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Email: [email protected]
3
The Extended Continuity Thesis, Chronocentrism, and Directed Panspermia
Milan M. Ćirković
Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Abstract
The continuity thesis as formulated by Iris Fry has a strong appeal not only in the origin of life studies, but as a unifying principle bridging the gap between physical and life sciences. It is one of the most powerful methodological tools of contemporary astrobiology, especially in its efforts to build a synthetic view of the place of life and intelligence in the widest, cosmological context. Here, I briefly survey several of its key aspects and identify several open problems that it might be able to help with. Two particularly interesting aspects of the continuity thesis not discussed so far are its relation to the chronocentric bias and the application to panspermia hypotheses, especially the theory and practice of directed panspermia.
Keywords: Astrobiology, evolution, history and philosophy of science, abiogenesis, panspermia, extraterrestrial intelligence, physical eschatology
Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolts, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man; to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground put forth grass?
The Book of Job 38: 25-27
He [Eddington] told me once, with evident pleasure, that the expanding universe would shortly become too large for a dictator, since messages sent out with the velocity of light would never reach its more distant portions.
Sir Bertrand Russell1
