Fungi in Outer Space?

Fungi in Outer Space? 





Fungi may not be unique to Earth. Scientists theorize that life is spread throughout the cosmos, and that it is likely to exist wherever water is found in a liquid state. Recently, scientists detected a distant planet 5,600 light-years away, which formed 13 billion years ago, old enough that life could have evolved there and become extinct several times over (Savage et al. 2003). (It took 4 billion years for life to evolve on Earth.) Thus far 120 planets outside our solar system have been discovered, and more are being discovered every few months. Astrobiologists believe that the precursors of DNA, prenucleic acids, are forming throughout the cosmos as an inevitable consequence of matter as it organizes, and I have little doubt that we will eventually survey planets for mycological communities. The fact that NASA has established the Astrobiology Institute and that Cambridge University Press has established The International Journal for Astrobiology is strong support for the theory that life springs from matter and is likely widely distributed throughout the galaxies. I predict an Interplanetary Journal of Astromycology will emerge as fungi are discovered on other planets. It is possible that proto germplasm could travel throughout the galactic expanses riding upon comets or carried by stellar winds. This form of interstellar protobiological migration, known as panspermia, does not sound as farfetched today as it did when first proposed by Sir Fred Doyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe in the early 1970s. NASA considered the possibility of using fungi for interplanetary colonization. Now that we have landed rovers on Mars, NASA takes seriously the unknown consequences that our microbes will have on seeding other planets. Spores have no borders. 

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