{"id":35430,"date":"2025-12-05T05:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T10:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=35430"},"modified":"2025-12-04T23:23:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T04:23:32","slug":"europan-trilobites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/05\/europan-trilobites\/","title":{"rendered":"Europan Trilobites"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was watching a YouTube video about the material that a NASA probe brought back from an asteroid<\/a>.\u00a0 This asteroid apparently is in a near Earth orbit and so this mission was able to reach and return from this tiny world in just a few years with its cargo of sand and gravel.\u00a0 By the look of the asteroid, it\u2019s not even a solid piece of rock but a bunch of space junk that gravitated together out in the lonely stretches of interplanetary space.<\/p>\n

But as unpromising as this locale seems to me, apparently, it was a bonanza for science.\u00a0 This one kilometer flying gravel pit somehow contains an astonishing collection of organic molecules that hint shockingly about being the precursors or even the aftermath of life.\u00a0 A slew of amino acids and even some precursors of the RNA molecule showed up in this sampler that NASA recovered.<\/p>\n

Now, reading this I immediately began to question in my own mind whether these organic molecules started out on Earth and were ejected into space during one of the asteroid collisions that befall this planet every once in a great while.\u00a0 After all, if rocks from Mars have ended up on Earth (as has been claimed by geologists) then surely debris from Earth could have contaminated nearby space and ended up on this neighboring rock.\u00a0 But the writers of this report have information that dates this asteroid to very ancient times.\u00a0 In fact, they claim it\u2019s older than the planets and could possibly contain material from completely outside the solar system.\u00a0 Well, who knows?\u00a0 Despite assurances I think it\u2019s fifty\/fifty whether it\u2019s originally terrestrial organic material they\u2019re looking at.<\/p>\n

But suppose it really is extraterrestrial in origin.\u00a0 In that case, I think that eventually we will find that life existed on Mars in the past when it possessed abundant water.\u00a0 In fact, it\u2019s entirely possible that life exists cryptically below the surface of Mars at a depth where temperature is higher and reservoirs of water exist.\u00a0 And if organic molecules are floating around the solar system, it seems likely that some of the larger Jovian and Saturnian moons with their liquid water oceans will also turn out to contain life.<\/p>\n

Now here\u2019s the thing.\u00a0 I would make a small wager that when these life forms are found, they will be shown to have a relationship to terrestrial organisms.\u00a0 I say this because I think they will be descendants of microorganisms that have managed to be ejected from Earth and drifted through the solar system until they reached environments that they could adapt to.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s possible that life on Earth also came from space.\u00a0 Experimentation with hardy terrestrial lifeforms has shown that they can exist in the vacuum of interplanetary space for surprisingly long periods as spores.\u00a0 I guess the interesting question is just how advanced is the life that we will find in the rest of the solar system.\u00a0 There is a big difference between finding bacteria, algae, lichen or moss on Mars or a jellyfish swimming in the oceans of Titan as opposed to finding the xenomorph.\u00a0 Well, I won\u2019t be greedy.\u00a0 I\u2019ll split the difference.\u00a0 I\u2019ll settle for a Europan trilobite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was watching a YouTube video about the material that a NASA probe brought back from an asteroid.\u00a0 This asteroid apparently is in a near<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3545],"tags":[5095,4124],"class_list":["post-35430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-science","tag-extraterrestrial-life","tag-extraterrestrials"],"yoast_head":"\nEuropan Trilobites - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/05\/europan-trilobites\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Europan Trilobites - 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