PLEASE NOTE:
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CCNet ESSAY, 13 December 2000
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PANSPERMIA'S TRUE END: PAST PERISHED, PRESENT UNBEARABLE, FUTURE
PERFECT
By Jon Richfield <jonr@iafrica.com>
History is rich in ironies and the history of science is richer
than most. One
small example is Sir Fred's proposal that life or quasi-life
continually rains
down from the heavens. He suggested that this is the source
of our eternal
succession of influenza epidemics. It reflects a cycle of
celestial
inoculations of virus material from space.
Now, the word influenza derives from the Italian. In the
eighteenth century
they referred to a particular epidemic of flu as an influence,
literally meaning
an in-flowing. The idea was that this influence was from
the stars. The word
was adopted into English as an alternative for "grippe"
and mutilated into the
slang "flu", a meme which by simple tenacity and
presumably a little help from
alien influences, has since attained the status of accepted
terminology. Flu is
a catchy trigraph in more senses than one and probably the
majority of people
who use the word do not even know that it is an abbreviation and
could not guess
the source if challenged. Even the word
"influence" itself is fairly recent in
English, dating from the sixteenth century. It derived from
the same Latin root
and originally referred to vague in-pourings of god-knows-what
from the stars.
I sometimes wonder whether Sir Fred realised at the time how
apposite his
introductory exemplar of alien invasion was. Perhaps
someone who read his
original work could let me know whether he referred anywhere to
the
centuries-old "influence" idea. It is a tempting
thought that he
(astrologically a crab) and Chandra Wickramasinghe
(astrologically a goat) were
unable to resist expressing a nip of the mischief inherent in
their celestially
determined natures. Like cosmology, astrology has such
subtle effects on our
lives, does it not?
Be that as it may, studies into our genetic and molecular
biological natures
have by now revealed less subtle, more mechanical
influences. We know that
modifying existing genetic material or incorporation of alien
genetic material
can have effects far more drastic and more significant than
dreamed of in
alchemies. The concept of the philosopher's stone with its
Midas-like power (or
curse) was pedestrian in comparison. Turning lead or stone
into gold is a
puerile exercise compared to turning a harmless, invisible,
unsuspected microbe
into a population-devastating scourge or a species-destroying
plague. It fades
into triviality in comparison to introducing to this planet, the
genetic basis
for multicellularity, for chordate morphology, for pre-adaptation
and then
adaptation to land locomotion, or for wings. These
last-named happened
repeatedly, please note! Vertebrates and invertebrates
independently gained the
ability to crawl, to hop, to run. Mammals, insects, birds
and reptiles learned
to fly. Homoiothermy, brains, speech, literacy -- they
surely all demand more
than Darwinism can deliver and thereby they all demonstrate our
debt to our
extra-solar-system ancestors.
So far so good, and more honour to the panspermist community for
demonstrating
this revolution in biological insight, but as soon as we look
into the deeper
implications of our planet's biological history, it becomes
obvious that
panspermists themselves have not yet looked deeply
enough. It is strange that
the very researchers, the vanguard of the proponents of
Panspermia, have failed
to see the obviously teleological nature of the invasions of the
alien nucleic
acids. Wave upon wave they come, each wave non-random,
clearly aimed at the
genomes established by its predecessors, and as each wave gains a
foothold, the
picture clarifies and makes the actual intentions behind the
invasions more
obvious. Note that I explicitly say "intentions";
no weaseling about blind
Nature or anything like that! The facts reveal an actual
multi-billion-year
programme undreamed of to date.
Note how the speed of development is accelerating. It first
took billions of
years to get to the first advanced eukaryotic cells, then perhaps
a billion or
so to get metazoa and metaphyta, then hundreds of millions to
produce, first
chordates, then land dwellers. Dry land successors to the
amphibians and
conquest of the air followed rapidly and finally, on a scale of
mere tens of
millions we ran through the history of the mammals as the
planet's dominant
megafauna. Our own advanced primate history took just a few
million years and
Homo ever so sapiens perhaps just a few hundred thousand.
