Picture of a tardigrade in front of a trippy background.
To speak of exogenesis is to speak of the notion that life started elsewhere in the universe and arrived here on earth, perhaps as some sort of spore; possibly with the design for intelligent life engineered into its DNA. It is a notion often associated with the consumption of marijuana, and it occasions two main counter-arguements.
The first is a simple OJ Simpson-style application of Occam’s razor; for the latter we apply a reduccio ad absurdum in the same way that Prescott “Gentleman” Ford might have administered his famous “Tennessee Tourniquette” to the testicles of an unlucky Grizzly during his heyday as a bear wrestler in the 1870’s.
In other words, even if life didn’t begin here, it had to evolve somewhere, so what’s the fucking difference?
There are two main responses to this. One discusses the improbability of life arising so geologically quickly after the formation of our planet. However, our ill-understanding of the processes from which the seeds of life arose offers up the possibility that it was a quicker leap than had previously been suspected. Indeed, arising theories of punctuated evolution give credence to this claim, especially in consideration of the great span of time afterward, in which very little biological change took place.
The second line of reasoning is one most often posited by the (dare we say,) chronic consumptors of marijuana, which is that the seeds of life have always been.
Haile Selassie!
This brings us to the subject of the Tardigrade, a.k.a. the “water bear.” These tiny creatures – the largest of which can just be seen with the naked eye (1.5mm long) – have remained nearly unchanged since the species’ divergence from what would later become the arachnids. Its ability to survive in the most extreme of environments puts to shame even the fabled prowess of the cockroach: a stark reminder to all anthropophiles that the truly successful creatures are those that have had to adapt the least.
Water bears have been found living in every ecological niche, from atop the Himalayas to the sulfur vents at the bottom of the sea. But it is the tardigrade’s ability to potentially survive extraterrestrial conditions and to shut down their metabolism and enter indefinitely into a state of suspended animation known as cryptobiosis, that make them an ideal candidate for exogenesis.
In this state, they can withstand temperatures of only a few degrees above absolute zero indefinitely, and temperatures as high as 151°C for short periods of time; they can survive doses of radiation over 500 times the dose fatal to humans, and a range of pressures from the near vacuum of space to those six times greater (and possibly more) as those at the bottom of the deepest parts of the sea. There is also evidence that they can undergo a process called chemobiosis that makes them immune to chemicals that would normally be toxic to terrestrial life.
While there are some few who suggest that the tardigrade was our cosmos-travelling common ancestor, DNA and fossil evidence put these ideas into the same crackpot category as other theories of exogenesis. In particular the nature of natural selection to move towards states of increasing complexity makes it seem unlikely that algae and bacteria would evolve from a much more complex organism. such as the water bear..
No, what I am suggesting here is an exogenesis program of our own, starting with the planets and moons of our own solar system, and eventually the universe.
And I am suggesting it, because I am high.