Panspermia: Life's Big Bang
One of my favorite concepts about the emergence of life on Earth
Early last semester, in my intro biology course I remember how we talked about how all things are connected. That organisms are made up of carbon-based bonds that lead to chemical reactions causing the production of energy and metabolism within organisms, permitting life to develop. I was deeply fascinated by this concept, and I would frequently ask my teacher questions about how this occurred. He would smile, and then he lectured the class about a theory passed around in the scientific community: panspermia.
The word “panspermia” as he called it translated to mean “Life’s Big Bang”, the theory of how all life on Earth developed. He explained that shortly after the creation of Earth, the planet was likely bombarded with asteroids and comets containing organic compounds. Water, zinc, carbon, magnesium- all of these elements were on these alien bodies, and they were added to the planet. Since lifeforms here are carbon based, this would have helped provide the necessary materials needed for lifeforms to emerge on the Earth.
I was deeply fascinated by this concept, as it had answered a lot of the questions I had in my head about how life emerged on our planet. However, it also led me to have more questions as well. Were the first organisms truly carbon based? What did it look like? How did we potentially go from being small organisms floating in the ocean, to something can change the shapes of our landscapes as we see them?
Such questions illuminate me, and as I spend my time learning more about biology I can only hope to answer them.