--- title: TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens? | TIME description: TIME explains the tantalizing evidence that suggests life on Earth may have been seeded from other planets canonical: https://time.com/video/klUn8B3a/ og:title: TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens? og:description: TIME explains the tantalizing evidence that suggests life on Earth may have been seeded from other planets og:url: https://time.com/video/klUn8B3a/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/klUn8B3a/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens? twitter:description: TIME explains the tantalizing evidence that suggests life on Earth may have been seeded from other planets twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/klUn8B3a/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens? [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/klUn8B3a.m3u8) (2:48)  _Published 2012-10-12. TIME explains the tantalizing evidence that suggests life on Earth may have been seeded from other planets_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:28 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Venus May Once Have Been a Garden Planet](/video/5aJLNTMb/) ### Venus May Once Have Been a Garden Planet [Early Mars May Have Been A Lot Like Early Earth](/video/6uSmLeZO/) ### Early Mars May Have Been A Lot Like Early Earth [Extreme Shrimp May Hold Clues to Alien Life](/video/O9gL0DSQ/) ### Extreme Shrimp May Hold Clues to Alien Life --- ## Transcript For as long as human beings have been looking up at the stars we've been wondering if there are aliens in outer space. Well it turns out we might be the aliens, here's what you need to know. [ MUSIC ] For more than a hundred years scientists have been talking about, what's known as panspermia. The idea that biological material or even living organisms could've immigrated from one planet to another, essentially seeding their new planet with life from afar. Panspermia wouldn't involve an actual alien and an actual spacecraft. Much more commonly it would be bacteria trapped within the matrix of a meteor or even simply amino acid sugars or some other hydro carbon or prebiotic material. On Earth, organisms that survive in extreme environments, known straight forwardly as extremophiles, can sometimes go dormant or even in a sense, dehydrate until conditions improve and they can essentially come out of hibernation. Also, as one study came out last year showed, sometimes space rocks can act as sort of warm incubators with water and radioactive heat essentially keeping everything inside the rock percolating. So that hydrocarbons or other prebiotic material can essentially evolve during their long journey in space. We already know that meteor strikes are common on earth, and they're certainly common on, on planets with no atmosphere. We also know, or increasingly suspect, that water, much of the water on earth may have come from comets deep in the oort cloud beyond the orbit of Pluto, and Neptune. They may have collided with earth, and essentially deposited their water in the basins that are now earthly oceans. In 1996 Mars' rock ALH84001, made a lot of news for a rock when it was announced by NASA that scientists had, had found what they believed were fossilized bacteria inside the matrix of the rock. That caused quite a sensation, but it turned out not to be as reliable as people thought. The rock still sparks a lot of controversy. Some people say that we have tossed it aside as prematurely as we accepted that it was evidence of life on Mars. But it did get the idea of panspermia going. [ SOUND ] So how does this make us aliens? Well nobody knows exactly how and when life started on earth. But it's entirely possible that the early prebiotic material or even the first microbes traveled to earth abode a rock of some kind and seeded, the once barren ground with what would later become every species alive, today. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME Explains: Could We Be Aliens?","description":"TIME explains the tantalizing evidence that suggests life on Earth may have been seeded from other planets","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/klUn8B3a/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2012-10-12T21:29:25.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/klUn8B3a.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/klUn8B3a/","duration":"PT2M48S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/klUn8B3a/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```