Space is the place: did life begin in the cosmic void?

A few weeks' ago I was watching a television documentary about the search for intelligence aliens and featuring the usual SETI experts Jill Tarter and Seth Shostak when I realised that we rarely see any crossover with research into non-intelligent extra-terrestrial life. Whereas the former is often seen by outsiders as pie-in-the-sky work by idealistic dreamers, the latter has more of a down-to-Earth feel about it, even though it has at times also suffered from a lack of credibility.

Based on current thinking, it seems far more probable that life in the universe will mostly be very small and entirely lacking consciousness, in other words, microbial. After all, life on Earth arose pretty much as soon as the environment was stable enough, around 3.7 billion years ago or even earlier. In contrast, lifeforms large enough to be visible without a microscope evolved around 1 billion or so years ago (for photosynthetic plants) and only about 580 million years ago for complex marine animals.

The recent publicity surrounding the seasonal variations in methane on Mars has provided ever more tantalising hints that microbial life may survive in ultraviolet-free shelters near the Martian surface, although it will be some years before a robot mission sophisticated enough to visit sink holes or canyon walls can investigate likely habitats. (As for the oft-talked about but yet to be planned crewed mission, see this post from 2015.)

Therefore it seems that it is worth concentrating on finding biological or pre-biological compounds in extra-terrestrial objects as much as listening for radio signals. The search can be via remote sensing (e.g. of molecular clouds, comets and asteroids) as well as investigating meteorites - bearing in mind that the Earth receives up to one million kilogrammes of material per day, although less than one percent is large enough to be identified as such.

The problem is that this area of research has at times had a fairly poor reputation due to the occasional premature claim of success. Stories then become widespread via non-specialist media in such a way that the resulting hype frequently bears little relation to the initial scientific report. In addition, if further evidence reverses that conclusion, the public's lack of understanding of the error-correcting methods of science leads to disillusion at best and apathy at worst.

One key hypothesis that has received more than its fair share of negative publicity has been that of panspermia, which suggests not just the chemicals of biology but life itself has been brought to Earth by cosmic impactors. The best known advocates are Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, but their outspoken championing of an hypothesis severely lacking in evidence has done little to promote the idea. For while it is feasible - especially with the ongoing discovery of extremophiles everywhere from deep ocean vents to the coolant ponds of nuclear reactors - to envisage microbial life reaching Earth from cometary or asteroid material, the notion that these extra-terrestrials have been responsible for various epidemics seems to be a step too far.

It's long been known that comets contain vast amounts of water; indeed, simulations suggest that until the Late Heavy Bombardment around four billion years ago there may have been far less water on Earth than subsequently. Considering the volumes of water ice now being discovered on Mars and the Moon, the probability of life-sustaining environments off the Earth has gained a respectable boost.

It isn't just water, either: organic compounds that are precursors to biological material have been found in vast quantities in interstellar space; and now they are being found in the inner solar system too. That's not to say that this research has been without controversy as well. Since the early 1960s, Bartholomew Nagy has stirred debate by announcing the discovery of sophisticated pre-biological material in impactors such as the Orgueil meteorite. Examination by other teams has found that contamination has skewed the results, implying that Nagy's conclusions were based on inadequate research. Although more recent investigation of meteorites and spectrophotometry of carbonaceous chondrite asteroids have supplied genuine positives, the earlier mistakes have sullied the field.

Luckily, thorough examination of the Australian Murchison meteorite has promoted the discipline again, with numerous amino acids being confirmed as of non-terrestrial origin. The RNA nucleobase uracil has also been found in the Murchison meteorite, with ultraviolet radiation in the outer space vacuum being deemed responsible for the construction of these complex compounds.

Not that there haven't been other examples of premature results leading to unwarranted hype. Perhaps the best known example of this was the 1996 announcement of minute bacteria-like forms in the Martian ALH84001 meteorite. The international headlines soon waned when a potential non-biological origin was found.

In addition to examination of these objects, experiments are increasingly being performed to test the resilience of life forms in either vacuum chambers or real outer space, courtesy of the International Space Station. After all, if terrestrial life can survive in such a hostile environment, the higher the likelihood that alien microbiology could arrive on Earth via meteorite impact or cometary tail (and at least one amino acid, glycine, has been found on several comets).

Unmanned probes are now replicating these findings, with the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft finding glycine in the dust cloud around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2016. Although these extra-terrestrial objects may lack the energy source required to kick-start life itself, some are clearly harbouring many of the complex molecules used in life on Earth.

It has now been proven beyond any doubt that organic and pre-biological material is common in space. The much higher frequency of impacts in the early solar system suggests that key components of Earth's surface chemistry - and its water - were delivered via meteorites and comets. Unfortunately, the unwary publication of provisional results, when combined with the general public's feeble grasp of scientific methodology, has hindered support for what is surely one of the most exciting areas in contemporary science. A multi-faceted approach may in time supply the answers to the ultimate questions surrounding the origin of life and its precursor material. This really is a case of watch (this) space!

