Abiogenesis and life on Earth - thoughts and pet theories?

[Santaman]

So maybe life here on Earth was caused by some alien schmuck who just landed here for a second to clear his ashtray.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

So maybe life here on Earth was caused by some alien schmuck who just landed here for a second to clear his ashtray.

Wouldn't that be a real hoot?

 

[Will The Serious]

This article just showed up on my Google front page:
The Math Says Life Shouldn’t Exist: New Study Challenges Origins Theories
https://scitechdaily.com/the-math-says-life-shouldnt-exist-new-study-challenges-origins-theories/

The findings indicate that chance alone, combined with natural chemical reactions, may not sufficiently account for the origin of life within the limited timeframe of early Earth.

I would think that if the barriers to the spontaneous formation of life was extremely high, chance might be the only reason it has formed so early. Roll a million sided die and you might hit your number on the first throw, as unlikely as that is, it is still possible.

Because systems generally move toward disorder rather than order, the formation of the highly structured arrangements required for life faces serious barriers.

Except, there are forces and structures that do move systems towards order. Gravity is one, velcro is another.

While maintaining scientific rigor, the paper acknowledges that directed panspermia, originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, remains a speculative but logically open alternative.

This just adds another turtle to the tower. The question of the likelihood of life forming naturally doesn't change. In fact, that would only make chance a much more important player in the game.

If life on Earth was the result of alien seeding, doesn't that put the true origins of life much closer to the creation of the universe than if it formed naturally here on Earth? Life still had to have formed spontaneously somewhere, and to obscure the the question of its possibility and likelihood with an earlier intermediary, just means it would have had to form, develop, and evolve to intelligent life that then advanced technologically to interstellar travel hundreds of millions of years earlier. That really is our number coming up on the first roll in a million.

This hypothesis suggests that life might have been intentionally seeded on Earth by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, though the author notes this idea challenges Occam’s razor, the scientific principle favoring simpler explanations.

-Will