The Search for Our Cosmic Ancestry

217 Pages·2014·7.13 MB·English

by  Chandra Wickramasinghe

The Search for
Our Cosmic Ancestry
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The Search for
Our Cosmic Ancestry
Chandra Wickramasinghe
Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, UK
World Scientific
NEW JERSEY • LONDON • SINGAPORE • BEIJING • SHANGHAI • HONG KONG • TAIPEI • CHENNAI
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Published by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wickramasinghe, Chandra, 1939– author.
The search for our cosmic ancestry / Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe, Buckingham Centre for
Astrobiology, UK.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-9814616966 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-9814616973 (softcover : alk. paper)
1. Exobiology. 2. Extraterrestrial beings. 3. Life on other planets. I. Title.
QH326.W534 2014
576.8'39--dc23
2014018316
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2015 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means,
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In-house Editor: Ng Kah Fee
Printed in Singapore
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Dedication

In memory of Fred Hoyle who changed the way we perceive our
connection with the external Universe more profoundly than anyone in
living memory.
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Preface

Since Fred Hoyle’s passing in 2001, evidence supporting the theory of
cometary panspermia has grown to the point of becoming almost
compelling. The most direct supportive evidence has come from the
discovery of biological structures within cometary fragments and
meteoroids arriving at the Earth. Astronomical evidence for organic
molecules linked to biology has now been extended to include galaxies
located at distances exceeding 11 billion light years, thus indicating that
life is distributed throughout a very large fraction of the observable
Universe. Evidence from DNA sequencing studies has revealed that our
DNA contains sequences belonging to viruses that were evidently the
result of past infections that inevitably contributed to later evolution of
our species. A closed-box neo-Darwinian evolutionary paradigm is
rapidly giving way to the type of model proposed by Hoyle and the
present author in their 1980 book Evolution from Space. Terrestrial
evolution is the expression on the Earth of a long history of
developments that has taken place across vast cosmological distances,
and over aeons of time.

Chandra Wickramasinghe
Cardiff, March 2014
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Contents

Dedication v
Preface vii
List of Tables xi
List of Figures xiii
Prologue xix
Chapter 1: The Genesis of Panspermia 1
Chapter 2: The Primordial Soup and Evolution 10
Chapter 3: Cosmological Context 21
Chapter 4: From Dust to Life 29
Chapter 5: Comets 41
Chapter 6: Cosmic Viruses in Our Genes 58
Chapter 7: Evidence from Epidemics 68
Chapter 8: Microorganisms Entering the Earth 84
Chapter 9: Planets of Life in the Solar System 96
Chapter 10: Search for Exoplanets 108
ix