Article on Ceres and Exogenesis at Universetoday.com
March 6th, 2009
Well this Hubble imaging of Ceres is incredible news. Most asteroids have always conjured imagery of Thistledown for me, being the hollowed-out asteroid/spaceship from Greg Bear’s Eon. This image however, is more likely to conjure thoughts of baobabs.
Although the article is intriguing and makes for some sort of Treasure Island type musings late at night, I find personally that the theory of Panspermia and theories of exogenesis in general are highly academic; imho the origin of life anywhere is exactly where it originated.
Panspermia presupposes that life is somehow difficult to evolve. This despite the fact that amino acids, PAHs, water in some form, respirable chemistry (whether CO2, methane, salts/perchlorate, acids) are pretty much everywhere we look.
I think we will find - especially with The Dawn Mission - that life is not the exception, but the default state of anywhere significant resources can be leveraged in a location with energy and chemistry to warrant it. The ingredients for life will simply be expressed as a chemical/energy gradient that indicates there is an advantage to be had, that life will show up to exploit.
>> Image credit: Hubble ACS
>> More Ceres info at Wikipedia
>>Dawn Mission Home Page
Also see: The Potential for Fungal Life in the Asteroid Belt













