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Life Discovered in Space

by Michael Matthews on January 7, 2003


The discovery of living creatures at this altitude—25 mi (41 km)—is truly amazing, but it doesn’t explain all the media attention. The real reason for the interest is the researchers” claim that their discovery supports a way-out hypothesis about the origin of life—‘panspermia.” This is the belief that life evolved (and is possibly still evolving) “out there” in the universe, and that the Earth was “seeded” with life some 3.8 billion years ago. In fact, some of its proponents believe that microscopic life is still periodically carried to Earth in the interior of comets. This hypothesis was first proposed in detail by the Swedish chemist and Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927).

First, the facts




But the real science stops here.

Now for the rest


Wickramasinghe’s bias, however, has led him to conclude far more than is warranted by the evidence. The discovery of life in space does not tell you where that life originated. Yet Wickramasinghe boldly told a United Press reporter that “the findings support the idea of panspermia, the theory that comets not only brought the first living microorganisms to Earth 4 billion years ago but that they must also be doing that at the present time.”3

Here’s the line of reasoning that Wickramasinghe gave the reporter. Finding microbes like ones on Earth is what his theory “predicts,” he said, because his theory proposes that Earth’s bacteria evolved from space microbes in the first place. “They’re extremely closely related to known Earth bacteria but that's what the theory of panspermia predicts,' Wickramasinghe explained.4



Anyway, it could be contamination, after all

For more information, visit Q&A: Origin of Life

Dr Wainwright, who isolated the bacteria and fungus, was honest that there is always a danger of contamination, even under the best circumstances. Without further research in space, he can say only that “internal logic … points strongly” to his belief that the bacteria and fungus are not contaminants:

“Contamination is always a possibility in such studies but the ‘internal logic’ of the findings points strongly to the organisms being isolated in space, at a height of 41km. Of course the results would have been more readily accepted and lauded by critics had we isolated novel organisms, or ones with NASA written on them! However, we can only report what we have found in good faith.”6

Origin of life—an insurmountable problem

Whether it came from space or from Earth, the origin of the first microorganism remains a huge problem for evolutionists. In fact, this problem was the motive behind panspermia in the first place. The modern pioneer of panspermia, Arrhenius, was also motivated by “the failure of repeated attempts made by eminent biologists to discover a single case of spontaneous generation of life.”7 Francis Crick, a prominent advocate of “directed panspermia” (deliberate seeding of life by aliens) was also motivated by repeated failures of “chemical evolution.” As Wickramasinghe explained to, it is mathematically impossible for life to have evolved on Earth:







  1. Microorganism isolated in space, press release from Cardiff University, ‹›, 24 December 2002.
  3. Mitchell, S., Scientists find evidence of life in space, ‹›, 17 December 2002.
  4. The press release by the Centre of Astrobiology said the same thing: “The new work of Wainwright et al. is consistent with the ideas of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that in fact predict the continuing input onto the Earth of ‘modern" organisms. In recent years and months there has been a growing body of evidence that can be interpreted as support for the theory of panspermia—e.g. the space survival attributes and general space hardiness of bacteria.”
  5. How bacteria could travel so high in the stratosphere is still an unsolved mystery, since it seems to defy gravity. “Possible mechanisms by which these organisms could have attained such a height” is one of the topics covered in the paper that Wainwright et al. published on their experiments. They argue that no volcanic eruptions had taken place for at least two years before the samples were taken, and they assert that no meteorological event could explain the density of bacteria that they believe must be in the stratosphere (if there was enough for them to find samples in the small area they looked).
  8. Britt, R., Panspermia Q and A: leading proponent Chandra Wickramasinghe, ‹›, 27 October 2000.

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