Futurology

The research in question grew a common plant - garden cress, and a cyanobacteria under a simulated K dwarf light spectrum. This has never been tested before, somewhat surprisingly, the garden cress grew as normally as it would from our G-type star's sunlight, but the cyanobacteria grew even better.

Panspermia is the idea that life throughout the universe is seeded from elsewhere. We can easily see the mechanism for this in our own solar system. Asteroid ejecta from Mars has made its way to Earth many times. We can assume the opposite has happened with Earth's material traveling throughout our solar system. Indeed, if we found life on Mars or Europa, the first question would be if it arose independently or was seeded via Panspermia.

This discovery bolsters the idea that the same thing is happening throughout the galaxy. It would be harder for such asteroid ejecta to escape the gravitational pull of its local solar system, but it does happen. Thus dust from other planets outside the solar system reaches our Earth, and we can assume vice versa.

This is why this discovery is so intriguing. K-type stars are common, making up 12% of all stars. Not only that, they are unusually long-lived and stable. Gliese 86, a K-type star that is 35 light years from us, is 10 billion years old, more than twice the age of our own solar system.

If cyanobacteria perform better under a K-type star's light - did they originally evolve there?

It is possible we are operating under completely incorrect assumptions, both about the origin of life on our own planet, and the search for life on others. Most research into the origin of life here assumes it arose independently. Perhaps, it is much more reasonable to think Panspermia is the most likely explanation.

Secondly, the search for extraterrestrial life assumes we are looking for something that arose independently elsewhere. Perhaps, that is wrong too. Maybe it is more reasonable to think microbial life is common everywhere in the universe but primarily has spread by Panspermia, with who knows how few times it has arisen independently.