If life can spread from star to star, researchers should see a characteristic pattern of overlapping growth. In this theoretical artist’s conception of the Milky Way galaxy, translucent green “bubbles” mark areas where life has spread beyond its home system to create cosmic oases, a process called panspermia.Researchers have proposed a new mathematical theory states that life in the universe spreads like an epidemic.
A fundamental astrobiological question is whether life can be transported between extrasolar systems.
(via www.ewao.com)
As astronomers are getting very close to reach a milestone of finding signs of life on distant exoplanets, a new mathematical theory has been proposed which demonstrates how life spread through the cosmos. Did life on other planets appear spontaneously or were planets “infected” with life?
“Life could spread from host star to host star in a pattern similar to the outbreak of an epidemic,” study co-author Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) said in a statement. “In a sense, the Milky Way galaxy would become infected with pockets of life.”
Among scientists the idea of life spreading across different planets or moons and even solar systems is referred to as Panspermia. Panspermia proposes that life could occur anywhere in the universe and did not originate on Earth and did not happen exclusively on our planet. Microscopic organisms could “hitch a comet or asteroid ride” from one place to another, transferring life, but even intelligent beings could colonize other planets. In both situations we would see the same basic pattern according to researchers.
“In our theory, clusters of life form, grow and overlap like bubbles in a pot of boiling water,” the study’s lead author Henry Lin, also at CfA, said in the same statement.
Simply put, if scientists can identify, as is expected in the coming years, unmistakable signs of exoplanets where life proliferates, then one would only need to follow the patterns in whch the cluster of life could have spread to other parts of the galaxy.
The tricky part is identifying those patterns while embedded inside them, only able to see a certain selection of stars.
The transfer of life from star to star, through a species’ exploration or by natural events in the galaxy, would drastically speed up the transition from an empty galaxy to a life-filled one, the researchers said in the paper.
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