"What has the sea level elevation of the Pacific Ocean been at varied periods in the last 4.5 billion years."
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Question
What is the latest thinking regarding the origin of life on Earth? Is Panspermia considered seriously by the astrobiology community?
The origin of life on Earth some 4 billion years ago is one of the central questions of astrobiology and is related to almost all of biology. Science has not yet provided a detailed scenario for the emergence of the first living things. Various aspects of this question are discussed in other more specific answers posted on this website. You might want to try the search headings "origin of DNA" or "early Earth" or "Oparin" to look up those answers. I also recommend the recent book by Nobel-prize winner Christian de Duve called "Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind and Meaning". Modern concepts about the origin of life are also discussed by Paul Davies in his book "The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life". The basic ideas are still that life probably arose using the chemical building blocks available on Earth (the "primordial soup"), but since nothing survives from that early period, it is very difficult to reconstruct the details. Panspermia is also considered by some astrobiologists, especially the limited concept of panspermia in which biological materials are exchanged among the inner planets by hitching a ride on meteorites. If this concept is correct, then we might be closely related to life on Mars, and it would be difficult to determine today whether life first arose on Earth or on Mars. While there may be some proponents of the original concept of panspermia as life migrating across interstellar space, I am not aware that this is an active area of current research in astrobiology.
David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
June 21, 2004
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