[meteorite-list] DON'T NEED METEORITES TO TRANSFER LIFE TO OTHER WORLDS

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Sep 10 17:01:45 2006
Message-ID: <004101c6d51c$4ee55210$7628e146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, All,


    We're all familiar with the notion that the transfer
of material from one planet to another, like meteorites
from Mars landing on Earth or meteorites from Earth
landing on Mars, could possibly transfer microbial
life between worlds. It's called "panspermia."
    There have been lots of computer simulations of
materials being transferred between worlds by Gladman,
Melosh, and others. Stuff gets from Mercury to Earth
and even Titan in some situations, and other studies
argue that Mars could never supply the Earth with life,
and so forth.
    But this is a totally new take on the possibilities! Four
billion years of pumping microbes into the solar system
and intergalactic space? Go, baby, Go!

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9601-electromagnetic-space-travel-for-bugs.html

Electromagnetic space travel for bugs?
21 July 2006
NewScientist.com news service
David L Chandler

Life on planets such as Earth or Mars could have been
seeded by electrically charged microbes from space,
suggests a new study.

Since the discovery of meteorites from Mars on Earth
in the 1990s, people have speculated that living microbes
could have traveled back and forth between the two
planets, perhaps allowing one planet to seed the other
with life.

The problem with this idea is that such a trip could
only happen after a huge asteroid collided with one
of the planets, with an impact large enough to blast
rocks off the planet's surface, and such strikes are
extremely rare: just a handful are thought to have
occurred since the solar system formed.

However, a new study suggests there may be a much
gentler and steadier way for microbial life to leave a
planet and travel to other worlds - and even from one
solar system to another, something even the biggest
impacts could not do.

The startling conclusion grew out of work by Tom Dehel,
an electrical engineer at the US Federal Aviation Administration,
 who was investigating how electromagnetic fields in the
Earth's atmosphere can affect GPS satellites and disrupt
their use for aircraft navigation. He presented his findings
at the biennial meeting of the international Committee on
Space Research (COSPAR), in Beijing, China, this week.

Dehel calculated the effect of electric fields at various levels
in the atmosphere on a bacterium that was carrying an
electric charge. He showed that such bacteria could easily
be ejected from the Earth's gravitational field by the same
kind of electromagnetic fields that generate auroras. And
these fields occur every day, unlike the extraordinarily large
surface impacts needed to eject interplanetary meteorites.

Near-vacuum

The measurements of field strength vary greatly at different
levels of the atmosphere - the strongest ones are near the
surface, generated by thunderstorms. There are large gaps
where the fields have not been measured directly, but
assuming the fields extend through the whole air column,
there could be an ongoing, sustained process of lofting
bacteria high into the atmosphere.

Since the upward forces of the magnetic field would balance
the force of gravity for tiny organisms, they could float in
the upper atmosphere for years and reproduce there, giving
them a chance to evolve capabilities to endure the hardships
of that environment, including coping with strong UV and a
near-vacuum. Such organisms would thus be well equipped
to endure the rigours of a journey through space, Dehel told
New Scientist.

The idea that microbes could be electrically levitated into
the upper atmosphere was first suggested in 1908 by chemist
Svante Arrhenius, but until recently there had been no direct
measurements of the strength of electric fields high in the
atmosphere to show whether the mechanism would work
to propel microbes away from the planet.

Other researchers have already demonstrated that some
bacterial spores can survive in conditions thought to exist in
interplanetary space, and then be revived. So the possibility of
interplanetary spread of life is plausible and deserves further
investigation, Dehel believes.

Charged microbes could also be propelled outwards from
a planet at high speed by "magnetospheric plasmoids" -
independent structures of plasma and magnetic fields
that can be swept away from the Earth's magnetosphere.
Hitching rides on these structures could accelerate
microbes to speeds capable of taking them out of the
solar system and on to the planets of other stars.

And because of the potential for a steady outflow of
the particles pushed by the electric fields, a single
life-bearing world might seed an entire galaxy with life,
claims Dehel.
Received on Sun 10 Sep 2006 05:01:38 PM PDT