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The status of present knowledge does not warrant a conclusive position on the actual feasibility of interstellar panspermia. However, the previous discussion, although sketchy and incomplete, suggests that we keep an open mind. Adopting an agnostic stance in light of poor evidence is the most rational course of action. At the same time, there is by now plenty of motivations to look more closely into the issue than was done in the past, both experimentally and theoretically.

In particular, even without committing to a specific scenario, it is interesting to explore what would be the theoretical consequences of considering interstellar panspermia as a possible ingredient when modeling the distribution of life on galactic scales. There are at least two aspects that should deserve close attention in future studies.

The first is to include a panspermia mechanism of some sort in studies of galactic habitability. The existence of a galactic habitable zone (GHZ) was first pointed out in pioneering studies almost two decades ago [2.14, 2.22]. While the concept was later refined and investigated in more detail, with varying degrees of overlap among different assumptions and conclusions (see, e.g., [2.36, 2.41, 2.11, 2.15, 2.16, 2.31]), the inclusion of panspermia in GHZ models is the exception rather than the norm [2.10].

So far, the conventional approach to GHZ has focused mainly on identifying locations (and epochs) where the formation of terrestrial planets can preferentially take place, and on assessing the risk for life in such locations due to possible nearby catastrophic events, such as supernovae explosions. Such an approach might turn out to be too conservative if interstellar panspermia can take place. One can envision the existence of a trade-off between sterilizing events and the possible survival of life by interstellar migration, such that some equilibrium point is reached, depending on the typical time-scales of such competing processes. In fact, as pointed out in [2.5], even galactic locations that traditionally were deemed too harsh to be habitable, such as the bulge, might benefit from the greater facility for life to leave its original abode, spreading elsewhere. Attempts to model the possible distribution of inhabited planets should take this aspect into due consideration, especially for the inner region of the Galaxy. More generally, any measure of the overall propensity of the Milky Way to host life should not overlook the fact that quick migration to safer locations could happen during the interval between extinctions events, thereby enlarging the boundary of the GHZ well beyond what has been deemed possible so far.

As a result, once panspermia is factored in, the qualitative features of the GHZ might be rather different from what is generally deduced. For example, the galactic bulge would have the highest number of potential locations for abiogenesis (provided that the formation of habitable planets is not too suppressed with respect to the disk) and, at the same time, the highest predisposition to panspermia. If we use as a reference the typical timescales of abiogenesis and biological evolution on Earth, there would be enough time for life to appear repeatedly on planets in the bulge between sterilizing events [2.5]. Thus, the bulge might be the most likely abode for microbial life (especially if high metallicity favours biochemistry) and act as a “source” of interstellar panspermia, seeding the outer regions of the galaxy, where conditions are more conducive to prolonged habitability and, therefore, to the evolution of complex organisms. This sort of radial gradient in life’s complexity, from the inner regions toward larger galactocentric distances, might even in principle be testable in the distant future.

In light of these considerations, it can be argued that, despite all the big uncertainties surrounding the problem, interstellar panspermia should, in principle, be treated on a par with other processes that are customarily included in GHZ models, but whose exact role is still unresolved, such as the biological effect of ionizing radiation or the dependence of terrestrial planet formation on stellar metallicity.

The second potentially important consequence of taking interstellar panspermia seriously has to do with the interpretation of future observations. Over the next couple of decades, there will be realistic prospects for detecting (or at least looking for) spectroscopic signatures of biological activity (“biosignatures”, for short) on nearby exoplanets [2.38, 2.17, 2.12, 2.26]. It has been suggested that the imprint of panspermia could be detected in the statistical correlation properties of exoplanetary biosignatures [2.21]. This is an interesting prospect, although definitely not around the corner. More relevant, in the near term, is how the possibility of panspermia can weaken the conclusions that can be inferred from the detection of one (or few) biosignatures in future exoplanetary surveys.

In [2.6], we used a Bayesian framework to show that even a single unambiguous detection of biosignatures in the vicinity of the Solar System, in a survey of the extent attainable in the next decades (i.e., less than 100 light years), would radically alter our prior credence on the frequency of life in the Galaxy, leading even an initially skeptical or pessimistic observer to conclude that inhabited planets are extremely common (of order 105 in the whole Milky Way). However, we also showed that allowing for the possibility of panspermia would substantially weaken such a conclusion.

A similar caveat is well-known when searching for life in the Solar System, where possible cross-contamination among terrestrial planets can result in the impossibility of firmly establishing independent abiogeneses (see, e.g., [2.39], where the panspermia hypothesis is discussed in the context of the recent claim for a possible biosignature, phosphine, on Venus). If interstellar panspermia is indeed possible, and if life can survive and adapt in a different habitable location within a relatively short time-scale after the transfer, there will be an enhanced probability that an exoplanet is inhabited if a nearby planet is inhabited as well: thus, the probability that two planets simultaneously display biosignatures will depend on their relative distance and on a typical length scale. By treating this length scale as a free parameter, and adopting a generic correlation model, we showed that detecting a biosignature would not allow us, in itself, to draw strong conclusions on the frequency of life in the Galaxy, when observing a sample of limited extent [2.6].

In other words, if interstellar panspermia is feasible, finding life in a nearby exoplanet would not exclude the possibility that we live in a cluster of correlated inhabited worlds, surrounded by volumes where life is uncommon. In the most extreme case, i.e., when the radius surveyed is smaller than the distance over which panspermia could act, discovering biosignatures in another stellar system would result in no net gain in the knowledge of the overall distribution and frequency of life in the Galaxy.

This, of course, is not the end of the story. On the contrary, it only highlights the necessity of further, more detailed theoretical work. As a final pointer in this direction, it should be noted that, in the previous discussion, it was implicitly assumed that panspermia acted on planets which originated and remained in a common galactic environment—i.e., at approximately constant relative distance. However, when one takes the complex behavior of stellar orbits into account (including, for example, phenomena like radial diffusion, secular increases in amplitude of vertical oscillations, etc.), there is no guarantee that this is the case. In fact, there are intriguing hints that even the Solar System went through a significant radial displacement from the inner galactic disk, since its formation [2.40]. Therefore, unless the age and history of planetary systems are known to sufficient accuracy that they can be connected to the dynamical properties of the Galaxy, any conclusion on the occurrence of panspermia drawn from the detection of correlated biosignatures would be weakened. This reinforces the need for embedding the study of planetary habitability, and the interpretation of future searches for life beyond Earth, in the wider galactic context.