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“We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me that man with all his noble qualities … still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.” - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871). The origin of human life on Earth continues to remain a partially solved mystery that has yet to be completely understood. Historically, it was thought that an all powerful God possessed the ability to create matter at will and thus molded the universe, including Earth and all its inhabitants. This creationism theory not only formed the basis for many religions, but was also trusted and accepted without any true supporting evidence for centuries. It was not until the Scientific Revolution in the mid 16th century when the authority of the church was truly challenged. People became scientists; thought processes changed and people began to acknowledge the sensory and empirical evidence that lay before them. Perhaps the most acknowledged event since the beginning of the revolution was the publication of the book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin in 1859. Based upon scientific evidence, Darwin’s theory, which argued that species were not created in their present form but had evolved from an ancestral species through natural selection, was a complete antagonist to the teachings of the church (Campbell et al. 1999). Since then, this evolutionary theory has exploded and continual research in this field strives to determine the original origin of life on Earth. Panspermia is one such suggestion that has recently gained support from these extensive investigations. Panspermia encompasses the idea that life did not originate from Earth itself but was “seeded” onto the planet through cosmic elements or by other intelligent life (Gribbin 1999). It suggests that the appearance of then foreign organic compounds, amino acids or even generic material initiated the development of life on ancient Earth (Raulin-Cerceau et al. 1998, “Panspermia 2000” 1999). In contrast, the theory of an Earth based formation for life contains many little intricacies, problems and uncertainties that make this theory much more complex when compared to panspermia. Thus, application of Occam's Razor, which states that in the case of two theories with similar predictions, the simpler one is more plausible, favours externally assisted panspermia over an internal formation of life on Terra by itself. Regardless, the theory behind panspermia has been supposed by many and has included acknowledged scientists such as William Thomson [Lord Kelvin], Svante Arrhenius and Francis Crick. (Hoyle and Wickramasighe 1999, Gribbin 1999, “Panspermia 2000” 1999). Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher who lived in the 5th century BC, can be credited as the first person to present the idea of panspermia: “the seeds of plant and animal life are inherent in the cosmos, and they take root whenever the conditions become favourable.” (Hoyle and Wickramasinghe 1999). However, this novel idea did not hold well in an Aristotelian society that believed in the concept of spontaneous generation; life can be created from non-living matter. (“Panspermia 2000” 1999). It was not until the invention of the microscope and Louis Pasteur’s experiments in the mid 19th century that provided clear scientific evidence against spontaneous generation. Through his investigations on the souring of milk and the fermentation of wine, Pasteur demonstrated that life must have been derived from another pre-existing form of life, and concluded that life, indeed, was not a spontaneous process (“Panspermia 2000” 1999). This opened the door for many new interpretations of panspermia and in 1865, the German physician Hermann E.
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