From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Sat Dec 06 2003 - 23:13:03 PST
>From the Panspermia.org Web site for November 15, 2003:
http://panspermia.org/whatsnew.htm
Microorganisms may have spread throughout the galaxy. That's the conclusion in two papers to be published simultaneously in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. It is already known that microscopic life could cross interplanetary distances on debris blasted from a planet by a collision with an asteroid or comet. However, the enormous distances between stars have seemed an insurmountable barrier to colonising a galaxy These new papers show ways around this barrier.
Max K. Wallis and N.C. Wickramasinghe, Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, "Interstellar transfer of planetary microbiota," to appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, accepted October 2003:
Wallis and Wickramasinghe explain that life-bearing particles would be buried in and protected by comets, which escape from the Edgeworth Kuiper belt and reach proto-planetary discs and star-forming nebulae [see figure] There sputtering releases the trapped micro-organisms to seed forming planetary systems.
http://panspermia.org/wallis01.pdf
W.M. Napier, Armagh Observatory, "A Mechanism for Interstellar Panspermia," to appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, accepted October 2003:
"Napier finds that collisions with interplanetary dust will quickly erode the ejected boulders to ...tiny, life bearing fragments [that] may be thrown out of the solar system by the pressure of sunlight in a few years."
http://panspermia.org/napier01.pdf
Spread of Life Throughout the Galaxy [1 page PDF, image format, or 2 page .doc], Armagh Observatory Press Release about these papers, by John McFarland, 31 October 2003.
http://panspermia.org/napierblurb.pdf
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