Earth's Atmosphere May Have Alien Origin

Earth's Atmosphere May Have Alien Origin

www.wired.com

Detailed analyses of the gases provide clues about where those atmospheric components originated, says Greg Holland, an isotope geochemist at the University of Manchester in England. Those analyses, reported in the Dec. 11 Science, suggest that those gases, as well as many others now cloaking our planet, arrived via comets or were swept up from nearby gas clouds during the late stages of Earth’s formation.

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Could this be further evidence for the Panspermian theory of the origins of life on Earth? Given recent discoveries of both water on Mars, and the apparent fossil record of microorganism found in various meteorites, this would seem to increase the probability that life does in fact exist in the universe in places other than earth.

www.wired.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

read about this on national geographic too - heres the link -

news.nationalgeographic.com...

The gases that make up Earth's atmosphere came from a swarm of comets, not from bubbling volcanoes as long thought, a new study says. The new theory came about after scientists discovered that pristine samples of the elements krypton and xenon, recently collected from deep within the Earth, have the same chemical makeup as ancient meteorites

Thanks for posting this. S+F!

Well I'm not sure that it's further evidence for Panspermia, since we already had strong evidence that our water came from comets, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that at least some of our atmosphere came from them too.

Panspermia IMHO is a more workable hypothesis if the agent of delivery is bits of crust blasted off other planets/moons when it comes to the life itself, but comets may provide the right conditions for it to survive. We also know that comets may have delivered the building blocks needed for life to get started - simple amino-acids that form the basis of all DNA.