We Are the Aliens | Life's Interstellar Journey to Earth: Panspermia

this episode of the wi files is brought to you by the wi files operation podcast deep Dives and longer stories every week there are extraterrestrials Among Us they landed 4 billion years ago when the Earth was just forming and there weren't humanoids with tall slender bodies and dark almond-shaped eyes the aliens were microbes and they were delivered here and once these aliens awakened in our mineral Rich World they multiplied quickly and evolved if you want to see these aliens for yourself it's actually pretty easy just look in the [Music] mirror until next time be safe be kind and know that you are appreciate sir I'm going to need you to come with us uh [Music] okay hello can can anybody hear me I don't know why I'm here take off the pillowcase we are agents with the cfp cfp I I I don't know what that is I I never heard of that yeah that's not your concern uh okay we have been following your show and we have reason to believe hey dude I thought I was going to do the investigation this time do it then do it stop sitting there do it all right jeez we have been following your show and we have reason to believe that you have far more information on your topics that you've been sharing uh what we have been following your show no no no I I I heard you I just I I just don't know what that means we have been following your show he speaks English you your question is confusing my question is not confusing it he's just playing DG you're D I'm well if you know that I have more information then you already know that I what I know that you know just tell us what we want to know okay what what what episode are you talking about what what are we talking about I don't know dude you're you're the researcher no you're supposed to know this what the heck the one that has more information look guys I have a podcast that covers all of this the yfiles operation podcast comes out every week on Mondays we release the YouTube episodes and then on Wednesdays we do deep dives into those stories and then we cover unredacted topics that are a little too sensitive for YouTube kind of makes sense and uh where does this podcast air you can get on Apple Amazon Spotify Pandora anywhere you listen to podcasts this sounds really convenient actually super smart okay go unlock his cuffs so can I go me unlock the Cuffs you have the keys No I gave you the keys you did not specifically put them under you have keys give me Keys you're the one who sat on the syringe start telling everyone that we were Men In Black and we're way cooler than in the movies we are way cooler than the guys in the movies give me a little support while down wait wait where did he go a damn it not again 4 billion years ago the Earth's surface was very different than it is [Music] today no continents existed the entire planet was covered in Ocean but the waters were shallow no more than 100 ft deep in most areas countless volcanoes covered the globe spewing molten rock that would soon form tiny Islands the atmosphere was a heavy shroud of volcanic ash superheated dust and toxic gas this was perfect for the large craft that had just entered Earth's orbit this craft was on a mission on the vessel was a cargo chamber filled with row after row of large capsules each about the size of a car the capsules contain trilli ions of procariotas are single- celled organisms they don't even have a nucleus but these organisms carry something very important in each and every one of them DNA there was a loud hiss a door opened and a capsule was ejected toward the planet below the vessel powered up its engines as soon as the payload entered the atmosphere moments later the ship bolted out of the solar system and onto its next destination the alien capsule glowed red hot as it pushed through the Earth's atmosphere this wasn't a problem it was designed for this when the object hit the water the impact was violent this was also expected the capsule opened outpoured what looked like thousands of glass beads each of these beads contained millions of organisms the ocean water dissolved the beads and released the organisms into the boiling Seas most died immediately this was also expected but some survived these pioneering organisms thrived in the depths of the ocean around hydrothermal vents heated by the Earth's core the organisms adapted evolved and diversified this was the plan and so the tiny planet Earth began its Journey from a Barren piece of lifeless Rock to a vibrant Oasis Of Life the creators knew it would take a few billion years for intelligent life to evolve this was all encoded in the D of those first microorganisms the DNA was a program the programmers knew that when their Creations were finally ready they decode the program and find a way to call [Music] home there is a growing group of scientists who believe life on Earth began from microbes delivered from space this theory is called panspermia yes spermia please don't be immature in Greek pan means all and Sperma means seed anyway Sante arenus was a major proponent of this Theory and when it came to biochemistry he knew what he was talking about it was 1908 and arenius was a Nobel prizewinning chemist working in Sweden the accepted theory of life's origin is a biogenesis this refers to the process where chemical reactions of inorganic material form organic material which eventually become life and this happened on Earth about 3. 