Abiogenesis and delivery from space

3:45important for origin of life debate, things like that. It's hugely important for this theory called abiogenesis which scientists have debated for a very long time. It's this idea that the process by which life arises naturally can be from outer space right and actually from non-living matter. That's that's the idea right abiogenesis means from non-living to living a bio. Now the question is on early earth which is around 4 billion years ago. This is right after the Earth formed and it cooled down to the point where it could support liquid water. Life emerged remarkably fast. Okay, it's like there

4:25was liquid water and then immediately we have fossils of tiny bacteria looking thingies. And the question is how come it happens so fast? And what's the necessary chemical ingredients that can assemble so quickly to create something like life? One important hypothesis is exogenous delivery. meaning asteroids and comets. We already know that comets brought most of the water on Earth. Um, asteroids and comets maybe they have genetic material and material for life and they act like a galactic postal service where life originates somewhere else. Let's not worry about how it

5:06originated somewhere else. But it originates somewhere else and then an asteroid gets kicked out of that planet or whatever thing has the life. It roams around space for millions maybe billions of years and then it finds its way on Earth. as an example that we've seen recently that we've covered on the show is, you know, the interstellar object of three Atlas, you know, that came into our neighborhood that was one of these travelers that was roaming around. Obviously, he did not make impact >> Yeah. >> with Earth. But we've also covered the crater in Arizona. >> Yes, we've covered the crater in Arizona. We've covered um how like actual Mars a Mars meteorite could

5:49impact Mars, get travel to Earth and then get on Earth and that entire process can be just enough like just um just the right conditions where life under the surface of the asteroid could survive. Maybe not on the surface because it's got to survive re-entry and all that kind of stuff, but like just under the surface, if there's life, it could survive the impact and it could actually create life on Earth. We we've we've had several stories in the past that talk about this. So, scientists have found individual organic compounds in meteorites that fell on Earth, right? But those samples always carried a major asterisk, which is mainly that you can have terrestrial contamination. The most

6:31famous of this is in the 1990s when Bill Clinton um he got in front of the press and I >> think it was in the Rose Garden maybe. >> Yeah, he was in the Rose Garden and he said, "I did not have [laughter] >> I always do this because we've covered this so many times. It's like a running joke now, but he he was actually announcing a science paper by um