Panspermia

Transfer of Life by Earth-Grazing Objects to Exoplanetary Systems

By Keith Cowing

Press Release

astro-ph.EP

January 8, 2020

Filed under panspermia

Transfer of Life by Earth-Grazing Objects to Exoplanetary Systems — A beautiful Perseid meteor, captured during the 2011 Perseid meteor shower. Seen by astronaut Ron Garan aboard the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/6045926830">Larger image</a>

NASA

Recently, a 30 cm object was discovered to graze the Earth’s atmosphere and shift into a Jupiter-crossing orbit. We use the related survey parameters to calibrate the total number of such objects.

The number of objects that could have exported terrestrial microbes out of the Solar System is in the range 2×109−3×1011. We find that 107−109 such objects could have been captured by binary star systems over the lifetime of the Solar System. The total number of objects carrying living microbes on them upon capture is 10−103.

Amir Siraj, Abraham Loeb
(Submitted on 7 Jan 2020)
Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures; submitted for publication
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:2001.02235 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2001.02235v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Amir Siraj
[v1] Tue, 7 Jan 2020 19:00:01 UTC (172 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02235
Astrobiology, panspermia

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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