5 billion years ago arenius wasn't buying it the ancient Greeks had a much simpler Theory they suggested the seeds of Life were present everywhere in the universe and they were talking about alien spacecraft dropping probes into primordial Seas they felt that bits of space dust contain Seeds of Life the Greeks and arenus beli that when the space dust arrived on Earth it brought life with it then Evolution took over and created millions of new species of plants and animals but Life coming from outer space is tricky even in its most basic form it shouldn't be able to survive the harshness of space so arenus set to find out he created extreme environments in a lab he subjected living microorganisms to deadly cold temperatures near 0 Kelvin if these microbes were from space they could handle it cuz nothing else on Earth could handle zero kin Z Kelvin may not sound that cold but it is we're talking- 49° F basically the temperature of deep space the microorganisms could not survive those temperatures arenius was disappointed but then he slowly and carefully applied heat most microbes remained inert but some when reheated very carefully activated again they were alive this shouldn't have happened the ability to survive Inus 450° cold was not driven by natural selection in our terrestrial environment these seemed to be the abilities developed on another world arenius had discovered a new kind of Life which became known as extremophiles before arenus scientists didn't believe life could survive in Earth's most extreme environments but as soon as they started looking they found life was everywhere arenus had proved that life could survive the extreme cold of space but what about extreme heat in 1977 explorers discovered hydrothermal vents they were on the ocean floor beneath the galapagus: tectonic plates collide now humans can't survive very long in temperatures over about 122° F at that temperature proteins in our body start to melt our cells lose their shape at over 158° our DNA begins to unravel yeah but nothing loosens up the muscles like a nice fin rub and a nice hot soak well maybe but the water released that these hydrothermal vents is over 800° that would kill you me anything almost instantly yet here's the thing that water is teeming with life there are bacteria thriving in water at 220° some can even survive in temperatures higher than that these are called hypothermal no one knows how their DNA keeps its shape at these extremes but it does and as you go deeper into the ocean life faces another deadly problem pressure we don't really notice it but our atmosphere is heavy enough enough to exert pressure on us when you go underwater the weight of the water does the same thing without protection the human body can't survive from more than five or six atmospheres of pressure but scientists have found organisms that thrive in 300 atmospheres pressure doesn't seem to affect the much at all now how about this there are organisms that can survive in acid too pH stands for potential of hydrogen or power of hydrogen pH ranges from 0 to 14 s is neutral below seven is acid and above seven is basic or alkaline the human body likes a pH of seven neutral or maybe slightly above we go below that we're in trouble we don't like acid speak for yourself the pH scale is logarithmic so a pH level of six is 10 times more acidic than neutral a pH level of five is 100 times more acidic and so on and so on exposure to acid is very bad for humans it's bad for almost every living thing on Earth almost every living thing there are bacteria that live happily in sulfuric acid with a pH of 0. 3 that is 5 million times more acidic than human blood even in those extreme conditions life exists now what about oxygen before beaming down it's the first thing you check right can we breathe out there if there's no Oxygen the planet's not inhabitable life needs oxygen but not all life some microbes called Anor robes convert carbonate sulfate or iron into energy they don't need oxygen at all so once scientists started looking they realized extremophile microorganisms do more than exist they're the most numerous life forms on Earth but if pans spermia is real these extremophiles would have to withstand a trip through the harshest environment we know space and as soon as we had the technology to get these things into orbit we [Music] did space is an environment more extreme than anything found on Earth with no protection from the sun's radiation temperatures can be over 250° F pass into the Earth's Shadow hidden from the Sun suddenly it's minus 148 or lower if temperature fluctuations don't kill you radiation will do the trick radi in space is strong enough to damage human cells and Destroy DNA molecules unless you're going to the Moon then for some reason radiation isn't a problem at all you're talking about going through the Van Allen belt yes the Van Allen belt you know the radiation around the planet that nobody can get through which is why nobody went to the moon the Apollo spacecraft traveled through the Van Allen radiation belts at a very high speed and the particles in the belt are spread very far apart so the astronauts weren't exposed to much radi ration ah what are you doing p and ning now no I'm just saying even more dangerous than radiation is the vacuum itself there's no atmosphere in space and with no