In article <450u12$9hi at unix.sbu.ac.uk>,
matthias <hammm at trier.fh-rpl.de> wrote:
>the nearest star to the sun
>is several light-months away.
Only if you define "several" to be as large as "fifty." Proxima
Centauri and the Alpha Centauri multiple-star system are taken to be 4.1
and 4.3 light-years away, respectively.
One of the problems with the galactic panspermia hypothesis, aside
from having no real explanatory power, is that it requires spores, for
example, of bacteria-like organisms to survive for tens of thousands of
years, since they would traverse interstellar space at only tiny fractions
of the speed of light. All the while these spores are unshielded from
energetic stellar radiation, from the near-total vacuum of space, and from
the on-average near-absolute-zero temperature of space. Hardy little buggers,
aren't they?
Mark
--
Mark D. Garfinkel (e-mail: mg16 at midway.uchicago.edu)
(c) 1995; all rights reserved. Permission granted for Usenet quotation
with attribution.
