Transcript from June 19, 2003 9:00-10:00 PM Eastern

Copyright © by International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design 2003.

ISCID Moderator
Our guest speaker today is panspermia theorist, Brig Klyce. Brig is the writer and creator of the internet's most comprehensive website on panspermia. Brig has actively studied evolution, the origin of life, and panspermia since 1980. In 1995 this activity became his full-time occupation. Today he conducts, promotes and publicizes research pertaining to the strong version of panspermia, which he would like to rename 'Cosmic Ancestry'. He has given many lectures and radio interviews, and presented papers on Cosmic Ancestry at colleges, universities and science conferences from NASA's Ames Research Center in California, to Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

ISCID Moderator
I'm now going to turn the chat over to Brig. Feel free to start sending in questions.

Brig Klyce
Hi everyone. Cosmic ancestry is a version of panspermia, the theory that life is spread from place to place in the universe when viable cells are delivered by vehicles such as comets. Evidence for this theory is accumulating -- organics in interstellar dust and on meteorites, very hardy extremophiles, and apparently immortal spore-forming bacteria.

Brig Klyce
(More about panspermia) -- One of the best reasons to like panspermia is the inadequacy of theories explaining life's origin from ordinary chemicals.

micah
Hi Brig. Does panspermia imply that conditions for the origin of life are better in other places in the universe?

Brig Klyce
(More) Cosmic ancestry finds a similar inadequacy in the darwinistic account of evolutionary _progress_ (not adaptation or microevolution). A logical extension of panspermia is to suppose that the genetic programs for such advances also come from space on the same vehicles.(end)

Brig Klyce
(reply to Micah's) No. It is true that there are some 10^20 more opportunities -- planets -- for life to originate on if we open the posibilities of space. Also, life could originate on comets or in more diffuse bodies like interstellar clouds. But none of these places is better than Earth.

phil
Do you address the question of origin of the interstellar life-forming organisms?

Brig Klyce
Phil, no. In the version of panspermia that I advocate, the origin of life from nonliving chemicals is impossible. A cell is irreducably complex, I guess.

mitochondrion
Hello Brig, it appears to me that viruses evolved from cells, here on earth. Genetic material escpaes from cells from time to time to form what we call viruses. Evidence of this is the extreme specificity of the virus to host relationship. What are your thoughts?

Brig Klyce
I'm not entirely sure that viruses are merely genetic material that has escaped. They have their own basic genes (gag, pol, and env are the 3 necessary ones I think). But their specificity fits neatly with the requirements of cosmic ancestry (CA). This specificity would reduce chaos as new programs arrive.

bertvan
after life is in existence, do you believe random mutation and natural selection plays any role in its furether development>

Brig Klyce
Absolutely, bertvan. Even if random mutation cannot compose new programs, it can help optimise them for specific species, environments, etc.

Bill111
The idea that life reached earth from outer space only moves the mystery one step further away. It solves nothing. Some things could take place from random motion of atoms. But some could not happen without intelligent aid from outside. Using the old illustration of a 747 resulting from a tornado passing thru a junk yard, there is nothing in the tornado that could tighten screws or nuts and bolts.

Brig Klyce
If we knew for sure that life had to originate somewhere, I would agree with you, Bill. The evidence that life had to originate on Earth used to be thought very secure. Now we know that life didn't have to originate here. In cosmic ancestry, is didn't have to originate ever, but always existed. I realize that we are in the habit of seeking the origin of everything. But without better scientific evidence, I think we can doubt that life ever originated. If so, we would have to amend the big bang theory, but it is often amended anyway!

Fred
Do you view Cosmic Ancestry as one of many views under the Intelligent Design umbrella, and do you think that there is evidence that might be sought to distinguish between a theistic explanation for life and a panspermic explanation?

Brig Klyce
Fred asks 2 questions. First, no, cosmic ancestry is a third thing, different from both Darwinism and ID. Both of them think life must have originated -- CA doesn't. This leads to the second question. I do not think that any scientific evidence can be used to prove that a miracle ever occurred in the past, if that's what you mean by a theistic explanation. On the other hand, there are some questions that science cannot answer, no matter what. For example, why is there anything instead of nothing? Science would do well to acknowledge that there are scientifically unanswerable questions. CA holds that the origin of highly evolved life is one of those questions.

bertvan
Does the3 work of James Shapiro and natural genetic engineering hold any implications for panspermia?

