11-17-2023, 11:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2023, 11:22 PM by stevebowers.)
The OA position is discussed in this article.
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48e8cb5ecb84f
A number of worlds in the OA universe did acquire microbial lifeforms via panspermia; this is particularly common as a method of transfer between stars in a cluster, because the distances involved are much smaller. After a star leaves its birth cluster the opportunities for panspermia are much reduced, because stars and particularly planets are very small targets, so the chances of a viable organism transferring between stars (outside of clusters) is very small. Additional to the phenomenon of natural panspermia, we also consider 'directed panspermia', or translocation, which is the transfer of living organisms between worlds by spacefaring cultures. Translocation is quite common in the OA universe, although nobody knows whether this is true in the real universe (yet).
The majority of lifebearing planets in OA are considered to be the result of natural, in-situ abiogenesis events, and this includes life on Earth. Most life-bearing worlds in OA are microbial or prebiotic, so the fact that Earth and a small fraction of other worlds have rapidly developed macroscopic life is mostly down to chance rather than a particularly long evolutionary process.
The main lesson that sophonts in OA have learned about evolution is that you can't predict the outcome of this process from first principles - you have to go out there and examine life on a myriad of different worlds before you start to see the big picture, and even then the possibilities are very diverse.
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48e8cb5ecb84f
A number of worlds in the OA universe did acquire microbial lifeforms via panspermia; this is particularly common as a method of transfer between stars in a cluster, because the distances involved are much smaller. After a star leaves its birth cluster the opportunities for panspermia are much reduced, because stars and particularly planets are very small targets, so the chances of a viable organism transferring between stars (outside of clusters) is very small. Additional to the phenomenon of natural panspermia, we also consider 'directed panspermia', or translocation, which is the transfer of living organisms between worlds by spacefaring cultures. Translocation is quite common in the OA universe, although nobody knows whether this is true in the real universe (yet).
The majority of lifebearing planets in OA are considered to be the result of natural, in-situ abiogenesis events, and this includes life on Earth. Most life-bearing worlds in OA are microbial or prebiotic, so the fact that Earth and a small fraction of other worlds have rapidly developed macroscopic life is mostly down to chance rather than a particularly long evolutionary process.
The main lesson that sophonts in OA have learned about evolution is that you can't predict the outcome of this process from first principles - you have to go out there and examine life on a myriad of different worlds before you start to see the big picture, and even then the possibilities are very diverse.