few other pre-Columbian contacts listed in the wiki page did happen, definitely Polynesian-Chilean contact of some sort. And ammonia and other building blocks of aminoacids, proteins, and life, have been found in at least two separate asteroids. Some sources after the cut.

This isn't meant to be evidentiary, it's just my opinion, but I believe it to be a relatively grounded one, yannow?

Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories - Wikipedia

Abundant ammonia and nitrogen-rich soluble organic matter in samples from asteroid (101955) Bennu - Nature Astronomy

Rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu contain some of the molecular building blocks of life on Earth, such as amino acids and nucleobases.

Building Blocks of Life Found on Samples Collected From an Asteroid

The find suggests that amino acids could land on Earth on meteorites