The Daily Debate: "Evolution is the metamorphosis and replication of living creatures which long ago lived on other planets."

"The progression from simple cell to sentient intelligent being is due to the activation of viral, archae, and bacteria genes acquired from extra-terrestrial life and inserted into the Earthly eukaryote genome. What has been described as a random evolution is in fact the metamorphosis and replication of living creatures which long ago lived on other planets."

Rudolf Schild, astrophysicist at Harvard University/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

What do you think?

Comments

[Bert]

Possible.

[yyyy]

I'd buy that over most common theories, easily.

[James]

Possible but how did the first thing come along?

[Steve Bergman]

This is easily the silliest "Daily Poll/Daily Debate" topic so far. And that's saying a lot. Simple panspermia? Sure, I can entertain that idea.

But come on. Where is the evidence to support this bizarre point of view? And what is the Daily Galaxy's source on this quote, anyway. I plug it into Google and the only relevant results point back to the Oct 29 "Daily Debate" at dailygalaxy.com.

And assuming the quote is not completely made up, what was the context of the quoted material?

Discussion in this informational vacuum is nearly guaranteed to be valueless.

Sheesh!

-Steve

[Lee]

When things defy explanation we often turn to magical explanations. But life when you think about it, sentient life is magic and sentient life had to start somewhere. I don't see an irreconcilable difference or basic conflict with this theory and the emergence of sentient life.

[Bob Greenwade]

I'm with Steve on this one. This assertion is among the silliest I've seen posted on this site.

I mean, really -- whatever your point of view as to the origins of life on Earth (God's creation, spontaneous emergence, extraterrestrial origin, or something else), the traits we see in Earth's species are, by and large, traits needed for survival in those species' ecological niche. Any trait that isn't a survival trait is simply an occasional trait within the species, part of its genetic diversity.

And as James pointed out, if life's complexity came from somewhere else, where did the first complex life come from? That turns the argument into a gigantic donut -- circular, with a huge hole in the middle.

[Simon Jackson, BEng.]

Sounds ok, where did the first life come from? From an event horizon? It could make sense, the containment would be high, and the effective slow motion on temperature could be useful, I mean isn't the argument about the amount of TIME it would take, and not about how much space would be needed?

[Steve Bergman]

"""
I don't see an irreconcilable difference or basic conflict with this theory and the emergence of sentient life.
"""

Of course, it's also possible that in the distant past, a predecessor race to the Borg had a hundred million year war with the Vogons. The Vogons adopted a strategy of extinguishing the stars of systems in which the Borg had established bases, by extending wormholes into the core of the star to siphon off its fuel.

One of the star systems in question harbored a planet, unbeknownst to to either the Vogons or the Borg, because its ancient inhabitants, who were the descendants of a colony established billions of years ago, by the race which eventually became the Organians, had cloaked it with a specially designed anti-refracton field, in an attempt to avoid unwanted visitors. When their star began to deflate, they designed a mutagenetic virus in order to distribute their genetic material far and wide, and launched millions of virus-carrying nano-ships into space in order to ensure the continuity of their genetic heritage. Earth was not on the list. But the nano-ship destined for a planet in the Centari system, encountered a slight gravitational perturbation, due to a war being waged by the Xeelee against the Photino-birds, the reasons for which need not concern us here. But the Centari nano-ship ended up crashing on Earth, instead.

It sustained a great deal of damage, and was not able to fulfill the goals of its mission. It lay dormant for many eons.

Until one day, Sargon's (Return to Tomorrow) people discovered the craft, while on an exploratory mission in this arm the the Milkyway. They sympathized with the plight of the poor lost race. (Sargon's sister-in-law was an Organian) And they respliced the mutanogenic virus, as best they could, substituting their own DNA in the spots they were unable to recover from the original, and injected it into the early eukaryotic cell on earth. (Which they had to modify a bit, since they weren't the original intended targets of the virus.) It took awhile. But the ancient genes finally expressed themselves, in the form of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Yes. That must be what happened. I don't see an irreconcilable difference or basic conflict with this theory and the emergence of sentient life. And so it *must* be true.

Hey, Lee. You told me I should engage my imagination more. :-P

-Steve

[Randy]

If humans are made of star stuff like supernova remnants etc then we came from far away too. Also, our galaxy and solar system are moving at a good clip, too.(aka a good speed) The real question would be, "what does the disbursement pattern look like!?" ....Now that would be a neat question to have answered!? Could micro-organisms be hidden in our solar system to help answer it? Unfortunately, we have difficulty finding microscopic life on Earth, thus we are not even close to discovering it in the vast solar system, or are we?

[Jordi Mas]

As crude as it may sound and given the lack of evidence, bullshit is about the mildest term that comes to mind

[prime]

check out brainmind.com

[fsdfsfs]

unfortunately none of you put forth any real compelling evidence against his 'theory' at all. firstly, he is an astrophysicist at harvard.. no matter what you think of titles, he has undoubtedly been presented TONS of evidence and information on this subject and it's related topics.. and you're some fucks on the internet. his speculation should not be taken as fact, and that's not the way he meant it either, i would guess... for we will probably never know 100% how life started on earth in the first place, but open minded speculations like this provide a foundation for discovering ideas about the origin of life that we can't even fathom right now.

