I am not a biologist, and that sounds weird to me:
Aren't viruses dependent on hosts?
Aren't viruses dependent on hosts?
These early RNA-based replicators would go on to become more complicated, first developing a protective barrier and then specialized organelles.
As a byproduct of that process, viruses developed which could interact with organelles (or just the soup inside a cell) to reproduce themselves without being part of the host "genetic code".
In approximate complexity order:
- self-replicating compound, in solution with precursors
- viroid
- virus
- bacteria
- archaea
- eukaryota
From that perspective, hiding viroids (or similar simple replicators) in comets and boosting them into other systems would be a relatively efficient way to "seed" life around the cosmos.
I guess there's not much to base such a wild hypothesis on but would love to go down the rabit hole anyways.
Edit: Found it, it talks about thermodynamics and entropy being the inevitable outcome. https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-t...