User:Aulses/Panspermia/Ujons Peer Review

General info
Aulses
 * Whose work are you reviewing?


 * Link to draft you're reviewing:User:Aulses/Panspermia
 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Panspermia :

Evaluate the drafted changes
Panspermia

Overview


 * Maybe mention that intentional seeding is also called directed panspermia up front; could link to the wikipedia page on that specifically
 * It might be good to mention radiopanspermia, lithopanspermia, and directed panspermia in this section since those theories are discussed in depth in the article.
 * Same idea as above for the events discussed in the Hoaxes section.

History


 * It might be a good idea to bring info in from other sources too; there were a few directly from Wickramasinghe and Hoyle in the original article that could probably just be kept, or even elaborated on if you wanted to include them.
 * Maybe link to the uniformitarianism wikipedia page? I had no idea what it was!
 * Small grammatical edits:
 * “Panspermia as it is known today, however, is not identical to this original theory.”
 * Italicize book titles, e.g. Origin of Species (I also have a bunch of sources on Darwin’s thoughts about the origin of life I could share if you were interested)
 * “Those who accepted Pasteur’s rejection of spontaneous generation began to develop the theory that under (unknown) conditions on a primitive Earth…”
 * “On the other side of this are those scientists of the time who rejected Pasteur’s results…”

Overview of theory


 * Citations for core requirements section
 * It could be interesting to talk about atmospheric re-entry processes a bit; I’m having a hard time imagining how something as delicate as a seed could survive that process unless it was somehow encased inside a rocky asteroid. Wouldn’t ice ablate off really quickly? Since it is discussed under Lithopanspermia, an idea would be to refer to that section.

Variations of panspermia theory


 * Could be worth a sentence discussing what radiation pressure is for people who aren’t familiar.
 * One small typo under radiopanspermia counterarguments: “Carl Sagan, who cited evidence…”
 * Maybe add all the objections to lithopanspermia and directed panspermia that are described in the main sections to the counterarguments sections (e.g. lack of evidence all around, organism lifetimes, transporter velocities, and generally low probabilities especially for intergalactic panspermia)
 * For directed panspermia, it could be worth mentioning that Leslie Orgel didn’t take the proposal in Crick and Orgel entirely seriously; it’s discussed a little in Plaxco’s Chapter 6 of Astrobiology: an Introduction
 * A bacteriophage as a message from ancient ETs is such a weird/ interesting idea. Almost definitely nothing to it, but maybe worth expanding on it or any counterarguments to it. I guess what they are getting at is that the nucleotide sequences encoded by the gene corresponding to the protein that allows the bacteriophage to lyse/ break the membrane of the host cell after replicating  completely overlaps with the coding sequence of a gene for a separate protein. Apparently it’s rare but not uncommon. It’s referenced in the discussion of this paper: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009475 . Or maybe that’s a complete tangent, I’m not sure!

Hoaxes


 * Interpretation of Omuamua as an alien artifact doesn’t really seem like a hoax per se. Would a discussion of that speculation fit better in the interstellar panspermia section? Or maybe renaming the section to “Hoaxes and speculation” or something similar?