From: slider@anashram.com   
      
   ### - not long after the earth cooled down enough to no longer be   
   completely molten, a single-celled bacteria arrived here, either via a   
   comet or from just drifting through space - pan spermia! the obvious   
   answer...   
      
   an incredibly simple entity that then proliferated for around a billion   
   years in earth's oceans without any change, the big question being: after   
   a billion years of such utter stability what then kick-started the   
   multicellular explosion history records that eventually resulted in all   
   the different complex multicellular life-forms we see today?   
      
   well, the full(ish) answer eventually came to me in a dream heh, in a WILD   
   actually...   
      
   i.e., have been pondering this question of origins for quite some time,   
   have even asked about it in other dreams only to receive but partial   
   answers, clues maybe like pieces of an incomplete jigsaw whereby you can't   
   quite make out the full picture coz it isn't finished enough yet?   
      
   this time tho' methinks i gots it lol :)))   
      
   and it's really rather startling & surprising! (as most solutions found in   
   dreams often are...)   
      
   i can't, however, swear that's it's true or totally correct as this all   
   appears to be an answer entirely from the subconscious mind, one that   
   during the hours of WILDing seemingly has some kinda more   
   conscious/photographic access to the sum total of memories stored over a   
   lifetime, which thus then links/weaves forgotten/unconscious ideas &   
   patterns together in some kinda novel manner that can't otherwise be   
   accessed under normal waking/rational conditions... genius level, smile :)   
      
   the answer in this case to how & why life originated on this planet and   
   was completely stable for a billion years as just a single cell, only to   
   suddenly then explode into ever-changing and ever complex multicellular   
   forms that eventually exploited every possible niche on earth in every   
   possible way over the next half-billion years right up to today, is simply   
   because exactly the 'same' simple life form also reached mars and   
   proliferated there for maybe a billion years too while mars still had   
   running/sitting water on its surface!   
      
   the 'difference' being that mars doesn't have all of the 'same' elements   
   that we have here on earth? (there's one particular organic one that's   
   missing on mars that's fairly important to life but common here) so the   
   entity that grew and stabilised on mars, although exactly the same   
   bacteria originally, was actually very slightly differently evolved in its   
   chemical makeup, almost like the species of whatever it originally was   
   split/diverged into 2 slightly different species merely because of the   
   differing conditions in which it was forced to live & grow etc...   
      
   which, for a billion years, was apparently just fine... both species were   
   stable enough in their simplicity and respective environments on their   
   respective planets for simply ages without any change whatsoever...   
      
   mars, however, began to die... whether it was too far out from the sun to   
   remain warm or just too small to hold its atmosphere, doesn't really   
   matter coz start to die it did...   
      
   at some point before it died a large meteor strike on mars (one that   
   killed the planet or not is interesting but irrelevant) for sure threw-off   
   some mars-rocks into space, some of which apparently traveled to earth   
   carrying live examples of it its own home-grown bacteria... conditions in   
   the oceans being similar here it too thrived and proliferated until it   
   grew in enough numbers to bump into it's cousin here on earth... and   
   that's when things hotted up heh...   
      
   some probably just attacked and ate each other, others maybe cooperated,   
   either way an arms race between predator & prey that led to ever-complex   
   forms & intelligence commenced, simple conjoined forms to begin with (we   
   still see the likes of today with bacteria living inside other species in   
   some kinda simple but symbiotic, mutually dependent relationship... our   
   own gut for example, where scores of different bacteria help us to break   
   down our food!)   
      
   the end result of the introduction of a slightly different but related   
   species to each other being all the different life forms we then see today   
   when their initial meeting galvanised them into some kinda   
   survival/cooperation mode, this being an explanation for the origin of the   
   predator/prey dichotomy that people have always wondered about...   
      
   one obvious (contextual) question being: so was it the mars microbe or the   
   earth microbe that ultimately turned predator?? (heh)   
      
   it all adds up see?   
      
   only how would ya ever know if it's actually correct or not?? (maybe   
   genetically huh, and/or if/when they find similar fossilised bacterial   
   mats on mars too)   
      
   correct or not tho' i likes it haha, it's neat ;)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)