I just finished Project Hail Mary and the amount of people who think panspermia/lithopanspermia is a wild, unrealistic hypothesis that has no basis in reality and makes the science not grounded in the book makes me think of reading old Clive Cussler books and how for the longest time people felt the same way about hypothetical pre-Columbian contact between the Americas and other continents (diffusionism, IIRC).
I feel the same way about both; Lithopanspermia is as likely in my mind as pre-Columbian intercontinental contact and travel. Far as I am concerned, they are both true to some degree.
I mean, Leif den Lykkelige having traveled to Greenland and the Northeastern Americas was considered ridiculous at some point, too, but he sure did, and I'm convinced a few other pre-Columbian contacts listed in the wiki page did happen, definitely Polynesian-Chilean contact of some sort. And ammonia and other building blocks of aminoacids, proteins, and life, have been found in at least two separate asteroids. Some sources after the cut.
This isn't meant to be evidentiary, it's just my opinion, but I believe it to be a relatively grounded one, yannow?
