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Published online 17 March 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060313-18
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Did Earth seed life elsewhere in the Solar System?
Impacts on our planet could have sprayed life into space.
Earthly bacteria could have reached distant planets and moons after being flung into space by massive meteorite impacts, scientists suggest.
The proposal neatly reverses the panspermia theory, which suggests that life on Earth was seeded by microbes on comets or meteorites from elsewhere.
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