Brig Klyce
Not sure if I know James Shapiro's natural genetic engineering. Is it like using viruses to install genetic modifications? If so, it demonstrates a principle about how evolution could work, according to CA.

evolving_fast
So if evolutionary processes can evolve specific organisms, is it possible that we are an "evolutionary backwater", and there are more highly evolved organisms out there that may someday float to earth? Or is the converse true, are we the most highly evolved, and therefore seeding the rest of the universe?

Brig Klyce
There is no way for us to know whether even more highly evolved forms exist. Unless perhaps we could find the genes for them in a genome sequencing project. Even then we wouldn't know what the genes would do unless we somehow activated them. I haven't thought this through. I think we could logically assume that the capability to become cosmic ancestors must exist, so if we couldn't accomplish some part of that project ourselves, something must be missing.

micah
Brig, does your version of panspermia reject the strict reductive methodology of 20th century biology in favor of an organism based biology (in the same spirit as McClintock, Shapiro, etc.) In other words, do you think that trying to explain the organism by reference to just chemistry and physics leaves something out?

Brig Klyce
I do not reject strict reductive methodology, but it leaves something out, of course. First, from chaos theory and complexity theory, we know that complex phenomena and behaviors, that could not be anticipated from simply knowing the rules, often emerge. Consider "Gliders" in Conway's "Game of Life". It also leaves something out in the same sense as chemistry and optics leave out a great deal about impressionistic painting.

mitochondrion
How does CA explain the origin of humans?

ISCID Moderator
Here's a related question....

VidyardhiNanduri
Why do you take bacteria only into consideration? How do you correlate to Human Evolution ?

Brig Klyce
If real time experiments do not give evidence of sustainably inventive evolution (and they don't) then it is reasonable to doubt that it is possible. If so, humans and all life forms do not originate, they _develop_. The genetic programs for them are already present, and are expressed when conditions and prior development permit. If the planet were all water, maybe the individuals in a civilization would not be called (by us anyway) humans....

bertvan
Micah's "something eles" might ber volition/intelligence. Do you entertaint he possibility of volition/intellience being a real force of nature?

Brig Klyce
Bacteria are the life-form that forms spores that are apparently immortal. They could survive billion-year inter-galactic trips, if necessary. Other forms of life haven't shown this capability. But bacteria (and viruses, which could - not survive but - persist through such voyages) could contain all the genes for everything else.

Brig Klyce
I think volition/intelligence are properties of highly evolved life, such as ourselves. And we are a real force _in_ nature. Now our influence is mostly limited to this planet, but it could become greater.

Bill111
" humans and all life forms DO NOT ORIGINATE, they _develop_ The genetic programs for them are already present." So you wrote. If this solves the question of life on earth, then there is still another question even more important. Who or What wrote the genetic programs?

Brig Klyce
I do not think we have evidence of a time when the programs did not exist. So who wrote them? contains an assumption that I do not make -- that they had to originate.

mikeg
Since I'm late joining, I'm not sure if this was covered. But if directed panspermia is proposed, do you see this as a one time event or an on-going event? If on-going, how would we recognize it?

Brig Klyce
Directetd panspermia was proposed by Crick and Orgel in 1973 because they thought that radiation in space would sterilize aything. That was wrong. (Comets can shield life from UV and cosmic rays.) But ordinary, undirected panspermia would be ongoing.

bertvan
you don't see the genome as something dynamic and constantly changing then?

ISCID Moderator
let me point out that bertvan's quesiton is in reference to "the genetic programs for them are already present."

Brig Klyce
Yes! the genome is totally dynamic and changing. But without new genetic programs from somewhere, these internal dynamics reach an evolutionary limit. They are housekeeping, error-correcting, grammar and syntax checking (perhaps) processes, but not inventive ones.

NelsonAlonso
Do you think that photosynthesis was the result of something akin to Shapiro's natural genetic engineering?

Brig Klyce
" The genetic programs are already present" somewhere within the biosphere and available for ultimate use by the appropriate species, is what I think I meant earlier.

Brig Klyce
NelsonAlonzo: photosynthesis has been carefully studied recently, and the conclusion is that it arrived by horizontal gene transfer. I mentioned this in What'sNEW on my website recently, and the references are there.

ISCID Moderator
let me just point out htat Shapiro's natural genetic engineering thesis states that organisms have the capacity to reorganize their own genomes to deal with their environments.

ISCID Moderator
Well, that wraps up our chat for the evening.

ISCID Moderator
Thanks to everyone who showed up.

Brig Klyce
Thanks all!!

ISCID Moderator
And thanks especially to Brig Klyce for the stimulating discussion!

mitochondrion
Brig thanks for the chat! Keep up the site!!!

VidyardhiNanduri
Thanks every one

Copyright © by International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design 2003.