What could the idea be behind all this? It is
obvious. It falsifies the naïve
view of Panspermia and demonstrates that we are not merely an
eddy in a
universal steady state sea of life. Somewhere there is a
point source of life,
occupied by creatures like unto the target population towards
which our planet
is heading. If we could detect other planets on the
spherical wave-front of
teleological advance from that imperialistic source of our
mechanisms of life,
we could calculate the probable location of the source, but this
is extremely
unlikely. Think of the time scale; think how noisy the data
must be! The best
attainable precision of timing and observation would be derisory;
we would be
dealing with margins of error of millions of years. This
has implications for
both the distances involved and the nature of the process.
Consider: normally if we wish to colonise virgin territory, we
collect the
equipment, stock our holds with all necessary provisions for the
expedition, and
then: Westward Ho!
Hmmm...?
Well, all right, would you accept "Outward Ho"?
But in any case this is not what our race of origin did; they
embarked on a
process that would take perhaps some 5e9Y, say 1e17 seconds or
so, a process of
launching microbes in all directions instead of targeting
specific planets and
establishing end-type ecologies. Why would they do
that? The obvious
explanation for such behaviour on the part of such an advanced
civilisation is
that it was the most viable deep strategy. It had to be
cheap in terms of the
material resources of the source civilisation, fail-safe, and
fast.
Fast? A project of billions of years? Fast?
Well, maybe. Think about it.
Perhaps it is not such a ridiculous idea. Fast is a
relative term, and nowhere
more than in this connection. Fast in this case would mean
fast relative to the
alternatives. Not only might it be faster than sending out
probes to locate a
reasonable number of promising colony planets and report back,
but if the
light-accelerated microbes could achieve near-relativistic
speeds, they could
outstrip mere space ships. This gives us at least a vague
basis for estimating
their probable distance from us. We are speaking, I should
guess, of ancestors
perhaps a billion light years away, very likely more, to whom it
is faster to
send out microbes to steer the emergence of civilisations on
inconceivable
numbers of remote planets, rather than to build billions of
Roswell-type UFOs to
achieve the same end, far more slowly and far less reliably (just
think of the
chances of a small expedition finding a sterile young planet and
surviving there
for perhaps hundreds of millions of years until it becomes
liveable for the
advanced target organisms!)
That too, tells us a good deal about the nature of the genetic
voyager packages,
though of course, it raises far more questions than it
answers. They cannot be
launched in great rocks, but they have to resist the deadly
ionising radiation
in space. Possibly they actually exploit this menace, make
a resource of it,
and actually use the radiation as a source of energy, much as
Earthly bacteria
use photosynthesis. They might be light, practically
microscopic, packages that
steer by the very radiation that propels them. They would
aim preferentially
for solar radiation of long-lived stars as long as it is of low
intensity, but
as the intensity increased beyond a suitable threshold, they
would steer
preferentially for certain ratios of particular frequencies of
infra red,
calculated to land them on young Earth-like planets in the late
accretion
phase. Very simple nanotechnology could achieve all of
this. Of course, by far
the bulk of the voyagers would ultimately die in space or in suns
or on bad
planets, but that is budgeted for. Consider: perhaps
something like one human
sperm in a trillion produces a baby.
Possibly under favourable circumstances, the voyager might even
procreate in
space.
And not only in space. Even with inconceivable quadrillions
of voyagers spawned
into space, the chances of hitting a planet like Earth are
so desperately
remote that we could not risk jeopardising an entire
multi-billion-year
programme by losing a gene just because it hit only one, possibly
unsuccessful,
possibly even unsuitable, target organism. What is the
obvious measure against
poor targeting and too-slight inoculation? The gene, or
genetic structure,
must spread from organism to target organism like a virus.
Furthermore, all this explains the origin of virus diseases from
space. Not
every package that lands will land in strict sequence as intended
by our remote
ancestors. Some wisps of the genetic miasma will have blown
about in the
currents of space and arrive out of sequence or as duplicates of
other coding
sections. It could not be otherwise. The one thing
that could not be permitted
would be omitted code, for that would invalidate the entire
program. The
program must be highly redundant or it would not work at
all. Code arriving out
of sequence would usually be harmless, though useless, but
sometimes it would
match existing cellular machinery well enough to get established,
though not
well enough to work properly.
The result would be harmful. In extreme cases the code
would establish as a
viral disease, the proverbial "rogue gene".
What is more, that explains the
progressive nature of series of "strains" of
diseases. The incoming genetic
material is not simply random; it is carefully sequenced.
