Because this is FQXi, I want to post another radical suggestion – this time related to the possibility of life on the moon.

Before I do, though, one reader has asked a reasonable follow-up question to the last post: why was NASA ever concerned about “lunar germs”? How could microbes have gotten to the moon in the first place?

About NASA’s quarantine program back in the Apollo...

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image: l*u*z*a*

Because this is FQXi, I want to post another radical suggestion – this time related to the possibility of life on the moon.

Before I do, though, one reader has asked a reasonable follow-up question to the last post: why was NASA ever concerned about “lunar germs”? How could microbes have gotten to the moon in the first place?

About NASA’s quarantine program back in the Apollo years, or why it was eventually dropped, I have no knowledge (anyone who has, please chime in). My guess is that lunar infection, even if it didn’t seem likely given everything we knew, was given some non-zero probability simply on the grounds that we didn’t know a whole lot.

As to how life *might* have gotten to the moon, two ideas present themselves. The first, while by no means mainstream, is hardly fringe any more. The second is my radical idea for the month.

I had the pleasure once of speaking with Cassie Conley at NASA, whose experiment onboard the ill-fated Columbia showed that even macroscopic life-forms can survive not only the mechanical stresses of explosion and impact but the burn of falling to earth from space. “Transpermia” is the suggestion that life hops from one Solar System Object to another inside chucks of debris, blasted, say, off a planetary surface by an impactor or extremely powerful eruption. The life-bearing asteroid then drifts in its own orbit until it happens to be drawn into the gravity well of another planet which, if it is hospitable, becomes the microbes’ new home.

Could our own moon have collected guests, the same way it presumably collected ice? The moon, having essentially no atmosphere, is subject to direct collisions that don’t even burn “on the way in.” Earth-crossing asteroids stand a reasonable chance of hitting it, as evidenced by its densely pock-marked surface. Plus, there have been billions of years of collisions taking place up there. If transpermia is correct and if even a small number transferred biota, they could conceivably still be snoozing in the centers of what we see as impact craters. Extremophiles are already on record as being able to lie dormant for millions or even tens of millions of years. Transpermia traces on the moon are a stretch, but not an absurd one.

image: largerich

Now the more radical idea: Where else could lunar microbes have come from? I’m improvising here, but . . . what about Earth itself?

We know --- or, at least, it’s a well-reasoned theory – that the Moon was formed when a titanic, Mars-sized impactor hit the early Earth, blasting enormous quantities of mass into orbit. Let’s assume that theory is correct: most of what was ejected would be molten, but not all of it. Suppose life had already gotten started on Earth at that time. Could the same process that formed the moon have sterilized the young planet’s surface and transferred a sample of its biota into orbit in one go?

Think about it. Endoliths safely housed deep inside some rocky mass, tumbling around amid a wash of superheated detritus, protected from the various environmental hostilities until, eventually, the moon coalesces into a quiet orb.

I should repeat that this is pure speculation on my part. But if anything like this were actually the case, then NASA’s “lunar germs” might be our oldest living relatives . . . or something even more interesting.

How so? Evolution may have started over again several times during the bombardment period on Earth, with its products being wiped out with each new impactor storm and then arising anew from organic scratch. In this scenario, the products of one of those early attempts could have been preserved inside rocks in parts of the moon. If so, they would be the only life forms indigenous to Earth that nonetheless are unrelated to the life forms that gave rise to us—indeed, to everything that has existed in what we call the tree of life.

We have never known whether winding the clock back and starting evolution over again on Earth would produce the same kinds of living things, the same solutions to environmental needs, the same basic structural patterns. It seems unlikely, though. There’s no compelling reason to assume that what has evolved here *must* have evolved—rather, the current biological situation is probably just what happens to have come about. Roll the dice again and you would no doubt see convergent forms, but not wholesale repeats. There are plenty of ways to skin a microbe, and small differences at the beginning could lead to enormous, even unrecognizable, dissimilarities later on.

So if we had fossil evidence, to say nothing of dormant or active samples (!), of “pre-biosphere” Earth biota . . . what might it be?

RNA life? Expanded alphabet DNA? Non-carbon based microorganisms? Or something even stranger?

To find lunar neighbors might be not a threat at all -- but an amazing opportunity to understand our own evolution.

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Accepting Reality.