Something sinister: the left handedness of creation

I'm embarrassed to admit it but the first home-grown science experiment I remember undertaking was to explore the validity of astrology. Inspired by the Carl Sagan book and television Cosmos I decided to see for myself if, after centuries of practice by millions of adherents, the whole thing really was a load of bunk. So for three months I checked the predictions for my star sign every week day and was amazed at the result: I found them so vague and generalised that I could easily find something in my life each day to fit the prediction. A sort of positive result that negates the hypothesis, as it were. As a young adult I encountered people with a rather less sceptical frame of mind, and if anything their astrological information only reinforced my earlier results. As my birthday is on the 'cusp' between two star signs, I found that about half the astrologically-inclined viewed me as a typical sign A whilst the other half dubbed me a typical sign B. At this point, I think I can rest my case...

Of course, astrology is a very old discipline so it's no wonder it's pretty easy to see the cracks. Over the past forty or so years there have been several generations of authors with a slightly more sophisticated approach, paying superficial lip service to the scientific method. Although their methodology fails due to the discarding or shoehorning of data, this hasn’t stopped the likes of L. Ron Hubbard from making mints. To this end, I decided to generate a hypothesis of my own and test it to a similar level of scrutiny as their material. Thus may I present my own idea for consideration: evidence suggests that our universe was created by an entity with a penchant for a particular direction, namely left-handed / anti-clockwise. Here are three selected cases to support the hypothesis, although I cannot claim them to have been chosen at random, for reasons that will soon become obvious.

The first argument: in the 1950s and 60s physicists found that the weak nuclear force or interaction, responsible for radioactivity, does not function symmetrically. Parity violation, to be technical about it, means that for example massless particles called neutrinos spin in a counter clockwise direction if they are created by beta decay. Like many other fundamental parameters to our universe, no-one has an explanation of why this is so: it just is.

The second argument: amino acids are usually described as the building blocks of proteins, but in addition to those used to make life on Earth, additional types are found in meteorites. It has been theorised that life was made possible by meteorites and comets delivering these chemicals to the primordial Earth, but radiation encountered on their journey may have affected them. Whereas amino acids synthesised in laboratories contain approximately equal amounts of mirror image (i.e. left- and right-handed) forms, nearly all life is constructed from the left-handed, or L-amino acids.

The third argument: a new catalogue of observations using the latest generation of telescopes indicate that from our viewpoint most galaxies rotate counter clockwise about their cores. Of course it's been a long time since humans believed the Earth to be the centre of the Universe, but even so, this is a disturbing observation. We now consider our planet just an insignificant component of the second-largest galaxy within a small group at one end of a super cluster. In which case, why is galactic rotation so far removed from random?

So how do these arguments stand up to scrutiny, both by themselves and collectively? Not very well, I'm afraid. Working backwards, the third argument shows the dangers of false pattern recognition: our innate ability to find patterns where none exist or to distort variations into a more aesthetic whole. In this particular case, it appears that the enthusiasts who classified the galaxies' direction of rotation were mistaken. Put it down to another instance of the less than perfect powers of perception we humans are stuck with (thanks, natural selection!)

The second argument initially bears up somewhat better, except that I deliberately ignored all of the biological elements against the argument. The best known of these is probably DNA itself, which is primarily helical in a clockwise direction. This seems to be a fairly common problem in the history of science, with well-known cases involving famous scientists such as Alfred Wegener, whose continental drift hypothesis was a precursor of plate tectonics but who deliberately ignored unsupportive data.

The first argument stands by itself and as such cannot constitute a pattern (obviously). Therefore it is essentially worthless: you might as well support the left-handed notion by stating that the planets in our solar system orbit the sun in a counter clockwise direction - which they do, unless you happen to live in the Southern Hemisphere!


Once again, our ability to find patterns where none exist, or as with the rotation of galaxies, to misconstrue data, leaves little doubt that our brains are naturally geared more towards the likes of astrology than astronomy. Pareidolia, the phenomenon of perceiving a pattern in a random context, is familiar to many via the man in the moon. However, there are varying degrees to this sort of perception; I confess I find it hard to see the figure myself (try it with the image above, incidentally taken through my 130mm reflector telescope earlier this year – see Cosmic Fugues for further information on genuine space-orientated pattern-making).

Of course, these skills have at times combined with innate aesthetics to aid the scientific enterprise, from the recognition and assembly of Hominin fossil fragments from the Great Rift Valley to Mendeleev's element swapping within the periodic table. However, most of the time we need to be extremely wary if a pattern seems to appear just a little bit too easily. Having said that, there still seem to be plenty of authors who cobble together a modicum of research, combine it with a catchy hook and wangle some extremely lucrative book and television documentary deals. Now, where’s a gullible publisher when you need one?