Organisms on Earth have evolved many ways of spreading themselves to other environments suitable for them. Palm trees, seen on the beaches of even the most isolated islands, have a large seed that floats in the ocean quite well for very long periods. There are countless other examples.

Each of these adaptations survived because there were many receptive environments for the trick to work on. If the ocean wasn't full of coastlines with sandy beaches, the coconut gimmick wouldn't do much good.

If something evolved on such a moon, could it come up with an adaptation that would allow it to spread to other such moons, especially in the same gas giant system?


Interesting hypothethis.

Evolution takes something that occurs genetically by chance and keeps it in the gene pool because it delivers a survival advantage. Evolution does not say 'Hey, let's develop space hardiness so we can ride the geyser to the next oceanic moon'. That being said one thing we DO see in evolution is an adaptation that is developed and retained for one purpose gets serendipitally used for another quite different purpose. I see your panspermia hypothethis arising this way.

I bet it's happened as you speculate. (That's if there is ANY other life elsewhere, something we really don't have a clue about after 50 years of space exploration.)