Men, women, dogs, cats may all be from Mars, scientist says

Men may actually be from Mars -- women, too, not to mention dogs, cats and the teeniest microbes.
It's not a new theory. In fact, it got laughs in astronomy circles for decades, until researchers demonstrated that meteorites of just the right size and velocity could launch rocks into space and that microbes embedded deep in those rocks could survive a trip to another planet.
The first time University of Arizona geoscientist H. Jay Melosh published a paper on the subject in the popular science press in 1989, "they played it for laughs," Melosh said. The journal Nature titled his treatise "The Rocky Road to Transpermia."
It was a reference to the transpermia theory put forth at the turn of the last century that said spores could be lifted from planets by electric fields and distributed by solar radiation -- "seeding" the universe. Apparently not.
One hundred years later, when Melosh proposed that microbes could be transferred by asteroid, there remained many theoretical hurdles. But he and other researchers around the world have since demonstrated that rocks can indeed be ejected from the surface of a planet in an asteroid strike.
In fact, rocks from Mars and the moon have been found on Earth.
Could microbes in those rocks survive ejection and re-entry? Melosh was among several researchers who tested that theory.
Melosh and a colleague did a series of experiments. In one, they inoculated a piece of granite from the Santa Catalina Mountains with microbes and attached it to a rocket that blasted off from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Microbes inside the rock survived blastoff and re-entry.
Melosh is not saying that life on Earth came from Mars, or from Venus for that matter, simply that it could have.
"We don't have any proof that there is life on Mars or that Martian microbes ever made this journey," Melosh said.
Now for the big question.
Could men be from Mars and women from Venus?
"I don't think so," said Melosh. "We're all in it together."
E-mail Tom Beal at tbeal(at)azstarnet.com.

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