Martian Spores: How Life Could Have Flown to Earth express
The idea of extraterrestrial origin of life has long excited minds. Fred Hoyle believed bacteria travel between stars. A new study tested a similar but closer route: from Mars to Earth. In ancient times, Mars had water, and asteroid impacts knocked rocks with microbes into space. They fell on our planet — interplanetary delivery without a sender.
In the lab, spores (nature's nanocapsules) were covered with a layer of dead cells, creating a protective shield, and exposed to harsh solar ultraviolet — hundreds of times stronger than on Earth. Even with the rock rotating, many survived. And calculations showed that such a rocky container reaches Earth in a year — faster than Magellan circumnavigated the globe.
This doesn’t prove life came from Mars, but it confirms: carbon building blocks of life can travel inside cosmic dust. Interplanetary mail works.
Among meteorites on Earth, there are fragments of Mars — pieces of crust knocked off by asteroid impacts and delivered straight to us.