Can non-intelligent life naturally evolve the ability to space travel and to live in interplanetary space?
Can non-intelligent life forms evolve to leave their home planet and travel in interplanetary space, for instance, grow on atmosphereless icy moons and transfere spores over interplanetary space?
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Yes, via panspermia.
Panspermia is the idea that extremophiles "hitch a lift", as it were, on ejecta from collisions between celestial bodies. There are a few obstacles, because the microbes would have to survive all three phases of travel:
- Launch (as well as the impact event)
- Travel in the harsh environment of space
- Atmospheric entry and landing, with high temperatures
Extremophiles are really the only types of organisms that could survive such a journey. More complicated organisms (with more needs) would surely die en route.
On Earth, here have been some discoveries of materials related to organic matter that might be evidence of panspermia; see Bell et al. (2015) for one example.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia user Beao under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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