panspermia
08 Jun '10 01:16http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/T/Thomson.html
Thomson and panspermia
In his 1871 presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science,1 Thomson surprised the scientific community by declaring his support for a version of the theory of panspermia:
Should the time come when this earth comes into collision with another body, comparable in dimensions to itself ... many great and small fragments carrying seeds of living plants and animals would undoubtedly be scattered through space. Hence, and because we all confidently believe that there are at present, and have been from time immemorial, many worlds of life besides our own, we must regard it as probable in the highest degree that there are countless seed-bearing meteoric stones moving about through space. If at the present instance no life existed upon this earth, one such stone falling upon it might, by what we blindly call natural causes, lead to its becoming covered with vegetation.
Witty and derisive replies were not slow in coming. That arch-supporter of Darwinism, Thomas Huxley (who ironically had introduced Thomson to the BAAS meeting) wrote in a private letter: "What do you think of Thomson's 'creation by cockshy' – God almighty sitting like an idle boy at the seaside and shying aerolites (with germs), mostly missing, but sometimes hitting a planet!" Thomson, however, continued to argue his case, even urging that he considered it "not in any degree antagonistic to ... Christian belief." Zöllner's attack on Thomson's thesis prompted a rebuttal from Helmholtz, who had independently put forward a similar theory of panspermia. In recent years, with the discovery of meteorites that have come from Mars, the concept of microbes hitching a ride from one world to another aboard impact fragments has become scientifically respectable (see ballistic panspermia).
Thomson and panspermia
In his 1871 presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science,1 Thomson surprised the scientific community by declaring his support for a version of the theory of panspermia:
Should the time come when this earth comes into collision with another body, comparable in dimensions to itself ... many great and small fragments carrying seeds of living plants and animals would undoubtedly be scattered through space. Hence, and because we all confidently believe that there are at present, and have been from time immemorial, many worlds of life besides our own, we must regard it as probable in the highest degree that there are countless seed-bearing meteoric stones moving about through space. If at the present instance no life existed upon this earth, one such stone falling upon it might, by what we blindly call natural causes, lead to its becoming covered with vegetation.
Witty and derisive replies were not slow in coming. That arch-supporter of Darwinism, Thomas Huxley (who ironically had introduced Thomson to the BAAS meeting) wrote in a private letter: "What do you think of Thomson's 'creation by cockshy' – God almighty sitting like an idle boy at the seaside and shying aerolites (with germs), mostly missing, but sometimes hitting a planet!" Thomson, however, continued to argue his case, even urging that he considered it "not in any degree antagonistic to ... Christian belief." Zöllner's attack on Thomson's thesis prompted a rebuttal from Helmholtz, who had independently put forward a similar theory of panspermia. In recent years, with the discovery of meteorites that have come from Mars, the concept of microbes hitching a ride from one world to another aboard impact fragments has become scientifically respectable (see ballistic panspermia).
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