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A summary of decades of research on a rather 'out-there' idea involving viruses from space raises questions on just how scientific we can be when it comes to speculating on the history of life on Earth. It's easy to throw around words like crackpot, rogue, and maverick in describing the scientific fringe, but then papers like this one, from 2018, come along and leave us blinking owlishly, unsure of where to even begin. A total of 33 names were listed as authors on this review, which was published by Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology back in August 2018. The...

SCIENTISTS have proved for the first time that bacteria can survive in outer space, supporting the theory that life on Earth began with extra-terrestrial microbes. Researchers showed that spores could stay alive when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the Sun if they were protected by particles of clay and red sandstone commonly found in meteorites. The tests, in which spores were released from a Russian satellite, suggest that the 'panspermia' theory that life began elsewhere and was carried to Earth on meteorites is plausible. The hypothesis was first proposed by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, in 1903 and was ...