atmospheric pressure the liquids in your body boil and vaporize saliva tears blood humans can't survive in space but there are animals that can in 2007 the European Space Agency sent 3,000 living tardigrade into orbit for 12 days no one expected any to survive how could they they would have no shielding from the deadly radiation or the vacuum tardigrades are a bit more complex than typical microbes these are microscopic animals with segmented bodies and eight legs they're commonly called water bears now that's a cute name for what's probably the toughest animal on earth tardigrades can live at temperatures ranging from absolute zero to Boiling they can survive pressure six times times that of the ocean's deepest trenches when the orbital Mission returned 68% of the tardigrades survived the space vacuum and exposure to Cosmic radiation were not a problem for the water bears some even went on to reproduce Offspring more tolerant to radiation exposure lyen is a unique form of life that represents a symbiotic relationship between two organisms a fungus and photosynthetic bacteria other Miss prove that lyen can also survive in space and tardigrades by the way are most often found on Lykan could an asteroid carrying lyan and tardigrades have seeded life on Earth well it's been proven that they could survive the impact if certain bacterial spores are shaded from direct sunlight and radiation as they would be inside a meteor they can survive in space for years yeah but for bacteria to be transported across space it would need to survive for millions of years and that seems unlikely but in 2020 scientists pulled a piece of sediment from the ocean floor The Rock was 20,000 ft down and over 100 million years old they put it under a microscope The Rock was full of microbial fossils they looked more closely those aren't the fossils of microbes they're actual microbes 100 milliony old microbes various types of bacteria they appeared to be in a type of suspended animation so the scientists wondered if they could oh don't tell me they tried to revive them they tried to revive them oh no they didn't wake up did they they woke up no what year was this 2020 in 2020 eggh heads up pulling 100 million year old bacterias from the bottom of the ocean and waking them up hello turn on the news your morons not only did the bacteria wake up they had a nice 99.

1 success rate and they started multiplying immediately and there it is well there were about 100 cells per cubic centimeter at the beginning of the experiment 68 days later there were a million cells per centimeter oh great next thing you know only'll need two weeks to flatten the curve not now okay so this experiment proved that bacteria can survive dormant for long enough to travel to other planets that was shocking but we already knew life existed on earth 100 million years ago that doesn't prove it came from outer space a mainstream science agrees we are surrounded by creatures that seem alien in their abilities but the mainstream view is that life started on Earth from nothing a biogenesis the earliest evidence of microbial life dates back to 3. 5 billion years at this time the Earth had oceans of water and plenty of organic matter this is known as the primordial soup that soup had all the ingredients of life uh beef stock and mira mira carrots onions celery I know what miraa is the ingredients were water amino acids organic gases and some minerals and that was the prevailing theory for a long time before 3. 5 billion years ago there was no way the Earth could support life the conditions were too harsh and that was the theory for hundreds of years but then that theory blew up when they found evidence of life in IR Rock much much [Music] older Earth formed a little over 4.

5 billion years ago in the hadon Eon named after Hades the ancient Greek god of hell because this time in history was hell on Earth the planet had just started forming from Interstellar gas and dust the crust in the atmosphere didn't exist yet the Earth was so hot that rocks couldn't solidify this was not a habitable place so it makes sense that the first evidence of life was found in rocks from the second stage of Earth's geological timeline the archan Eon this is when the earth began to cool a crust developed and the oceans formed the atmosphere was a combination of methane and ammonia and the sun was only 75% as bright as today but this was good enough for life to begin we know because amazingly there are places on Earth where rocks still exist from that time one of these places is the isua greenstone belt in Greenland this strip of volcanic rocks dates back 3. 8 billion years and geologists have found direct evidence of Life there microbial colonies formed about 3. 7 billion years ago fine this proves what scientists suspected early life began in the archanon and not before but some of the oldest rocks on Earth are found in the Jack Hills and Western Australia incredibly you can stand on rock formed in the hadon Eon the time of Hell on Earth before life even existed however scientists found something surprising when they studied ziron crystals from the area ziron is unique among all materials on Earth ziron grows in volcanic rock and although the crystals are thinner than a human hair they're nearly indestructible ziron even outlasts the rocks in which they're originally formed researchers have found zircons going back 4.

