Comets, messengers of life

Comets are icy, Solar System bodies, generally with diameters of a few kilometers (1 to 30 kms) which, when passing close to the Sun, warm and release gases, a process called outgassing.

This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles. The coma may be up to 15 times the Earth's diameter, while the tail may stretch one astronomical unit. If sufficiently bright, a comet may be seen from the Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° (60 Moons) across the sky. Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures.

As of July 2018 there are 6,339 known comets, a number that is steadily increasing as they are discovered. However, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population, as the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer Solar System (in the Oort cloud) is estimated to be one trillion (1,000,000,000,000).

The outer surfaces of cometary nuclei have a very low albedo, making them among the least reflective objects found in the Solar System. 

Comet nuclei with radii of up to 30 kilometres (19 mi) have been observed, but ascertaining their exact size is difficult.

The nucleus of the comet 322P/SOHO is probably only 100–200 metres (330–660 ft) in diameter. A lack of smaller comets being detected despite the increased sensitivity of instruments has led some to suggest that there is a real lack of comets smaller than 100 metres (330 ft) across.[27] Known comets have been estimated to have an average density of 0.6 g/cm3 (0.35 oz/cu in).[28] Because of their low mass, comet nuclei do not  become spherical under their own gravity and therefore have irregular shapes.

The objection that life can't survive in space needs examination. A serious problem for Svante Arrhenius's theory in 1908 was that spores in empty space would be subject to radiation damage, especially in the vicinity of a star. In 1978, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe observe in Lifecloud that if a cloud of bacterial matter were dense enough, the inner contents would be protected from radiation by the outer layers. Other scientists have recently observed that a coating of dust only half a micrometer thick would adequately protect a bacterium from ultraviolet radiation in space.

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe also discuss another means of space travel which solves the radiation problem: comets. And even before that danger was known, the idea that comets could contribute to life on Earth was afoot. Among others, Isaac Newton endorsed it. "Newton considered the continual arrival of cometary material to be essential for life on Earth".

Comets, as astronomer Fred Whipple figured out, are made largely of ice. Much of the ice in comets is frozen water, but ices of other compounds such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are also present. And comets contain, we have recently learned, a large amount of more complex organic compounds. These organic compounds may be limited to a mixture of molecules such as the original Miller - Urey experiment was able to produce, or they may be even more closely related to life; we can't be sure from here, yet. In the interior of a comet, under layers of opaque organic material, viable cells would be shielded from radiation. Of course, freezing slows or stops metabolism, so cells could exist there in suspended animation.

A few larger comets such as Halley's comet have orbits that bring them as close to the sun as Earth is. Even fewer comets, called "sungrazers," actually strike the sun, or pass so close that they are destroyed by it. Most comets reside at distances far beyond that of Pluto, in orbits not confined to the plane in which the planets' orbits lie. They are so numerous that the total mass of comets in solar orbit may be as great as the total mass of the planets. Slight gravitational disturbances caused by the outer planets or neighboring stars can change a comet's orbit completely, steering some closer to the sun, others completely away.

When a comet nears the sun, some of its surface material ablates away, making the comet's "tail." This process usually begins somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Some of the discharged material is gas, some of it is dust. Each makes a different kind of cometary tail. Dust and larger debris left by comets remain for a while in solar orbit. Earth often passes through the orbits of cometary debris, causing meteor showers such as the Perseid meteor shower around August 10 every year, when we cross the orbit of comet Swift-Tuttle.
References.
panspermia.org and wikipedia

Context A (from the book "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents")

In the beginning it was the ice

“It started to take shape ... a spiritual being composed of wind, waves

and rains, whose essence was movement and whose body was

that of the snake. This snake lived in heaven, and his presence was

manifested everywhere ... in tornadoes, in the shapes of the clouds

and the winds. In the labyrinthine sheets of rain and streams ...

Sometimes this meandering genius of heaven fell on the earth

throwing tiny models itself with the rain. Old tiny snakes that they

slipped into the cracks of the earth and woke up the sleeping ls “1 .

Before she fell at high speed into the aqueous blue belly of that world, she had spent much time asleep in the ice, protected by a massive gray rock and dust covering.

It is difficult to know how much time elapsed since she left her ancient world on the other side of these stellar and gaseous worlds. The consciousness of time requires special complexity, at least within this stellar bulge in which she was traveling, In their old home there were other beings like her, elongated spirals of life nurtured by oceans and different, very old, very distant lakes.

May be she was not alone. Probably with her came also hundreds, thousands, millions of sisters also locked in their icy crusts.

