Dakota Cameron
Gold Member
- Points
- 26
4.1 billion year old zircon crystal from Western Australia contains biologically produced carbon, suggesting life had begun ~ 300 million years earlier than previously thought.
The earth hadn't even cooled yet from being smashed by the forces of the early solar system and life started anyways.
It gets even weirder: Consider that every time we push back the beginning of life on Earth, it becomes that much more likely that it actually didn't originate on Earth but arrived fro...m elsewhere.
It also increases the odds of panspermia between Venus, Earth, and Mars. To the best of our knowledge, all had very similar surface conditions around this time period, and ejecta from large impacts are known to reach the other planets with some frequency. At some point, all three planets could have hosted roughly the same set of organisms.
I dunno about you guys but I find this extremely exciting.
The earth hadn't even cooled yet from being smashed by the forces of the early solar system and life started anyways.
It gets even weirder: Consider that every time we push back the beginning of life on Earth, it becomes that much more likely that it actually didn't originate on Earth but arrived fro...m elsewhere.
It also increases the odds of panspermia between Venus, Earth, and Mars. To the best of our knowledge, all had very similar surface conditions around this time period, and ejecta from large impacts are known to reach the other planets with some frequency. At some point, all three planets could have hosted roughly the same set of organisms.
I dunno about you guys but I find this extremely exciting.