Fragments from Mars, Venus and Jupiter reached the Earth and the Moon, and vice versa
The question of the origin of life on Earth has occupied scientists and thinkers for years, but still remains open. Recently, there has been a turning point in the discussion, following a study conducted at Cornell University in the USA and Queen's University in Canada. The team of researchers has developed a computer program that reproduces the way in which substances from space enter the Earth. The findings were published in April in the journal "Science".
From the computer's findings, the researchers concluded that for billions of years the different planets exchanged tons of materials between them. This is how chemical elements and possibly living beings moved from planet to planet.
At the dawn of the solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago, dust grains, silicates (chemical substances), heavy organic substances and ice blocks formed together, forming spherical bodies with diameters ranging from millimeters to kilometers.
The bodies hit each other, stuck to each other, and this is how spheres of hundreds and even thousands of kilometers were formed. These are the planets and the moons. The large bodies that attracted each other greatly increased their speed before the collision, so the process is depicted as extremely violent.
The space bodies that landed on the surface of the earth during the "heavy bombardment" - as the event is called - are the ones that brought to it, so it is assumed, the buds of life. Over time, as a result of the mergers, the bodies surrounding the sun became smaller and smaller and collisions became rarer.
"In order to learn about the processes that led to these events, we must understand the dynamics of the elliptical orbits in which the objects revolved in space before entering the Earth," wrote the authors of the study. "With the help of fast computers and special software, we were able to follow the movement of bodies moving from planet to planet for 100 million years."
The beginning of the research in dark rocks that landed from outer space and were found in the snowy expanses of Antarctica. Experts noticed that the rocks were different from normal asteroid-derived meteorites, and they suspected that the strange rocks came to Earth from other planets.
In 1980, after astronauts brought samples from the Moon and Mars, it became clear that their chemical composition was the same as the chemical composition of the rocks. The researchers followed the remnants of cosmic radiation (radiation found in space) left in the rocks from the "heavy bombardment" period, and were able to estimate how long the rocks wandered in space before landing on Earth.
The tracking showed that the dozen rocks that came from the moon moved in space between a thousand and nine million years, and the bodies that came from Mars moved in space between 700 thousand and 15 million years. "It is difficult to assume that life can survive for such a period and under strong radiation," the experts argued. The tracking findings contradicted the idea that life could have arrived on Earth from other planets.
However, the data output by the computer shows a different picture. According to them, particles from the Moon and Mars moved in space for a relatively short time. According to computer simulations of 900 particles that were thrown from Mars and moved through space in elliptical orbits for 100 million years, it appears that 68 of them hit the Earth, 68 hit Venus, 135 hit Jupiter, 81 returned to Mars and the rest continued to move in space and will hit other targets in the future.
"Billions of dollars are spent to sterilize space crews," says Joseph Burns, one of the project's participants, "but if the situation was indeed as the computer simulates, the expense is unnecessary, because the planets have already met with the Earth and exchanged materials with it. In fact, particles from other planets flow continuously to us to this day."
The research shows that most of the particles that came to us from other planets are found in the bowels of the earth, probably in rocks, and no one knows about their existence. Particles of Venus and Jupiter cannot be identified today, because scientists do not have actual information about their chemical composition.
The simulations even show that collisions with the Earth happened every 16 thousand years. "Theoretically, particles from Mars can reach Earth even after two years, if they move in direct paths. This hypothesis strengthens theories that hold that life on Earth was brought from other planets," says Brett Gladman from Cornell University.
At the end of the 19th century, some scientists came up with the idea that somewhere in the universe conditions exist that allow life. These buds of life are carried in the universe as seeds, and they reached the earth via meteorites or in other ways. This theory, called the panspermia theory, was not accepted by most scientists at the beginning of the 20th century, and only in 1981 did Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, put forward a new version of it.
Following the study, the researchers believe, attention will be shifted towards Mars as a possible source of life on earth. Mars, whose face today is completely dry and cold, was probably warmer in the past, water flowed in it and life was bustling in it. At the end of this year, an international research mission will be launched that will last until the end of the next century.
The main goal of the research is to find water and life, and especially bacteria, that may thrive in the depths of the planet. It is possible that about four billion years ago, close to the formation of the solar system, the ancient Martian atmosphere was friendlier than the Earth's and served as a cradle for the creation of life. Rocks moving through space brought them to Earth. "Why should we look for the creation of life elsewhere and not on Earth?"
asks Professor Akiva Bar-Nun from the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University. "On the surface of Mars the temperatures are much lower, there is no liquid water, and if there was, it was only for a short period. On the surface of Venus, because of the massive greenhouse effect, the temperatures are so high, 450 degrees, that life could not form. The question of the beginning of life should be centered on the earth."
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