Abstract
Originally, the term ‘panspermia’ was used by microbiologists (of the late Victorian period, e.g. Roberts, 1874) to refer to the observation that terrestrial air is full of microorganisms. Panspermia, was later used to cover the view that life on Earth originated from space, while more recently, it has been extended to describe the hypothesis that life continues to rain down to Earth from space. In order to avoid confusion, here I will use the term panspermia in its original astrobiological sense, while adopting the term neopanspermia to refer to the hypothesis that life continues to arrive to Earth from space.
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Wainwright, M. (2003). A Microbiologist Looks at Panspermia. In: Wickramasinghe, C., Burbidge, G., Narlikar, J. (eds) Fred Hoyle’s Universe. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1605-5_28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1605-5_28
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