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Re:Scientists Say Canadian Bacteria Fossils May Be Earth’s O... by derefr on Thursday March 02, 2017 @05:25PM (#13778847)
Such evidence does tend to support panspermia hypotheses, but I don't think it helps much to support arguments about the tolerances of conditions required for the origin of life.

Life itself is effectively "a chemical soup that maintains homeostasis to keep its reactions going." Once you have something that can do that, you'd somewhat expect to find versions of it in all sorts of insane places—a bit like how you'd expect to find humans in all sorts of insane places, given that we can invent things like spacesuits.

But getting from basic replicators to (homeostatic) life is the hard part, because those replicators don't have the "defences" life has against the environment. If it gets too hot or cold, they die; if it gets too dry or saline or acidic or nitrogenous or anoxic, they die; they probably even die if they get too much visible-range sunlight.

A large mass of replicators—presuming they have RNA and mutational asexual evolution already—could eventually be winnowed into a group that has adapted into a homeostasis "feature." But you would need to start with "a large mass" of them—and it's questionable where you'd get that, given that it's unlikely for any single one to survive. (Maybe they developed biofilm-production early on. Maybe they had viroids. Maybe they were just really, really prolific. But "they just managed" is pretty unlikely.)

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