Topic: Panspermia - a viable driving mechanism

[Nemesis]

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Dehel calculated the effect of electric fields at various levels in the atmosphere on a bacterium that was carrying an electric charge. He showed that such bacteria could easily be ejected from the Earth's gravitational field by the same kind of electromagnetic fields that generate auroras. And these fields occur every day, unlike the extraordinarily large surface impacts needed to eject interplanetary meteorites.

Charged microbes could also be propelled outwards from a planet at high speed by “magnetospheric plasmoids” - independent structures of plasma and magnetic fields that can be swept away from the Earth’s magnetosphere. Hitching rides on these structures could accelerate microbes to speeds capable of taking them out of the solar system and on to the planets of other stars.

One of the things the Panspermia hypothesis always lacked was a method for microbes to leave their home world and travel across interstellar distances.  Now they have one.

I wonder if these magnetic fields could be harnessed for something like Forwards Starwisp concept?  If not using the Earths magnetic field perhaps Jupiter's?

[Skawpya]

For bacteria cluster maybe, but with present and foreseeable technologies adjusting the fields in question to produce the right directed energy output to hit the sails seems unlikely to me. I am suprised they didnt consider having the whisp carry a maser within itself, and upon getting close enough, having pushed some distance ahead by rocket or the like. Said Maser would then direct its beem towards the whisp. the maser would be powered first by a battery, then as it got close the system's sun, solar panels

[Nemesis]

For bacteria cluster maybe, but with present and foreseeable technologies adjusting the fields in question to produce the right directed energy output to hit the sails seems unlikely to me. I am suprised they didnt consider having the whisp carry a maser within itself, and upon getting close enough, having pushed some distance ahead by rocket or the like. Said Maser would then direct its beem towards the whisp. the maser would be powered first by a battery, then as it got close the system's sun, solar panels

The StarWisp is only supposed to weigh something like 14 grams carrying a maser or battery totally changes the design concept.

I would think that predicting the fields and releaseing the StarWisp when the time was right would be more practical than causing the fields.

[Just plain old Punisher]

You know, the title sounds vagley homoerotic.

[Nemesis]

You know, the title sounds vagley homoerotic.

Looks carefully and still can't see it that way.  Must be an Evil Overlord viewpoint to see that angle.

[Nemesis]

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Philosophy professor Carol Cleland first coined the term “shadow biosphere” in 2005, while heading an investigation into the definition of “life” at the NASA-funded CU-Boulder Center for Astrobiology. Professor Cleland described Earth’s shadow biosphere as: “…a microbial biosphere that is so chemically and molecularly different from life as we know it that it wouldn't be in direct competition with familiar life; familiar life couldn't metabolize it and it would occupy ecological niches that were under populated by familiar organisms. Such organisms might have proteins made of completely different amino acids or amino acids with the opposite chirality, or it might have nucleic acids whose sugars have the opposite chirality, to name a few possibilities,” explained Cleland in her project report on “Philosophical Issues in Astrobiology”.

If there were life on Mars (or elsewhere) being spread Earthwards by the mechanism earlier posted it could result in such a shadow biosphere - or multiple such biospheres.