Astronomical Origins of Life

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Panspermia 2000

   1. Panspermia 2000

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 1-17

3. General Considerations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

      PDF

   2. On a Possibly Fundamental Principle in Chemistry as Viewed in a Cosmogonic Context

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 21-31

   3. Biological Activity in the Early Solar System in its Outer Regions

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 33-41

   4. An Object within a Particle of Extraterrestrial Origin Compared with an Object of Presumed Terrestrial Origin

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe, Hans D. Pflug

      Pages 43-44

   5. The Viability with Respect to Temperature of Micro-Organisms Incident on the Earth’s Atmosphere

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe, S. Al-Mufti

      Pages 45-50

   6. A Laboratory Experiment with Relevance to the Survival of Micro-Organisms Entering a Planetary Atmosphere

      • S. Al-Mufti, F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 51-53

   7. Biological Evolution

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 55-75

   8. Metallic Particles in Astronomy

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 77-88

   9. The Universe and Life: Deductions from the Weak Anthropic Principle

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 89-102

   10. Miller-Urey Synthesis in the Nuclei of Galaxies

       • N. C. Wickramasinghe, F. Hoyle

       Pages 103-107

4. Cosmic Organic Polymers

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 109-109

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   2. Formaldehyde Polymers in Interstellar Space

      • N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 111-114

   3. Formaldehyde Polymers in Comets

      • V. Vanysek, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 115-124

   4. Composition of Cometary Dust: The Case Against Silicates

      • D. A. Mendis, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 125-128

   5. Primitive Grain Clumps and Organic Compounds in Carbonaceous Chondrites

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 129-132

   6. Spectroscopic Evidence for Interstellar Grain Clumps in Meteoritic Inclusions

      • A. Sakata, N. Nakagawa, T. Iguchi, S. Isobe, M. Morimoto, F. Hoyle et al.

      Pages 133-135

   7. Calculations of Infrared Fluxes from Galactic Sources for a Polysaccharide Grain Model

      • F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

      Pages 137-154

5. Cosmic Micro-Organisms: Infrared Characterisation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 155-155

      PDF

Living material contains about twenty different sorts of atom combined into a set of relatively simple molecules. Astrobiologists tend to believe that abiotic mater­ ial will give rise to life in any place where these molecules exist in appreciable abundances and where physical conditions approximate to those occurring here on Earth. We think this popular view is wrong, for it is not the existence of the building blocks of life that is crucial but the exceedingly complicated structures in which they are arranged in living forms. The probability of arriving at biologically significant arrangements is so very small that only by calling on the resources of the whole universe does there seem to be any possibility of life originating, a conclusion that requires life on the Earth to be a minute component of a universal system. Some think that the hugely improbable transition from non-living to living mat­ ter can be achieved by dividing the transition into many small steps, calling on a so-called 'evolutionary' process to bridge the small steps one by one. This claim turns on semantic arguments which seek to replace the probability for the whole chain by the sum of the individual probabilities of the many steps, instead of by their product. This is an error well known to those bookies who are accustomed to taking bets on the stacking of horse races. But we did not begin our investigation from this point of view.

• Galaxy
• astronomy
• evolution
• micro-organism
• phosphorus
• polymer
• space exploration
• stellar
• temperature

• Department of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, University College, Cardiff, UK

  F. Hoyle, N. C. Wickramasinghe

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