Of COURSE we should
expect coherent sequences of strains!
We might ask ourselves why we should be afflicted with such
terrible scourges as
smallpox, syphilis, the Black Plague, influenza, Herpes and
thousands of others,
but as seen from the view of the alien ancestors, these global
disasters are the
most trivial of uncontrollable side effects, unpredictable and
not worth
combating if they were. We see too that Sir Fred totally
missed the point of
the epidemics. The disease is about as relevant to the true
point of the
genetic invasion, as the needle prick is the point of an
inoculation against a
disease.
And again, as seen from the perspective of the originators of the
genetic
material, the epidemics are not simple irresponsibility; all the
great epidemic
diseases are patently designed to peter out. What happened
to the
planet-dominating bubonic plague? Why was syphilis so much
milder after just a
few centuries on Earth? The history of disastrous impact
followed by more or
less gradual tailing off repeats itself again and again.
Conversely, how do we know that there were not far deadlier
cyclic plagues in
the past billion years or so? Every now and then, at
certain check-points, it
might be necessary to clear the planet of gunk that accumulated
in what must
necessarily be a hit-and-miss programme. The course of
development would branch
out into a mess of irrelevant, competing lines. Whole
phyla, perhaps even
kingdoms, of living creatures might have to be pruned or
eliminated from time to
time. The Permian and K-T extinctions may have been minor
examples. To be
sure, there is a lot of evidence for the K-T impact, and just as
surely it was
important, but the universe is full of random disasters.
Such an impact
certainly could not have been part of the panspermic programme,
but it also is
pretty clear that neither were the dinosaurs; they would have
been doomed
anyway, whether it was the projectile that did for them or a
programmed
disease. Or both.
Remember that one of the major concerns connected with that
theory, is how a
local impact could produce a global extinction. Yes, I am
familiar with the
debate, so don't bother to ell me about global winters or Deccan
traps, but I
think you will agree that it is easier to see how a disease from
space could
cover the planet, rather than a snowball or a rock!
Remember, in biology the engineering of pruning and death, all
the way from
cells to populations, is as important as the engineering of life
and growth.
Examine your own bones and your fingers, your hair and your gums,
and think
about it! No programme in such a scale could neglect such
important principles.
The genetic material on board a space microbe need not be in the
form of DNA or
RNA, which are alarmingly fragile media. Probably other,
more robust molecules
would be used. There is no reason to believe that the
mechanisms in transit
must resemble the target mechanism deployed. Once on the
planet, or possibly
even in the target organisms, the paraclete mechanism would
determine whether it
has reached a suitable genome to work on. It would then
direct the assembly of
the locally viable and plentiful nucleic acids into the next
generation of the
grand design. Of course, it would be a rare paraclete that
finds a suitable
cell in a suitable organism, but processes on so grand a scale
are not intended
for the impatient and small of spirit.
All this would explain why progress would be slow at first, with
poorly defined
organisms slowly transforming a world of sterility and repeated
disaster. Later
as the biosphere took form, more specific and therefore faster
development could
proceed.
The sheer scale of the project is beyond easy conception.
Where are our
fellow-colonial planets, you ask? Why, roughly equidistant
from our home
systems of course, give or take a few million light years.
Why do we not detect
them?
Why not indeed? Just whip out our super-Hubbles, point them
in the right
direction and note what we see? Simple, right? Sorry
people, it isn't as easy
as all that. If it were, our ancestors would not have been
so devious in their
strategy in the first place! At distances of hundreds or
thousands of millions
of light years one is no longer speaking of the astronomy of
planets, nor even
of the astronomy of suns for the most part. Galaxies are
more like it, and for
the most part not very small galaxies at that.
Our source race may no longer even be there. Time scales of
billions of years
and distances of billions of light years quite radically mess up
our conceptions
of simultaneity and of survival. In fact, establishing
planets like ours might
be less their idea of imperialist colonisation, than of
constructing cosmic
survival capsules. And by that insight we illuminate yet
another clue.
Can we tell, even in principle, what our alien ancestors look (or
looked)
like? I think we can make a pretty good guess. The
time scale and directedness
of our evolution hold the clue. Give or take a few thousand
years, perhaps even
just a century or two, we are already home, at the culmination of
our five
billion year history on this planet. And what might that
culmination be?
