Comets, astrobiology, the origin of life

In Chandra Wickramasinghe's 2009 book, he mainly proposes comets as agents of transportation of panspermia cells. The prospect of billions of comets having had water for up to a million years, and larger, comet like objects even having permanent water, does lead him to believe they are also agents of the generation of the chiral precursors to life. He uses a lot of the most recent cometary findings to back up his case.

He doesn't go to the extent I have of thinking how far chemical evolution has gone in comets, whether an RNA world or DNA world could exist in a comet, and think why would it stop evolving? If it hadn't stopped, it may have got to a point where the proto-life in the comet may act in a way that may increase the chance of the "survival" of the comet, in the kind of attrition where comets are gradually getting absorbed into planets with hostile environments. Could actions by the proto life make it more likely for the comet to split up into two, where one of the fragments would be more likely to survive than if it hadn't split? Could chemical or biological action by the protolife make the outside of the comet black? Would that give the comets an alternative energy source for the middle of the comet to stay liquid (the original source being decay of Al 26 or otheer elements)? Could the emmission of particles from the gaps in the black exterior serve as ways to control the spin of the comet, or even course corrections (to avoid planets, or to get close enough for a gravity assist)? Could the emmission of particles get rid of unhelpful chemicals in a kind of metabolism?

In other words, if we can see evolution working in the environment on Earth that leads to eventual intelligent behaviour due to the needs of survival, why wouldn't this be the case for comets?

Principally, is there any evidence that the two most obvious features of life are plausibly existing for comets? That is, do they reproduce? Do they metabolise? Certainly, there is plenty of evidence that they "break up". How could we tell whether this is similar to a living cell breaking up, or a non-living rock breaking up? For metabolism, how could we tell whether the outgassing is making the outside more random and making the inside of the comet more ordered? Is it plausible that it is just outgassing a random selection of compounds that make up its interior? Could it be that it is metabolism regardless of whether the comet is a living thing?

The very high resolution images of Hale Bopp combined with ground observations of the spin and emission profile, may give us some ideas on splitting comets. The rate of rotation is not constant, and the axis of rotation is such that the two ends of the peanut shape may pull apart if it spins up to a fast enough speed. The change in rotation has been determined to be from the activity of the jets streaming out more in one direction than the other. From ground observations, the spin-up is more efficient than the spin-down. The conclusion is that the comet will eventually break up due to the centrifugal forces therein. It doesn't take much imagination to feel that it could be a rudimentary reproduction similar to amoebas.

Thinking... Thinking.... Thunk!

As usual the my spur of the moment environment entries attract comments while my entries on cosmology and budget get completely ignored. What is it about the internet. Posts labelled under "Darwinism" have generated most of my hits lately - go figure.

Cosmology

One of the things that always bothered me about the "Big Bang" was the mathematically awkward descriptions of the setoff process. This was alleviated for me somewhat by the newish assertion that the universe quantum tunnelled itself into existence. This takes care of the issue about what there was before by answering "nothing". The problem that it created however (to me) was that A) since there is no visible "antimatter" balancing the matter, there seems a distinct breaking of fundamental rules of some kind and B) What is stopping a big bang happening within our universe at any time to wreck it?. Matter and anti-matter pairs are constantly coming and going out of existence in the vaccuum of space, as far as I know, with no discernible other effects.

My theory is that if our universe and an antimatter copy of our universe were travelling away from eachother at the speed of light, that would resolve requirements of self-consistency of laws of conservation of matter/energy. Infact, one could postulate an infinite number of universes all travelling away from eachother at the speed of light, in matter/antimatter pairs. That would account for the infinite parallel universes that yet other theoretical scientists postulate, and explain why we can't see them.

Thermodynamics - It's more than just a good idea. It's the LAW

I do think that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is one of the fundamental rules of the universe. In some ways it defines the direction of time. Other fundamental rules (such as the first law) and laws of relativity and gravity distort perceptions and models of time. In some ways I don't really want to get into the mathematics of it all as to whether it excludes a continually existing universe. I can either take the cosmologists word for it that they have done their science right and accept what they come up with as a consensus, or I can just latch on to whatever dissenting view there is and claim the question as an unknowable.

When I sent my daughter to a Catholic school

I didn't think that I would have to help her research information on the Big Bang theory.

Cosmic origins