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[Justin]

How else would life evolve and come to? I just wonder that if life grew in the vents of the oceans, and made its way up and gave way to the life we've seen through the ages of earth through fossils. Then that would mean that "THIS" type of life and evolution would be common in the universe. Or is there different types of simple life that make no sense to us at all, that exist on meteors and asteroids and are easily adaptable to change and land on planets and evolve to give way to new life. It would almost have to be virus like to adapt to change or enter a host and go from there. But with hundreds of thousands of asteriods and meteors out in space, It only would make sense that our live is extra-terrestrial in a way, but found a home and is still evolving. This home on earth is one to be in "awe" of in my opinion. How many planets do you think there are that are almost perfect like earth is in our galaxy? Hopefully there are a lot but Earth is a great host for life.

[Steve Bergman]

"""
unfortunately none of you put forth any real compelling evidence against his 'theory' at all.
"""

You've got it backwards, fsdfsfs. When one makes extraordinary claims, the burden of proof lies with them.

"""
firstly, he is an astrophysicist at harvard..
"""

There apparently is a Rudolph Schild at Harvard University. No Rudolf Schild, so far as I can see. So the DG didn't even bother to spell his name correctly here.

"""
no matter what you think of titles, he has undoubtedly been presented TONS of evidence and information on this subject and it's related topics..
"""

Can you provide some independent confirmation that Rudolph Schild actually made this bizarre claim? I've looked, and have not found any.

"""
and you're some fucks on the internet.
"""

I'm Steve Bergman. You, on the other hand, are some fuck on the Internet going by the anonymous handle of "fsdfsfs".

"""
his speculation should not be taken as fact
"""

You don't say?

"""
and that's not the way he meant it either, i would guess...
"""

No context was provided. Consider that Dr. Schild might have grounds for suing the proprietor of the the Daily Galaxy for slander, depending upon whether or not he actually said this, and if so, what the context might have been.

"""
but open minded speculations like this...
"""

Just don't open your mind so much that your brain falls out. Though I fear I might have been too late with this word of caution.

-Steve

[Jerry Saylor]

A theory is just that, a theory, someone's opinion, a guess, or a host of other definitions. So far nothing has been proved or found to support any scientific "evidence" that is proported to be true. If truth is only a suspicion of what things are then truth is no longer truth but is only a "maybe" or a "might be". I value my opinion more than someone who is educated in guessing.

[Steve Bergman]

"""
A theory is just that, a theory, someone's opinion, a guess...
"""

No. A theory is a model which either explains reality well, or does not. All theories are not created equal. Some theories make no testable predictions. And so the most we can say about those is that they are either logically consistent, or they are not. These fall under the categories of math and philosophy.

Other theories do make testable predictions, and can be shown to be false.

Still others make testable predictions and stand up to the tests they are put to. These are the theories which we develop a level of confidence in. They are always subject to being falsified. And in those cases, need to be replaced, or more commonly, extended in order to accommodate new observational data.

"""
I value my opinion more than someone who is educated in guessing.
"""

Your opinion is not worth a rat's ass unless it adequately explains the observational data, in an objective sense.

-Steve

[Hakaunion]

Wow, I like this Steve Bergman guy. Normally when I come on these threads I spend ages refuting stupid comments or I just quit in frustration. However, he has done it all for me.

As to the topic at hand, I agree, there is too little information. The processes seem to be technically possible, but theres no suggestion as to why we might think that actually happened. It's a bit like anouncing "there's a teapot in orbit around the earth". Technically there's no reason why not, if an astronout threw one it would work, but why exactly would we think its true?

[Hunabku]

OK - i don't think the author intended for this to be a theory - more like a hypothesis - just like panspermia, etc. For what its worth - this kind of view of life involving cosmic encoding - makes much more sense to me.

"It takes a universe to raise a human" - No really, not only does it seem more likely that the information for life spreads across the universe - but also that life is not some sort of freak thing that happens on only our special planet. Lets just get over ourselves shall we.

There is a natural progression to evolution and new scientific information is "pointing" toward organic molecules and eventually DNA to be just as likely to form as iron - given time. I'm all for needing scientific proof - but if that is all we're about then how boring is that?

besides imagination is more important than knowledge so lets us it (with solid reasoning) for discovering and creating whole new sciences.

http://imaginariums.com
.

[steve stevensen]

this reminds me of a book i read. the chariots of the gods.

[steve stevensen]

this reminds me of a book i read. the chariots of the gods.

[steve stevensen]

this reminds me of a book i read. the chariots of the gods.

[steve stevensen]

this reminds me of a book i read. the chariots of the gods.

[steve stevensen]

this reminds me of a book i read. the chariots of the gods.

[priti]

I don't think s, that creatures on earth are the replication of some other universal creatures, we must have evolved on our own