The gap between the Dreamer and the Academic, the Historian and the Physicist, the Inventor and the Mathematician seems just too big to our own detriment. Religious wars start through ignorance and bigotry and modern man denies the very roots of his existance. OK then folks, just "who" was around to record the Earth as being a hothouse (EDEN) surrounded by the up to three...

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Accepting Reality.

The gap between the Dreamer and the Academic, the Historian and the Physicist, the Inventor and the Mathematician seems just too big to our own detriment. Religious wars start through ignorance and bigotry and modern man denies the very roots of his existance. OK then folks, just "who" was around to record the Earth as being a hothouse (EDEN) surrounded by the up to three canopies of water vapour when the earths crustal temperature was in fine balance with the atmosphere? This was millions of years ago yet science has us as only approx. 150,000 years old (humankind). Why does the translation of Genesis from the Hebrew not include that shattering word..."filtered" (light), which would explain to even the semi literate why the stars came into being AFTER the earth because they could not be seen through the canopies. Who was around to witness and record this? Just who were the 200 Angels led by the 20 who came down from the heavens and taught men all sorts of things from metallurgy to agriculture and slept with the daughters of men and had children to them? (See Secrets of Enoch). Who was Toth who claimed to be in touch with the gods (Earth Dwellers) and who beat death and had such an advanced knowledge of TIME and the makeup of the Universe? Has anybody disputed his claim to be the builder of the great pyramid using earth force techniques of construction (anti-gravity)? Does anybody even know about this? Has anyone explained yet the copper electrodes protruding from some internal sections of the pyramid that Egyptian authorities will not allow further investigation on? Does anyone take seriously this old mans claim that his "Space Ship" is buried beneath or near the Sphinx that stands sentinel over a Past Time. The Ship to be raised and used against the Dwellers of the Deep when they return?? You are hearing the roots of a lot of our Religious beliefs constucted by our ignorant superstitious ancestors but I suggest that the reality of recorded history is being ignored. An understanding of Toth and his view of Time and the Universe makes far more sense than a lot that is postulated by modern man and yet it is ignored. To be told a story about UFO incidents through the Press begs disbelief. To personally witness a flying craft in broad daylight at 200 meters brings scorn and derision. But to personally witness three beams of light approximately a quarter to a half a kilometer wide each radiating out of the water off a remote beach at night at the same time as tens of thousands of dead fish were being washed ashore, but only up to a certain size,is PROOF, scientific , physical, evidential. Man is incapable of making an underwater craft many kilometers long(est.exceeding 5klm). The craft had killed these fish through its vents only allowing the fish up to a certain size to pass through. Of course authority reaoned that a virus had attacked every species of fish simultaneously.What does all this mean to the FXQi community? Just a lonesome attempt to sway their thinking towards some things that were known many years ago already. Time is not what you think it is. It is not even the fourth dimension(state) as spoken about in comic books or TV. Without Time to "exist in" nothing would exist. Our human and material existence though is a manifestation of the mechanics of the four states. We are a product of the four whose sum is subservient to something else. There will never be a Theory of Everything (Stephen Hawking). When the great expansion took place through the Word, a waveform, Time had already existed and always will, regardless of the physical universe being or being in a state of chaos. Gods Creative Force that fashioned everything into order is most likely a combination of the Hydrogen Line and the Helium Line (Sound) to produce ORDER. The other phenomena receiving scant attention is the mechanics of "Wheel within a Wheel". Counter rotating wheels the product of which is the Stellar/planetoid bodies etc.etc The rotation of the earth is due to the same Wheel within a Wheel internal mechanics as is the propulsion system of unidentified flying objects. Surely science has had its suspicions for a long time especially given that the magnetic field of the earth has changed polarity in the past (and according to Toth that is why man does not live as long anymore). There is a clue to the make up of the earths internal motor on the earths surface.An amateur like myself is too scared to open his mouth really because of the flaming received when matter is said when mass was meant or vice versa or some such other heresy. More like a burnt chook rather than a human so we tend to keep our mouths shut. However thanks to this site we are allowed an input, amateurish as it is, but no less plausible. In closing, I ask that the reader consider this. You exist in Time right now and always will just do that, Exist. No past no future you simply exist. However your structure, your form, is moved forward to a place constructed for you to enter by the mechanics of the four states interacting. The fourth state is an inward acting force and the key to understanding the mechanics is an ancient knowledge...to see the future look backwards. Let the reader who understands this have his eyes openened like I have had and to grasp the Spiritual understanding of beyond the physical dimensions (states).

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