In 2016, I published my blog: LUCA, our Last Universal Common Ancestor. A recent Aeon article stated that life “emerged far earlier, and far quicker, than we once thought possible”. Current estimates: “LUCA lived between 4.09 and 4.33 billion years ago [..].” Earth’s age is 4.54 billion years.
What if LUCA will – once – be estimated as older than Earth ??
This question is not as weird as it seems. Nobody knows the ageing of viruses. Some astronomers (eg, Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe), have assumed that viruses are older than Earth and “travelled” to Earth. Related topics: astrobiology, astrovirology, panspermia.
Viruses are still not included in the Tree of Life because they lack compliance with the definition of life. Viruses can act dead for 30,000 years and then quickly return to life when they find a suitable host (BBC-2014). DNA of such ancient viruses mostly (ie, 60%) does not resemble any known DNA on Earth (eg, PNAS, Telegraph). Viruses may well be older than any known life form on Earth, may even predate the origin of Earth itself, and may thus even have an extraterrestrial origin (SA-2008).
Source: my 2016 blog LUCA, our Last Universal Common Ancestor
Implicitly, the Aeon article also triggers some other notions:
- round planets and/or suns are inconsistent with a Big Bang explosion;
- round planets do match an ovum or egg cell;
- Aeon-2025: life “emerged far earlier, and far quicker, than we once thought possible”;
- Hence, my 2019 blog: Are planets evolutionary lab experiments? Also see 2019-2, 2019-3, 2019-4.
The (extreme) ageing of LUCA and of viruses suggests a close interaction. Indeed, it does:
“The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses that embedded themselves into our genetic code over the course of human evolution.”
Source: CNN Science, 9 August 2025, Ancient viral DNA may play a key role in early human development, new study suggests
Interestingly, black holes can burp / spew out matter (eg, Harvard-2022, Space-2022, Live Science-2023, ScienceAlert-2025). This ovary-like notion seems much more interesting than the 1949 joke by Fred Hoyle that subsequently became known as the Big Bang theory (eg, LA Times-2000).
Luka (1987) by Suzanne Vega
artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-artist, Wiki-song
[Verse 1]
My name is Luka
I live on the second floor
I live upstairs from you
Yes, I think you’ve seen me before
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless in quotes or stated otherwise.
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