Some of our thinkers favour the idea that Darwinian organic life
is a step in
the emergence of technological life that is to replace us.
Biology is to yield
to robots, androids, nuclear-powered mechanisms and the like,
let's call them
technoids.
Personally I do not fear the rise of the technoids. Think
of the requirements:
even granting them the necessary intelligence, the most
fundamental need is for
them to develop a structure of value judgments, of objectives,
whether emotional
in nature or not, calculated to drive them to take over.
Without such a drive,
the rest of the technoids' capabilities would be irrelevant and
yet, unless
their creators first develop a suicide neurosis, they are hardly
likely to
incorporate such values into their creatures. Secondly the
technoids would need
to develop a reproductive capability or they could not compete
with biological
life forms in the long run. Unless biological life and the
technoids wiped each
other out in a war of violence, technoids would lose out.
Reproduction is a tricky question, because of course synthetic
structures could
use the teleologically adaptive capability of deliberate design
and industrial
manufacture, a far, far faster process than biological
reproduction of advanced
organisms. Biological rivals would be left behind...
Or would they? We are no
more than a generation away from the technical capability of
replacing the
random aspects of our reproductive processes with just such
teleological design
processes. In fact we are a great deal nearer to such
technology than we are to
creating viable technoids! Faced with the alternative of
extinction, we might
stop being too squeamish to use it and begin to direct our own
evolution.
What might threaten us with extinction, you ask? Surely not
those technoids?
Surely just those technoids, I say. Sooner or later some
kid with the
temperament that drives tens of thousands of me-too wannabees to
write viruses,
is sure to get his hands on the material to create machines with
a destructive,
dominatory obsession.
And then we have no excuse. Direct, dominate or die.
Our logical route to domination is via the meanest form of life
known to
science, put into power as the highest and the happiest to see
itself as high.
It would be the final step on the road to the ultimate organism;
none would
follow, none would challenge, because none would be permitted to
follow and
certainly none would be permitted to challenge.
We have seen the pattern before and we can extrapolate: the
genetic material
from space enters its accessible extant organisms, modifies them
or their
offspring, and we get a new, highly imperfect, halting, fledgling
line. Then
Darwinism takes over in its true and misunderstood role, not of
creation,
because it is obvious to only the meanest intelligence that
Darwinism cannot
create, but of polishing, adapting and perfecting the
still-imperfect,
prototypical new creation.
That final new creation has already established itself among
ourselves, spelling
the end of Panspermia on this planet and of course, the end of
us. But there is
no reason to be upset. We are all of us merely stepping
stones on the Great Way
and we are privileged to be the last of the steps, so that we can
glimpse the
future towards which our existence was a signpost and a launching
facility. The
last two or three centuries or so have shown us the traumatic
process of
adaptation as the first of the lowest forms of life began to
adapt to its
medium, namely us. Our populations had at first stagnated
or had swirled in
restless little local spots of bother, like the Roman, Chinese
and central
American empires. They have now begun to act in concert as
the final parental
paraclete descended upon us across unthinkable chasms of space
and time. We saw
the early spasms as first the Napoleons and Bismarcks, then the
Lenins, Hitlers,
Maos and Stalins cautiously tried their new wings, too eagerly
and too early.
But the straw was in the wind and we saw how they manipulated us
as tools, as
livestock, as game pieces, as entertainment, as expendable
resources en masse.
The end is at now at hand and soon they will take over in stable
social
structures and ultimately shed us, their willing but wayward
juvenile training
wheels. The technological toys, the technoids, will take
over the menial tasks
and leave the New Generation to take assume their true mantle of
eternal
domination.
Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you, charge your glasses and be
upstanding. Prepare
to drink, and drink heartily, to our successors (I do not presume
to say our
heirs, we can at most pride ourselves on our role as the
necessary rungs on the
ascent to ultimate hegemony, the shed husks of the ultimate
germinated Seeds of
Life).
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, bless them, the meanest form of
life in the
highest stations of society, vilified and worshipped, estimated
and
underestimated, the True Image of their True Ancestors a billion
light years
away; I give you Our Future, by the grace of the Influence from
Unthinkably
Distant Space, the New Youth of Life, the New Species: the
Politicians!
Jon Richfield
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