February is a leading month for Mars missions. The United Arab Emirates and China both arrived successfully in orbit Mars this week, and NASA will land its Perseverance rover on the red planet next Thursday.
All of these missions have, to some extent, the task of assessing whether Mars possibly offered life in its distant past billions of years ago. This question is not only crucial to our understanding of Mars’ habitability, it also has implications for life on earth: many scientists think that life may have begun on Mars. first, only to spread to the earth through a process called panspermia.
Amir Siraj, a student studying astrophysics at Harvard University, was co-author of several papers about panspermia, which he called a ‘very interesting theory’.
“We know there is an exchange between Earth and Mars,” Siraj said. a recent VICE News interview. “We see Mars meteorites and there is absolutely reason for us to think that if it was biology on Mars at some point, it could have brought it to Earth.”
“It is very difficult to determine the origin of life on earth,” he added, “but the idea that it could come from Mars is far from a wild one.”
The interplanetary pan-sperm idea suggests that you, I, and possibly every life form on planet Earth are descended from microbial Martians that existed about four billion years ago. But Siraj does not stop at Mars; he also studied the possibility that life can hook rides on rocks traversing interstellar space.
Since two interstellar objects have been observed by our solar system over the past few years, it is clear that objects jump between galaxies, although the chances of any life forms being able to survive these enormous journeys are slim.
In addition to his work at Harvard, Siraj is an accomplished pianist pursuing a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music. Watch the interview to hear his thoughts on the logistics of pan-sperm, the powerful connection between music and astronomy and the impact that the discovery of alien life can have on mankind.