Abstract
Originally, the term ‘panspermia’ was used by microbiologists (of the late Victorian period, e.g. Roberts, 1874) to refer to the observation that terrestrial air is full of microorganisms. Panspermia, was later used to cover the view that life on Earth originated from space, while more recently, it has been extended to describe the hypothesis that life continues to rain down to Earth from space. In order to avoid confusion, here I will use the term panspermia in its original astrobiological sense, while adopting the term neopanspermia to refer to the hypothesis that life continues to arrive to Earth from space.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Abbot, A.: 2001, Resuscitated ‘alien’ microbes stir up Italian storm, Nature 411, 229.
Al-Mufti, S., Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, C.: 1984, The survival of E.coli under extremely high pressures, in: C. Wickramasinghe (ed.), Fundamental Studies and the Future of Science, Cardiff, University of Cardiff Press, pp. 342–352.
Battista, J.R., Earl, A.M. and Park, M.J.: 1999, Why is Deinococcus radiodurans so resistant to ionizing radiation? Trends in Microbiol. 7, 362–365.
Crick, F.: 1981, Life Itself, London, Macdonald.
Donnes, F.G.: 1928, The mystery of life, Review of Reviews 76, 349–354.
Fish, S.A., Shepherd, T.J., McGenity, T.J. and Grant, W.D.: 2001, Recovery of 16s ribosomal RNA gene fragments from ancient halite, Nature 417, 432–436.
Graur, D. and Pupko, T.: 2001, The Permian bacterium that isn’t, Mol. Biol. and Evol. 18, 1143–1146.
Gregory, P.H.: 1961, The Microbiology of the Atmosphere, Leonard Hill, London.
Gribbin, J.: 2001, Space, BBC Books, London.
Harris, M.J., Wickramasinghe, N.C., Lloyd, D., Narlikar, J.V., Rajaratnam, P., Turner, M.P., Al-Mufti, S., Wallis, M.K., Ramadurai, S. and Hoyle, F.: 2001, Proceedings SPIE Conference,4495, in press.
Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, N.C.: 1979, Diseases from Space, Dent, London.
Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, N.C. (eds.): 2000, Astronomical Origins of Life-steps towards panspermia, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Macfayden, A. and Rowland, S.: 1900, Influence of the temperature of liquid hydrogen on bacteria, Proc. Roy. Soc. 66, 488–489.
Maher, B.A.: 2002, Uprooting the tree of life, The Scientist 16, 26–27.
Orio, J. and Tornabene, T.: 1965, Bacterial contamination of some carbonaceous meteorites, Science 150, 1046–1048.
Roberts, W.: 1874, Studies on biogenesis, Proc. Roy. Soc. 22, 289–291.
Vreeland, R.H., Rosenzweig, W.D. and Powers, D.W.: 2000, Isolation of a 250 million year old halotolerant bacterium from a primary salt crystal, Nature 407, 897–900.
Wainwright, M.: 2001, In praise of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, Microbiology Today 28, 2.
Wainwright, M. and Al Falih, A.M.K.: 1997, Fungal growth on buckminsterfullerene, Microbiology 143, 2097–2098.
Wainwright, M., Wickramasinghe, N.C., Narlikar, J.V. and Rajaratnam, P.: 2002, Evidence for microorganisms in stratospheric air samples collected at a height of 41 km, Proc. SPIE Conf, Hawaii,in press.
Wickramasinghe, C.: 2001, Cosmic Dragons, Souvenir Press, London.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wainwright, M. (2003). A Microbiologist Looks at Panspermia. In: Wickramasinghe, C., Burbidge, G., Narlikar, J. (eds) Fred Hoyle’s Universe. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1605-5_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1605-5_28
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-6339-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-1605-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive