Developing Ecospheres on Transiently Habitable Planets: The Genesis Project

TL;DR

The paper proposes the 'Genesis project', an interstellar mission to seed transiently habitable planets with microbial life, aiming to accelerate evolution and enable complex life development within limited habitable periods.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of using robotic microcrafts with gene laboratories to artificially seed planets, potentially fast-forwarding evolution on transiently habitable worlds.

Findings

Feasibility of seeding planets with microbes to accelerate evolution.

Identification of criteria for selecting suitable Genesis candidate planets.

Discussion of ethical and biosphere compatibility issues.

Abstract

It is often presumed, that life evolves relatively fast on planets with clement conditions, at least in its basic forms, and that extended periods of habitability are subsequently needed for the evolution of higher life forms. Many planets are however expected to be only transiently habitable. On a large set of otherwise suitable planets life will therefore just not have the time to develop on its own to a complexity level as it did arise on earth with the cambrian explosion. The equivalent of a cambrian explosion may however have the chance to unfold on transiently habitable planets if it would be possible to fast forward evolution by 3-4 billion years (with respect to terrestrial timescales). We argue here, that this is indeed possible when seeding the candidate planet with the microbial lifeforms, bacteria and unicellular eukaryotes alike, characterizing earth before the cambrian explosion. An interstellar mission of this kind, denoted the `Genesis project', could be carried out by a relatively low-cost robotic microcraft equipped with a on-board gene laboratory for the in situ synthesis of the microbes. We review here our current understanding of the processes determining the timescales shaping the geo-evolution of an earth-like planet, the prospect of finding Genesis candidate planets and selected issues regarding the mission layout. Discussing the ethical aspects connected with a Genesis mission, which would be expressively not for human benefit, we will also touch the risk that a biosphere incompatibility may arise in the wake of an eventual manned exploration of a second earth.