Human DNA detected in 2 billion year old meteorite

This statement may sound like a line from a science fiction movie, but what if life on Earth didn’t start here?

For decades, this question remained on the margins of science; discussed alongside crop circles and UFOs. But now, with new data from NASA and Japan’s space agency, a once-laughable idea is quietly moving into the realm of possibility.

It turns out that some researchers think life, or at least the components of life, may have come to Earth from space. It’s called theory panspermiaand recent findings from asteroid samples lend it greater weight than ever before.

From highlights to credibility

When British astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe first suggested in the 1970s that comets might form the “seed” of life on Earth, the reaction was brutal. Hoyle’s reputation in mainstream science has never recovered. But half a century later, scientists are now finding traces of the same story by examining asteroid dust and data.

Missions from NASA and Japan have returned fragments of ancient asteroids to Earth. Inside asteroids, researchers have found carbon, ammonia, salts, and even amino acids, the molecules that make up proteins. In January 2025, scientists said OSIRIS-REx samples contained 14 of the 20 amino acids used by life on Earth, as well as the chemical precursors of DNA and RNA.

NASA’s chief scientist on the OSIRIS-REx mission, Dr. “Bennu is basically a pantry full of ingredients,” Jason Dworkin said. “But the conditions were not very suitable for making cake. We have cake in the world and we don’t know why.”

Mars connection

The idea that life can travel between worlds is not new. In 1996, NASA claimed to have found “microfossils” inside a Martian meteorite discovered in Antarctica; this finding was later debunked, but not before President Bill Clinton announced it on the White House lawn.

This brief moment of excitement sparked a generation of research into how life might hitch a ride across the solar system. Today, scientists know for certain that the rocks were ejected by collisions between Earth and Mars and traveled through space. However, whether microbes can survive this journey is still debated.

“Mars cooled faster than Earth, so it may have been ready for life earlier,” said Professor Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. “It is entirely possible that we are all descendants of Martians.”

Seeds among the stars

The theory doesn’t end on Mars. Some researchers think the same process may occur between entire star systems, such as rocks exchanging matter and chemistry.

Astronomers have already determined that interstellar visitors such as ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov are moving too fast for either to have originated here. If bits of rock can travel between stars, can life, or its building blocks, do the same?

“The fact that we found that material can be ejected from one planetary system and go to another shows that this is not impossible,” said planetary scientist Fred Ciesla of the University of Chicago. “Rare but not crazy.”

However, most scientists agree that the possibilities are very small. Travel between the stars will probably sterilize almost everything that is biological. But inside a single solar system like ours or TRAPPIST-1, a compact cluster of seven Earth-sized planets, the math looks much better. In this system, scientists estimate that 10% of the debris from a habitable planet could fall on another planet within 100 years.

Comets, chemistry and cosmic timing

The idea of ​​panspermia is that it doesn’t actually need microbes to survive the journey, it just needs chemistry. If asteroids and comets had brought amino acids, sugars, and salts to Earth billions of years ago, they could have initiated life after the planet cooled.

“The Earth initially went through a molten phase,” Dworkin said. “Anything organic here would have been burned. So maybe the materials came later, with the same impacts that brought our oceans.”

So… are we aliens?

There is currently no evidence that we are aliens. But increasingly strange questions are being asked by more and more scientists.

If asteroids can carry molecules of life, and the same molecules are present throughout the galaxy, this suggests that the recipe for biology is not unique to Earth. Instead, it can be written in the dust among the stars.

That means the opening scene of humanity’s oldest story, where life began in a warm lake on young Earth, may be missing.

“We have to face the fact that we don’t really know where life begins,” Davies said. “And it probably didn’t start on Earth.”

Whether that makes us aliens depends on how you look at it. But either way, we’re starting to realize that the universe may be better at propagating life than we ever imagined.

Source: ScienceFocus

Read the original article GEEKSPIN.
Affiliate links on GEEKSPIN may earn us and our partners a commission.