In its elongated body she brought all the necessary information to reconstruct herself, to navigate, to create new daughters replicated from the old codes.

When the rain stopped and rock particles settled within the roaring waves of the great sea, she realized that she had arrived. The crust cracked and the ice melted. She was alive and well in her new home.

This new blue world was unknown, but it seemed as hospitable as her own.

Little by little her rock-uterus was getting smaller. Finally she was able to drift, to move in this blue unknown world, but that it looked as hospitable as her own.

Some, perhaps many of her sisters had also fallen there. They also were looking unhurried, for the necessary heat, the lights, the food for their growth and replication.

After a while, the tiny celestial serpents, had spread throughout all the waters of the planet, oceans, the clouds, rivers, lakes, and dew.

Our small progenitors

A description of panspermia to explain life on Earth

Our small progenitors brought the life designs in their long and twisted spirals.
They could reproduce millions of copies almost identical and only transmit forward those stronger, more efficient, more beneficial features.
Some millions years later they managed to harness the energy of the star system where the planet was orbiting to build their own bodies and to use the atmospheric gases as the basic components of their living matter.
Often the tiny organisms came together to improve their adaptation to the environment. They formed numerous partnerships in which each adopted a particular function. Protected in the crowd they managed to help each other in the difficult task of survival.
Each generation recorded the experience of success and failure. Codes became rich in new information about the blue planet and they were learning and passing on what they learned.
Gradually they occupied all the planetary liquid spaces from the high clouds to the hot water in the cracks of the rocks.
And the planet began to live differently.
They seemed to have a strategy, and perhaps they had one, embedded in ancient inherited millions of instructions from other worlds.
Through their metabolism they changed the gases in the atmosphere, continuing to build their bodies with the help of the central stellar light or other sources of energy from the depths.
Thanks to these changes they managed to keep the temperature of the air and waters relatively stable.
As the central star, which later was going to be called “the sun”,   gradually warmed, they created a global system, allowing the cooling of the atmosphere, keeping it within appropriate limits for life. In the meanwhile they developed new systems to promote learning and improve future adaptations.
There were now thousands or millions of copies almost identical which became divided into two complementary halves.
These two halves joined in different ways to ensure the transmission of traits and genetic changes. In that way it was possible to give rise to more complex organisms
One of these halves, called “female” was devoted to gestate eggs and produce new offspring, and the other, the male counterpart was dedicated to cooperate in various ways for their formation and growth. In  this manner many variants were emerging.
Some species grew to gigantic sizes, formed for associations of billion microorganisms in their aqueous spiral wraps, while others were kept separate, as in the old days.
Most living associations continued floating or swimming at all levels of seas and lakes, some groups tried to get out of the water and dragged through the dry earth with their fluid bags in tow.
They also developed roots that grew into the soil to absorb moisture and raised their leaves skyward for light and the precious air gases.
These complex associations where trillions of tiny snakes, grouped, grew and died, replicated in increasing number and in each generation they learned many things which were transmitting to the next.
The whole planet was alive, beating to the rhythm of new life attempts and explorations.
From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones

Our tiny ancestors

 Arrival of life to our planet

Danilo Anton

Before she fell at high speed into the aqueous blue belly of that world, she had spent much time asleep in the ice, protected by a massive gray rock and dust covering.

It is difficult to know how much time elapsed since she left her ancient world on the other side of these stellar and gaseous worlds. The consciousness of time requires special complexity, at least within this stellar bulge in which she was traveling,

In their old home there were other beings like her, elongated spirals of life nurtured by oceans and different, very old, very distant lakes.

Maybe she was not alone. Probably with her came also hundreds, thousands, millions of sisters also locked in their icy crusts.

In its elongated body she brought all the necessary information to reconstruct herself, to create new daughters replicated from the old codes.

When the rain stopped and rock particles settled within the roaring waves of the great sea, she realized that she had arrived. The crust cracked and the ice melted. She was alive and well in her new home.

Little by little her rock-uterus was getting smaller. Finally she was able to drift, to move in this blue unknown world, but that it looked as hospitable as her own.

Some, perhaps many of her sisters had also fallen there. They also were looking unhurried, the necessary heat, the lights, the food for their growth and replication.

After a while, they, the tiny celestial serpents, had spread throughout all the waters of the planet, oceans, the clouds, rivers, lakes, and dew. 

Gradually the liquid veins in the depths of the earth came to be populated by a multitude of tiny creatures. Mothers and daughters, many, recreating the ancient codes to generate another sphere of life in space.

