Panspermia is the hypothesis that microbial life, or the chemical precursors of life, can be transferred between planets or even between star systems, carried on meteoroids, asteroids, comets or interplanetary dust, rather than arising independently on every world where it is found. Variants of the idea range from lithopanspermia, in which organisms survive the journey embedded in rock ejected by an impact, to more speculative directed panspermia, in which such transfer is proposed to occur deliberately. Direct evidence remains limited to demonstrating that some microorganisms can survive extreme conditions of space and reentry, which shows the mechanism is not physically impossible without confirming that it has actually occurred.
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1. Wikipedia (space and spaceflight articles)
Wikimedia FoundationWikipedia, Panspermia, History sectionQuote, Wikipedia, Panspermia, History section
The name, as applied to this theory, was only first coined in 1908 by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist.
Panspermia (Wikipedia)
Lead section
Panspermia (from Ancient Greek πᾶν (pan) 'all' and σπέρμα (sperma) 'seed') is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the universe, distributed by cosmic dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms, known as directed panspermia.
In Group: Habitability and the Detection of Life, Lead sentence
Panspermia (from Ancient Greek πᾶν (pan) 'all' and σπέρμα (sperma) 'seed') is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the universe, distributed by cosmic dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms, known as directed panspermia.
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