create a plausible account of life's origins on Earth. The probabilities don't add up. Even the simplest self-reproducing systems are far more complex than anything that could have assembled itself by chance. It's fair to conclude that the first living cells did not originate on Earth, but arrived from elsewhere, either carried on a meteor, or in cosmic dust particles, or planted here as seeds by an advanced civilization. Francis Crick is the most esteemed of many people who have advocated this idea.
Remarkably, life on Earth is as old as the Earth. The universe is three times older than our Earth. There was time before Earth for many, many planets teeming with life, for unimaginably advanced civilizations to come and go and reappear and flourish, to expand and to perish long before the first life on Earth. An awakening awaits us, more fantastic than those uncontacted peoples, for whom globalization will arrive in the form of a bulldozer.
