A Matter of Life and Death Introduced by Geoff Watts
Sir Fred Hoyle earlier this year challenged the view that life arose here on earth billions of years ago. He contended that primitive organisms drifted around the solar system, carried along on fragments of solid material, and that they eventually rained down onto the surface of the earth.
In a further development of these ideas, Sir Fred suggests that this process may be happening even today and that such seeds of life from outer space could be the causes of the world's major epidemics.
(A shortened version of the 1978 Milne Lecture)