The conditions are perfect for life to thrive, and especially to evolve, we’re not so sure about forming.
Actually, I’m pretty compelled by the hypothesis that Mars actually had the perfect conditions for life to form. With less of an ocean covered surface, regular rain, and constant meteor showers. Such meteors would form holes lined with random chemicals, which then get filled with water, forming a puddle. If one puddle doesn’t have all the necessary components to form life, another likely will. That seems to me like a much better scenario than a sparsely diluted ocean on Earth.
Then whatever life originated on Mars might have been thrown into space by one of those meteors, and by chance, fell on Earth. There’s actually evidence that such interplanetary matter transfer is possible, and has happened. That would explain why we only know of a single common ancestor, the only one that arrived here.
I think OP’s question still holds, even if you think all of that happened. If there was so much life on mars and so much ejecta, why didn’t multiple (differently structured, eg not DNA) rounds of life get formed on mars and transplanted to earth? Why 1x?
We can’t know that didn’t happen. We just know that only one life form succeeded, it is very possible that others were pushed to extinction because of that.
Mitochondria don’t use DNA, so that particular detail has already been confirmed. Doesn’t mean they came from Mars, or weren’t from the same precursor to DNA-based cells, but it’s still interesting!
The conditions are perfect for life to thrive, and especially to evolve, we’re not so sure about forming.
Actually, I’m pretty compelled by the hypothesis that Mars actually had the perfect conditions for life to form. With less of an ocean covered surface, regular rain, and constant meteor showers. Such meteors would form holes lined with random chemicals, which then get filled with water, forming a puddle. If one puddle doesn’t have all the necessary components to form life, another likely will. That seems to me like a much better scenario than a sparsely diluted ocean on Earth.
Then whatever life originated on Mars might have been thrown into space by one of those meteors, and by chance, fell on Earth. There’s actually evidence that such interplanetary matter transfer is possible, and has happened. That would explain why we only know of a single common ancestor, the only one that arrived here.
I think OP’s question still holds, even if you think all of that happened. If there was so much life on mars and so much ejecta, why didn’t multiple (differently structured, eg not DNA) rounds of life get formed on mars and transplanted to earth? Why 1x?
We can’t know that didn’t happen. We just know that only one life form succeeded, it is very possible that others were pushed to extinction because of that.
Mitochondria don’t use DNA, so that particular detail has already been confirmed. Doesn’t mean they came from Mars, or weren’t from the same precursor to DNA-based cells, but it’s still interesting!
Then you get back to every other response on this thread, it probably did happen more than once.