Octopuses   are weird . Some would say evenout of this world .   And if you ca n’t explain something it might as well be unknown , right ?

That ’s what a mindbogglingly controversial composition in the journalProgress in Biophysics and Molecular Biologyhas claim . It says octopuses ( not octopi ) are so complex , they can only be explained by extraterrestrial spirit . plunderer : they ca n’t .

The paper include a whopping 33 researchers ( although notablyzero zoologists )   include a bloke called Chandra Wickramasinghe . He ’s a   advocator of the idea of directed panspermia – that life sentence on our major planet begin when it was seeded by foreign germ – and hepops up a lot . He ’s tried to examine it in the yesteryear , without success . There is no evidence for such a theory being on-key .

That has n’t cease this latest paper being written , which asks whether the Welsh explosion was “ terrestrial or cosmic ” . The Welsh burst was an event 500 million geezerhood ago when complex creature start to appear in the fossil record . We’renot sure why , but it ’s belike not aliens .

Anyway , back to the alien . In their paper the team say that the arriver of foreign germ probably kickstarted the Cambrian plosion , with the diversification ending with the phylogenesis of the octopus . Makes sense .

“ The genome of the Octopus shows a staggering level of complexness , ” they observe , bestow that feature like its large brain and camera - like centre “ appear suddenly on the evolutionary aspect . ”

Why ? Because , alien , of course . Have you even been reading this article ? “ The evolution from squid to octopus is compatible with a retinue of genes inserted by extraterrestrial computer virus , ” the researcher write .

But hold off , there ’s more . Because maybe it was n’t just microbes , right ? Yes , there ’s another explanation , namely that the devilfish eggs were cryopreserved by a comet and surrender to our satellite . possibly squid too .

“ The theory that cryopreserved Squid and/or Octopus eggs , arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted , ” the newspaper musical note .

The paper continues . At one breaker point they argue that we are on the doorstep of “ one of the biggest back - flips in history ” regarding how life emerge on our planet , comparing it to the approximation of continental drift oncebeing brush off .

Let ’s see what some expert had to say about all this . Here ’s what Mark Carnall from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History   thought .

Ah okay . Anyone else ? Here ’s Seth Finnegan , Assistant Professor at the University of California , Berkeley in evolution , geology , and palaeoecology .

And here ’s Jonathan Eisen , Professor at the Department of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California , Davis .

There is no evidence octopuses came from infinite . Have a good Tuesday .