An artist's conception shows the impact created 65 million years ago by a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid. The cosmic blast pushed the dinosaurs into extinction, but researchers say it also could have seeded Mars or the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn with life.
Life on Earth or Mars could have been brought to the moons of Jupiter or Saturn on rocks blasted off those planets, researchers say.
These findings suggest that if scientists ever detect life on those moons, they might have to contemplate the possibility that it came from elsewhere rather than originating there on its own.
The idea that life can spread through space is known as panspermia. One class of panspermia is lithopanspermia — the notion that life might travel on rocks knocked off a world's surface. If these meteoroids encase hardy enough organisms, they could seed life on another planet or moon.
