Posted on 03/06/2009 4:12:22 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
Are You Cereous? Life Came from an Asteroid?
March 5, 2009 — Ceres is an icy asteroid way out in space that has a lot of ice. The DAWN spacecraft is heading there. When it arrives in 2015, maybe it will find out if a substantial part of the water is in liquid state under an ice crust. Say the word water, and some think... life.
Space.com reported that an astrobiologist has a new idea: life started on Ceres and then moved to Earth. Believe it or not, it’s a radical new theory Joot Houtkooper told the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life conference in Florence, Italy. Ceres may be small, but its H2O molecules add up. He figures that “The total volume of all this water is something like 40 times greater than all the oceans on Earth.” OK so far, now what? Well, he figures that the core of Ceres may have rock, and the rock may have radioactive elements, and the radioactive elements may heat the rock and produce hydrothermal vents. How could life not be far behind? “...if life is not unique to the Earth and could exist elsewhere, then these icy bodies are the places where life may have originated.”
Now he has the problem of getting it to Earth. Here’s how the story goes. During the Late Heavy Bombardment, Earth got sterilized. Smaller icy bodies like Ceres might have survived unscathed. Life originated there, then fragments of rock blasted from it traveled toward the inner solar system. Fragments from small Ceres would be more likely to reach escape velocity, you see. He calculated that Earth is in a favorable position to reach the Ceres deliveries, and that is how you and I got here.
“The thought of Earth being seeded with life from Ceres and creatures existing there today is certainly fascinating, but Houtkooper admits that it is more science fiction than science fact until evidence can be provided,” the article ended. “This is naturally difficult to obtain, as Ceres is a small and distant world.”
See what happens when storytellers are allowed into the science lab? This makes Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs sound scholarly. Contest: see if you can top this. Make up the wackiest theory for the origin of life you can, and see if you can get Space.com to publish it. Tell them you’re an astrobiologist. You could be one, too, because the only job requirements are life membership in the Darwin Party and a vivid imagination.
Quote of the day:
“The essence of the theory of evolution is the hypothesis that historical diversity is the consequence of natural selection acting on variations. Regardless of the verity it holds for explaining biohistory, it offers no help to the experimenter—who is concerned, for example, with the goal of finding or synthesizing a new antibiotic, or how it can disable a disease-producing organism, what dosages are required and which individuals will not tolerate it. Studying biohistory is, at best, an entertaining distraction from the goals of a working biologist.”
—Dr. Phillip S. Skell, Member, National Academy of Sciences, “The Dangers of Overselling Evolution,” Forbes 2/23/2009.
What are the dimensions of Ceres? What is the average orbital distance from the sun and is it on a stretched elliptical path that might have brought it close to Mars way back when?
Wrong, it's been around since they started writing sci-fi books.
must-not-feed-crevo-trolls
Sheesh man, why post this garbage? You look like a spammer to me.
Weren’t Martian rocks found in Antarctica?
Garbage? The wacky theory you call garbage came from your fellow Evos over at Space.com. LOL
Ceres is the largest rock in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. One of many, many bodies out there. Being named for the mother goddess of the Romans, it’s a natural for those who write the titles on the covers of magazines. Earth mother=earth mother.
I’m not an “evo”, I believe in ID. Why did you post this if you don’t believe it?
“With a diameter of about 950 km (roughly the width of Spain, France, and Germany combined), Ceres is by far the largest and most massive body in the asteroid belt, and contains a third (32%) of the belt’s total mass.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Ceres
I just ran a Dogpile search. Ceres is ~975 km in diameter with approximately 60 to 120 km of water and ice mantle. It orbits the Sun out between Mars and Jupiter.
I thought it was an incredible theory that life started from green slime here on Earth. Now they want me to believe that life came form some unknown place by unknown process.
I laugh at the stupidity.
Of course not, everyone knows life came from a flying spaghetti monster.
==I’m not an “evo”, I believe in ID. Why did you post this if you don’t believe it?
This article could have easily been posted on Uncommon Descent, the Discovery Institute, or ARN. So let’s just say your reaction does not square with someone who is on board with ID. And btw, I posted this article because I agree with the conclusion of the Creationist who is poking fun at this Evo-tripe:
“See what happens when storytellers are allowed into the science lab? This makes Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs sound scholarly. Contest: see if you can top this. Make up the wackiest theory for the origin of life you can, and see if you can get Space.com to publish it. Tell them you’re an astrobiologist. You could be one, too, because the only job requirements are life membership in the Darwin Party and a vivid imagination.”
==Of course not, everyone knows life came from a flying spaghetti monster.
Is that what they are calling Darwood’s natural selection god these days?
==I laugh at the stupidity.
LOL!
And the monster was not alive itself?
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