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The theory of cometary panspermia argues that life cannot have originated on Earth in the time available. It must have an ultimate, but still undiscovered cosmological source. The origin of life remains an open question. Life on Earth was introduced by impacting comets, and its further evolution was driven by the subsequent acquisition of cosmically derived genes. Explicit predictions of this theory stating how the acquisition of new genes drives evolution, are compared with recent developments in relation to horizontal gene transfer, and the role of retroviruses in evolution. Precisely stated predictions of the theory of cometary panspermia are shown to have been verified.

We review the salient evidence consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology. Much of this physical and biological evidence is multifactorial. One particular focus are the recent studies which date the emergence of the complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian Explosion of ∼500 Ma. Such viruses are known to be plausibly associated with major evolutionary genomic processes. We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction of H-W theory whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events. A second focus is the remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity (Cephalopods) culminating in the emergence of the Octopus. A third focus concerns the micro-organism fossil evidence contained within meteorites as well as the detection in the upper atmosphere of apparent incoming life-bearing particles from space. In our view the totality of the multifactorial data and critical analyses assembled by Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe and their many colleagues since the 1960s leads to a very plausible conclusion - life may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind. ispartof: PROGRESS IN BIOPHYSICS & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY vol:136 pages:3-23 ispartof: location:England status: published

The origin of life on Earth took a puzzlingly short time. Panspermia is appealing because it means that the origin of life need not be confined to a few million years on one planet. Similar puzzles arise in the evolution of higher life forms. Punctuated equilibrium, for example, seems to violate the darwinian account of gradual evolution by trial-and-error, a few DNA nucleotides at a time. The strong version of panspermia alleviates this puzzle as well. If all of life comes ultimately from space, genes may appear to be older than necessary, evolution by the acquisition of whole genes or suites of genes, by horizontal gene transfer (HGT), becomes much more important, and punctuated equilibrium is not surprising. Does evidence support this supposition? How common are old genes? How important is HGT versus the gradual composition of genetic programs? We will look at these questions.