"Panspermia" is an intriguing and somewhat romantic hypothesis that proposes life, probably "extremophiles", exists throughout the Universe, and is spread by comets asteroids, meteoroids - and by intelligent aliens either intentionally or accidentally.

It's the latter part of the hypothesis that has scientists rolling their eyes in disbelief. Aliens spreading life?

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Now, however, a team of scientists in the United Kingdom has again advanced the theory intelligent aliens might have seeded life on Earth.

These scientists examined a tiny metal circular object the width of a human hair they suggest might be a micro-organism deliberately sent by an advanced alien civilization to create life on Earth.

The University of Buckingham reports the microscopic metal globe was discovered by astrobiologist Milton Wainwright and a team of researchers who were analyzing dust and microscopic matter gathered by a high-flying balloon in Earth's stratosphere.

Wainwright described the object as "a ball about the width of a human hair, which has filamentous life on the outside and a gooey biological material oozing from its centre", according to Express.co.uk.

"One theory is it was sent to Earth by some unknown civilization in order to continue seeding the planet with life," Wainwright said.

If proven, this could be evidence of what's referred to as "directed panspermia".

This apparently un-scientific theory was seriously supported by Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962 for his work on DNA.

In 1973, Crick co-wrote a scientific paper about directed panspermia.

In this paper, Crick stated that "It now seems unlikely that extraterrestrial living organisms could have reached the Earth either as spores driven by the radiation pressure from another star or as living organisms imbedded in a meteorite. As an alternative to these nineteenth-century mechanisms, we have considered Directed Panspermia, the theory that organisms were deliberately transmitted to the Earth by intelligent beings on another planet.

"We conclude that it is possible that life reached the Earth in this way, but that the scientific evidence is inadequate at the present time to say anything about the probability. We draw attention to the kinds of evidence that might throw additional light on the topic".