Our small progenitors brought the life designs in their long and twisted spirals.

They could reproduce millions of copies almost identical and only transmit forward those stronger, more efficient, more beneficial features. ²  

Some millions years later they managed to harness the energy of the star system where the planet was orbiting to build their own bodies and to use the atmospheric gases as the basic components of their living matter.

Often the tiny organisms came together to improve their adaptation to the environment. They formed numerous partnerships in which each adopted a particular function. Protected in the crowd they managed to help each other in the difficult task of survival.

Each generation recorded the experience of success and failure. Codes became rich in new information about the blue planet and they were learning and passing on what they learned.

Gradually they occupied all the planetary liquid spaces from the high clouds to the hot water in the cracks of the rocks.

And the planet began to live differently.

They seemed to have a strategy, and perhaps they had one, embedded in ancient inherited millions of instructions from other worlds.

From the book: "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones

Bacterial spores and hydrocarbons in space  

 Danilo Anton

 Spectroscopic studies of interstellar clouds of cosmic dust carried out by several astronomical observatories in recent years have shown that hydrocarbons are very abundant in the universe.

In particular, English astronomer Fred Hoyle and other members of his scientific team in British universities (Cambridge, Cardiff) contributed transcendent data about various organic molecules found in these clouds, including some, who had, the surprising spectral behavior of certain bacteria spores.

In 1968 studies of interstellar dust detected polycyclic aromatic molecules (Donn, 1968).

Four years later, in another study (Johnson, 1972) confirmed the presence of porphyrins in this space dust, 

Wickramasinghe in 1974 proved the existence of complex organic polymers in space conditions, particularly polyformaldehydes. It is noted that these molecules are related to cellulose and are ubiquitous in terrestrial biochemistry.

Finally, in 1975, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe concluded that organic polymers constitute a significant proportion of the powder material in interstellar dust clouds.

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe continued their research work in the mid-1970s and concluded that the light absorption spectrum of interstellar dust could be explained if the grains had a certain size and were hollow. 

In 1979, after comparing numerous substances with the data from the interstellar dust these authors found a strong similarity with dry bacterial spores which refract light as irregular hollow spheres and have a range of proper grain size. Based on these data they concluded that a significant proportion of interstellar dust grains could consist of frozen bacterial spores. 

This finding was considered ridiculous in that time and even today is generally ignored. There were even those who thought "poor Fred Hoyle had lost its way".

Although the interpretation of these research data were considered highly speculative new information has been obtained in the last few years ratifying those preliminary conclusions.

In a recent paper Wickramasinghe found hetero-aromatic polymers in the dust collected by the Stardust probe. According to the interpretation of this author they would constitute fragments of broken cell walls after impacts at 30 km per second against the surfaces of the detectors.
In the last 15 years of his life, until his death in 2001, Hoyle was dedicated to study the implications of this hypothesis. His student and successor, Chandra Wickramasinghe and other disciples continue exploring these bold and innovative aspects of life in space.

From the book "Inexhaustible? Petroleum and Gas", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones 

In the beginning it was the ice

  from the book "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents"

Danilo Anton

Context I

"It started to take shape ... a spiritual being composed of wind, waves and rains, whose essence was movement and whose body was that of the snake. This snake lived in heaven, and his presence was manifested everywhere ... in tornadoes, in the shapes of the clouds and the winds. In the labyrinthine sheets of rain and streams ...

Sometimes this meandering genius of heaven fell o the earth throwing tiny models himself with the rain. Old little snakes that they slipped into the cracks of the earth and woke up the sleeping souls ^"1   .

Before she fell at high speed into the aqueous blue belly of that world, she had spent much time asleep in the ice, protected by a massive gray rock and dust covering.

It is difficult to know how much time elapsed since she left her ancient world on the other side of these stellar and gaseous worlds. The consciousness of time requires special complexity, at least within this stellar bulge in which she was traveling,

In their old home there were other beings like her, elongated spiral of life nurtured by oceans and different, very old, very distant lakes.

Maybe she was not alone. Probably with her came also hundreds, thousands, millions of sisters also locked in their icy crusts.

In its elongated body he brought all the necessary information to reconstruct herself, to create new daughters replicated from the old codes.

When the rain stopped and rock particles settled within the roaring waves of the great sea, she realized that she had arrived. The crust cracked and the ice melted. She was alive and well in her new home.

This new blue world was unknown, but it seemed as hospitable as her own.

Some, perhaps many of her sisters had also fallen there. They also were looking unhurried, the necessary heat, the lights, the food for their growth and replication.