4 billion years pretty close to the actual birth of the planet so the one thing scientists don't expect to find inside a 4. 1 billion year old ziron crystal is the sign of life except that's exactly what they found they found biogenic carbon with isotopic signatures matching organic matter the ziron is 4. 1 billion years old this means life had to develop in the much harsher environment of the hadon Eon before oceans and a stable atmosphere formed at the same time comets and meteors were constantly raining down on the planet and panspermia says these meteors were bringing life with them lots of life and for years the theory of panspermia that comets were the source of life was marginalized it was pseudoscience the surface of the Earth was too hot it was molten rock life can't survive that the conditions that would most likely to have prevailed near the impact riddled Earth's surface 4.

1 to 4. 23 billion years ago were too hot even for simple organic molecules to survive let alone evolve into living complexity this leaves panspermia as the most plausible valent option for the origin of terrestrial life the first microbes were most likely delivered to the planet along with impacting comets and meteorites but even if comets could somehow land on the earth while it was forming it wouldn't matter comets are just dirty snowballs rocks made of ice and dust may be mixed with ammonia meth and carbon dioxide there was no way a comet could contain organic material but eventually we developed the technology to send probes to comets and test their chemical makeup and then all those wacky pseudoscience pens spermia Believers well they started looking pretty smart sir Fred Hoy was an English astronomer who developed the theory of Stellar nucleosynthesis the this Theory says that all the elements from which our world is made have been cooked inside Stars everything from carbon to uranium atoms were generated eons ago from a star's power source helium these heavy elements were then blasted into space in great Stellar explosions called Supernova where they later solidified into planets mountains humans and everything oil is the man who discovered we're all made of Stardust oy was also a believer in the pens spermia theory he was was convinced comets had been delivering microorganisms to Earth since its formation in 1978 he published the book life Cloud arguing that comets were the incubators of life and the stor that first carried life to earth now this was considered a fringe idea not accepted by mainstream science hoy's stubborn refusal to accept that the origin of Life happened on Earth and instead was delivered by comets made him an intellectual Outlaw in his field but ignition first stage ignition and takeoff take off and in 1986 the European space agency's jotto mission got a probe within 370 Mi of Haley's Comet that probe was able to analyze the chemistry of the Comet it was made up of mostly water some carbon monoxide a little bit of ammonia and meth and this was expected but what was unexpected was that the comet also contained hydrogen cyanide a precursor to amino acids which are necessary to form life the jotto mission also detected the presence of so-called Chan particles CH n named because they're rich in carbon hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen this was more evidence the Comets really were transporting life's ingredients across the Stars space agent gencies worldwide combined for 12 more missions to examine comets up close they discovered even more complex organic molecules such as ethanol for manide glycol alahh and acetyl aldhy oy passed away in 2001 but he lived long enough to review the data from those space probes he knew he was on the right track comets delivered the elements necessary for life if he had lived just three more years he would have been amazed in 2004 or for the first time in history we didn't just pass by a comet we landed on one and then the theory of panspermia which sounds a lot like science fiction started to sound a lot like science fact in 2004 the European Space Agency sent the Rosetta probe to visit Comet 67p and this time it carried a robotic Lander that explored the comet's surface the probe spent 786 days in space and traveled 4. 8 billion miles the mission revealed the comet had primitive water I formed 4.

