New Orbit Magazine Issue 08; Feb 2020, The Future of Animals

- Dr Gareth Corbett, Consultant Gastroenterologist
If the menu featured alien life that was
similar to us – more similar than we might at
first think necessary – there is a chance we’d
be able to tuck into some truly exotic cuisine.
The theory of
, a word
derived from the Greek πᾶν, meaning 'all',
and σπέρμα, meaning 'seed', is one which
denotes that all life in the universe, including
that on Earth, came from a single, original
source. Many imagine that this was a comet –
a small chunk of world that heated and
cooled as it passed across the regions of
warmth, light, and varying atmospheres that
it would come across in the uncharted
universe – which sparked that initial burst of
life. This comet, still on its inexorable course,
continued to arc arced across solar systems,
shedding fragments and ice and
cyanobacteria on one planet, or several, or
many, that evolved into every form of life
existing across the cosmos (or, according to
some versions of the theory, certain parts of
the cosmos) today. If this theory of the origins
of life were true, all life in the universe could
be constructed from the same few building
blocks that we, and all life on Earth, initially
came from.
Far-fetched as this theory may seem from a
scientific standpoint, it has its positives.
Mainly, it would require that life would have
sprung up from nowhere only once, not that
it came to be of its own accord a billion times
over in varying corners of space. Comets can
and do pass through planetary fields all the
time, shedding and dropping pieces and
gathering new parts to change its shape. Even
a single cell of the ancestral form of life
dropped into the right spot on the right
planet could get the ball rolling for all
generations to come – perhaps over, and
over, and over again.
This is a convenient theory for science
fiction writers, too. For example, it is part of
the reasoning behind Star Trek’s extended
lore of interbreeding between alien races, as