After a while, they, the tiny celestial serpents, had spread throughout all the waters of the planet, oceans, the clouds, rivers, lakes, and dew. 

Gradually the liquid veins in the depths of the earth came to be populated by a multitude of tiny creatures. Mothers and daughters, many, recreating the ancient codes to generate another sphere of life in space.

Our small progenitors

Our small progenitors brought the life designs in their long and twisted spirals.

They could reproduce millions of copies almost identical and only transmit forward those stronger, more efficient, more beneficial features. ²  

Some millions years later they managed to harness the energy of the star system where the planet was orbiting to build their own bodies and to use the atmospheric gases as the basic cp,´pmemts pf their living matter.

Often the tiny organisms came together to improve their adaptation to the environment. They formed numerous partnerships in which each adopted a particular function. Protected in the crowd they managed to help each other in the difficult task of survival.

Each generation recorded the experience of success and failure. Codes became rich in new information about the blue planet and they were learning and passing on what they learned.

Gradually they occupied all the planetary liquid spaces from the high clouds to the hot water in the cracks of the rocks.

And the planet began to live differently.

They seemed to have a strategy, and perhaps they had one, embedded in ancient inherited millions of instructions from other worlds.

Through their metabolism they changed the gases in the atmosphere, continuing to build their bodies with the help of the central stellar light or other sources of energy from the depths.

Thanks to these changes they managed to keep the temperature of the air and waters relatively stable.

As the central star, which later was going to be called “the sun”, gradually warmed, they created a global system, allowing the cooling of the atmosphere, keeping it within appropriate limits for life. In the meanwhile they developed new systems to promote learning and improve future adaptations. 

There were now thousands or millions of copies almost identical which became divided into two complementary halves.

These two halves joined in different ways to ensure the transmission of traits and genetic changes. In that way it was possible to give rise to more complex organisms

One of these halves, called “female” was devoted to gestate eggs and produce new offspring, and the other, the male counterpart was dedicated to cooperate in various ways for their formation and growth. In this manner many variants were emerging.

Some species grew to gigantic sizes, formed for associations of billion microorganisms in their aqueous spiral wraps, while others were kept separate, as in the old days.

Most living associations continued floating or swimming at all levels of seas and lakes, some groups tried to get out of the water and dragged through the dry earth with their fluid bags in tow.

They also developed roots that grew into the soil to absorb moisture and raised their leaves skyward for light and the precious air gases.

These complex associations where trillions of tiny snakes, grouped, grew and died, replicated in increasing number and in each generation they learned many things which were transmitting to the next.

The whole planet was alive, beating to the rhythm of new life attempts and explorations.

Life vehicles

Besides stars and planets, the universe is populated by countless tiny beings that act as carriers of life in space and time.

Usually they travel far from stars, traversing the huge cold and dark distances.

Some of them, the smallest ones, remain frozen hundreds of millions of years without anything to disturb their long sidereal winter.

Others, the largest ones, have enough mass to generate some heat from radioactive minerals and compounds.

In these larger heavenly bodies interior ice can melt forming underground warm seas. These are probably the most common scenarios of life in the cosmos.

Bacteria and other tiny organisms survive, reproduce and evolve in these environments, using the limited energy available. The solar system contains millions, perhaps billions of such bodies. A lot of them are very far from the Sun, beyond the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.

Some are closer to the center, in warmer regions, and occasionally come so close to their star that ice can vaporize and be ejected in the form of gas and dust.

These bodies, which often show dramatically in the earth night skies are called "comets".

Some astronomers, increasingly believe that comets and their relatives in the dark and cold remoteness, are carriers of life forms whose characteristics are difficult to imagine. Maybe some of them behave like real organisms with their own "metabolism" and history of individual and unique life.

According to Chandra Wickramansinghe, Fred Hoyle and other researchers, life has been a common phenomenon in the universe long ago, almost from the beginning (if there was a beginning), spreading through space onboard of tiny comets.

In that way spatial “seeds” came to Earth in the remote origins, several billion years ago.  At later times they kept coming, bringing new genetic material throughout the geological history of the planet.

For many years there were big and small ice blocks enriching the atmosphere bringing water and other compounds (nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, etc.).

Thus, gradually, in that way, the primordial seas were formed, they were filled with water and created the mixture of gases we call 'air'. 

Gases emanating from the planetary interior contributed to form this enriched atmosphere through a degassing process that still continues. These gaseous emissions were primarily nitrogen and methane. The nitrogen is still present mainly in the atmosphere, and methane oxidation processes enriched the surface of carbon dioxide and water.