5 billion years earlier Comet 67p contained a mix of compounds including ammonium salts ammonium salts are thought to be one of the precursors to life they can later form more complex molecules like amino acids this was an exciting Discovery but then things got even more interesting samples of the Comet were brought back to Earth and analyzed not only did they confirm ammonium salts were present but they also discover the presence of the amino acid glycine scientists had officially found a fundamental building block of life on a comet and there are thousands of comets zipping around our solar system and we now know they contain organic molecules but thousands of comets doesn't even begin to describe how many objects there are out there so surrounding our solar system is a vast area called the or Cloud the or cloud is so large that the outer edge reaches almost a quarter of the way to the nearest star it's staggeringly big and it contains trillions of objects trillions and these objects were even more common in the early solar system when they were busy delivering water to create Earth's oceans and delivering the building blocks of life itself the more evidence we collect the more likely hoy's bold theory of panspermia sounds like the truth but this is accidental panspermia the more controversial theory is directed pens spermia directed pens spermia suggests that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization purposely seeded life on Earth and maybe they did but it seems as if the aliens had a backup plan in case their first attempt at seating life on Earth didn't take so about 540 million years ago a rock landed on Earth that contained more than a few microbes The Rock contained [Music] eggs panspermia might not have been a single event 4 billion years ago large comets and asteroids only hit the Earth every few million years but small meteorites hit the Earth by the thousands every year we've established that life has been on Earth for a long time and there's debate about whether it began 3 billion years ago ago or 4 billion years ago but there's no debate that something very strange happened on Earth 540 million years ago the Cambrian explosion before the Cambrian Period life on Earth was microscopic single- cell organisms like bacteria were the most common form of life a few very simple multicellular organisms evolved but even over a few billion years life didn't become much more advanced then suddenly Boom the Cambrian EXP expion out of nowhere there was a rapid increase in the diversity and complexity of life especially in multicellular organisms this event drastically altered the course of evolution and shaped the modern biosphere now there are a few theories on why Evolution suddenly began escalating aliens Rising oxygen levels could have allowed for more complex metabolisms nope or the end of an Ice Age could have made the oceans more survivable nope but in 2018 a new theory was proposed a team of 33 researchers published a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that was interesting it was titled cause of the Cambrian explosion terrestrial or Cosmic 540 million years ago meteors landed containing biomatter that was more complex than microbes or amino acids these meteors had eggs from a new species Frozen in the icy center of the rock that species exists to this day and is different than any other animal found on Earth the creature has three hearts a body that can change its shape texture and color at will it has the brain power to use tools it can easily navigate complex mazes now you've seen this highly adaptable and highly intelligent alien species the octopus an octopus has camera likee eyes with an iris a circular lens and photo receptor cells it has half a billion neurons more than most other mammals and unlike other mammals most octopus neurons lie outside the central brain 2third of its neurons are in its Arms This results in the arms being able to act like independent animals each arm is capable of touch and taste they can move separately and can grasp objects even after being severed from the main body and if an octopus arm is severed no problem it grows a new one in its place completely indistinct isable from the first these characteristics the large non-centralized Brain the ability to camouflage itself and the flexible bodies appeared suddenly on The evolutionary timeline and when scientists examined the genes of the octopus the true alien nature revealed itself the octopus genome shows staggering complexity it has 33,000 protein coding genes that's 10,000 more than humans now the octopus is said to have evolved from nautiloids like clams and oysters but those are nothing like the octopus at all this mysterious leap can only be explained by aliens yep extraterrestrial intervention exchanges of rock between planets in our own solar system like Earth and Mars is a fact and quite common we' found Mars rocks here and it's safe to assume there are Earth rocks on Mars If by bi matter hitched a ride on those rocks and the conditions were right life would evolve Mars was once very earthlike with a stable climate and lots of surface water if microbes evolv there they very well could have ended up here in 1996 a meteorite from Mars was examined under a microscope it appeared to contain fossilized microbes it's a controversial claim but with what we now know about comets Life on Mars seems very plausible today Rock 841 speaks to us across all those billions of years and millions of miles it speaks of the possibility of life if this discovery is confirmed it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our universe that science has ever uncovered its implications are as far-reaching and all inspiring as Can Be Imagined what no Clinton joke oh no no no no no I would never joke about the clintons yeah but when we're