Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2019

38 ASTROBIOLOGY “Once all our attempts to obtain living matter from inanimate matter are vain, it seems to me to be part of a fully correct scientific proce- dure to ask oneself whether life has in fact ever had an origin, if it is not as old as the mat- ter itself, and if spores could not have been transported from one planet to another and took root where they found fertile ground.” Hermann von Helmholtz TRAPPIST-1 pl a panspermia t a by Michele Ferrara revised by Damian G. Allis NASA Solar System Ambassador T he planets of TRAPPIST-1, represented in this il- lustration, constitute a dynamically perfect sys- tem for testing the concept of panspermia. If life can move from one planet to another, it is very likely that it could do it inside systems like this. [NASA] JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019