When especially interesting new planets are discovered in the cosmos, scientists around the world begin the process of identifying their characteristics -- their orbit, their mass and density, their composition, their thermal properties and much more. It's all part of a drive that seems to be innate in humans to learn about the workings of …
How Long Were the Wet Periods on Early Mars, and Was That Water Chemically Suitable For Life?
There is no doubt that early Mars had long period of warmer and much wetter climates before its atmosphere thinned too much to retain that liquid H20 on the surface. As we know from the Curiosity mission to Gale Crater and other orbital findings, regions of that warmer and wetter Mars had flowing water …
All About Emergence
If there was a simple meaning of the often-used scientific term “emergence,” then 100-plus scientists wouldn’t have spent four days presenting, debating and not infrequently disagreeing about what it was. But as last month’s organizers of the Earth-Life Science Institute’s “Comparative Emergence” symposium in Tokyo frequently reminded the participants, those debates and disputes are …
Could High-Energy Radiation Have Played an Important Role in Getting Earth Ready For Life?
A version of this article first appeared in Astrobiology Magazine, http://www.astrobio.net. Life on early Earth seems to have begun with a paradox: while life needs water as a solvent, the essential chemical backbones of early life-forming molecules fall apart in water. Our universal solvent, it turns out, can be extremely corrosive. Some have pointed to …
Could High-Energy Radiation Have Played an Important Role in Getting Earth Ready For Life?
A version of this article first appeared in Astrobiology Magazine, http://www.astrobio.net. Life on early Earth seems to have begun with a paradox: while life needs water as a solvent, the essential chemical backbones of early life-forming molecules fall apart in water. Our universal solvent, it turns out, can be extremely corrosive. Some have pointed to …
Messy Chemistry: A New Way to Approach the Origins of Life
More than a half century ago, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey famously put water and gases believed to make up the atmosphere of early Earth into a flask with water, sparked the mix with an electric charge, and produced amino acids and other chemical building blocks of life. The experiment was hailed as a ground-breaking …
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Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak: Exoplanets Gave The Origin of Life Field a Huge Boost
Sometimes tectonic shifts in scientific disciplines occur because of discoveries and advances in the field. But sometimes they occur for reasons entirely outside the field itself. Such appears to be case with origins-of-life studies. Nobel laureate Jack Szostak was recently in Tokyo to participate in a workshop at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the …
The Magma Ocean and Us
In the late stages of the formation of Earth, the planet was a brutally hot, rough place. But perhaps not precisely in the way you might imagine. Most renderings of that time show red-hot lava flowing around craggy rocks, with meteorites falling and volcanoes erupting. But according to those who study the time, the reality …
Messy Chemistry, Evolving Rocks, and the Origin of Life
Noted synthetic life researcher Steven Benner of Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FfAME) is fond of pointing out that gooey tars are the end product of too many experiments in his field. His widely-held view is that the tars, made out of chemicals known to be important in the origin of life, are nonetheless …
Continue reading "Messy Chemistry, Evolving Rocks, and the Origin of Life"
Messy Chemistry, Evolving Rocks, and the Origin of Life
Noted synthetic life researcher Steven Benner of Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is fond of pointing out that gooey tars are the end product of too many experiments in his field. His widely-held view is that the tars, made out of chemicals known to be important in the origin of life, are nonetheless a dead …
Continue reading "Messy Chemistry, Evolving Rocks, and the Origin of Life"
Many Worlds 