off camera you joke about the clintons all the time I never joke about the clintons ever uh you've made quite a few ah can we move on please fine if life evolved in our solar system then chances are it's going to be found everywhere where the conditions exist to support it Mars has water ice and once had a vast ocean just like Earth Europa one of Jupiter's moons has liquid ocean under its icy shell Jupiter's gravity causes tidal forces on Europa that create heat Enceladus a moon of Saturn also has a subsurface ocean plumes of water vapor and ice particles including organic compounds have been detected erupting from cracks in the moon surface Titan another of Saturn's moons has a dense atmosphere and stable liquid on the surface now it's liquid methane not water but life could evolve there recent studies show Venus could support microbial life in the upper layers of its atmosphere spere and series a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt has water ice and there's evidence of liquid salt water below the surface and these are places right here in our solar system but if we look further out the chances of Life increase tremendously the number of potential earthlike planets in our galaxy is about 100 billion and there are about 100 billion other galaxies out there so the total number of planets that could support life is incomprehensible and with all the comets and asteroids flying around our galaxy carrying the seeds of life panspermia doesn't sound like pseudoscience in fact life being delivered here via panspermia is the only Theory to me that makes sense life not arising on Earth but arriving on Earth it's a fascinating Theory but is it true well a couple of factors make seaing life on earth a challenge the time required for biologically active rocks to be ejected from a solar system is probably the biggest obstacle it could take between 4 and 50 million years for rocks to break from a planet and lead the solar system but if a planet is hit with a big enough object like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs it can throw rock into orbit in an instant in the early solar system giant impacts like this were happening all the time on every planet but life finding its way here from another star that's a long shot not impossible but very difficult but life finding its way here from Mars or Venus that's no problem at all another issue though no matter the distance traveled the biological matter has to stay viable for the journey for millions or billions of years and the size of the rock really matters we know that bacteria and even more complex forms of life can stay dormant for many years but that doesn't do you any good if your rock vaporizes when hitting the Earth's atmosphere you're going to need a pretty big rock to get through again not impossible but not easy unless you adopt the theory of direct pens spermia which answers all these concerns the discovery of the structure of DNA is credited to James Watson and Francis Crick so reputable and respected scientists in 1971 they spoke at a conference on communication with extraterrestrial intelligence organized by Carl Sean they claimed organisms were deliberately transmitted directly to the Earth by intelligent beings from another planet no Randomness was involved the seeds of Life made it here because this is where they were sent simple enough but in the end panspermia means that we're not from here and you think like the octopus there'd be evidence within us that maybe the Earth isn't our original home well Francis Crick actually suggested there is evidence in 1973 he published the paper with les oril a molecular biologist the paper was called directed pens spermia the paper says that the chemical composition of living organisms and I quote must reflect to some extent the composition of the environment in which they evolved the paper makes the point that human beings have a trace element in their bodies called meibum which is crucial to organic processes but here's the thing mipam is pretty rare on Earth but you know what's a great source of it meteorites so maybe maybe somewhere out there is our home planet where meibum is plentiful and the fact that we can survive on earth makes us another extremophile the idea that the Earth was seated with life makes more sense to me than life spontaneously emerging from organic compounds in a primordial soup I like the idea of a galaxy teaming with life I like believing that we're not the children of the Earth but the children of the universe but whether life started here or somewhere far far away it did start somewhere so my question is who started it thank you so much for hanging out with me today my name is AJ that's eckle fish I have no jokes about the clintons this has been the wi files if you had fun or learned anything do him a favor subscribe comment like share all those buttons really help him out and like most topics we cover on the channel today's was recommended by you so if there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about go to the y files. com tips and remember the yfiles is also a podcast twice a week I post deep dives into the stories we cover here on the channel I also post episodes that wouldn't be allowed on the channel those are called unredacted the podcast is called the wi files operation podcast and it's available everywhere you get your podcasts now if you need more wi files in your life and not everybody does really not everybody does but if you do check out our Discord there are thousands of people on there I think there's 40,000 people on there right now they're there 24/7 and they're into the same weird stuff we are it's a great Community it's a lot of fun and it's free to join now if you want to know what's going on with the yfiles you can check out our production calendar it's at the wi files.