For decades, scientists have wrestled with one of humanity’s oldest mysteries: how did life begin? Was it the product of a lucky chemical accident in Earth’s primordial oceans — or could something, or someone, have helped it along?
A recent study by Professor Robert G. Endres, a biophysicist at Imperial College London, has reignited that debate. Using advanced mathematical modelling and biological simulations, Endres explored how likely it is that life could have emerged spontaneously under early Earth conditions.
His conclusion: the odds are astonishingly small.
A question of probability
According to Endres, even the simplest known cell contains roughly 10⁹ bits of information — about 125 megabytes, the size of a small computer file. The probability that such an organised information system could arise by pure chance, he says, is “astronomically low.”
In his paper, Endres calls this scenario “unreasonable” — not in the moral sense, but statistically implausible. The study, first highlighted by the science outlet Grenzwissenschaft-Aktuell, suggests that life’s emergence may have required more than chemistry alone.
If not random – then what?
The findings leave two main possibilities: either life is an almost impossible cosmic coincidence, or it was deliberately created or transported from elsewhere.
That second idea aligns with the controversial theory of directed panspermia — the hypothesis that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations might have intentionally spread microbial life to habitable planets like Earth.
While Endres himself stresses that this is “speculative but logically open,” the notion has deep historical roots. Even mainstream space agencies have considered the potential for artificially sending microorganisms to other worlds as part of “terraforming” experiments.
Comets, asteroids, and cosmic delivery systems
A more conservative version of the panspermia hypothesis suggests that microbial life or organic molecules could have arrived on Earth via asteroids or comets. Evidence of amino acids and complex carbon compounds in meteorites supports the idea that the building blocks of life might have been imported from space.
Geologically, the window for life’s emergence was extremely narrow. Liquid water and a stable atmosphere existed around 4.4 billion years ago, and the first traces of life appear by 4.1 billion years. Fossil evidence emerges only later, around 3.5 billion years ago.
“These timescales are short for such complex origins,” Endres notes — suggesting that external influence or pre-existing life forms might have accelerated the process.
Artificial intelligence and the search for origins
The researcher hopes that AI-driven cell simulations will one day help reveal the mechanisms behind life’s first spark. By modelling how molecular networks behave under different conditions, scientists could test whether life’s chemistry is reproducible — or if it truly represents a “guided miracle from the depths of space.”
Whatever the answer, Endres’s study reminds us that the mystery of our beginnings remains unsolved — and that the possibility of a cosmic connection between humanity and the wider universe may not be science fiction after all.
