Subscribe: Apples | Spotify
transcript
Clara Moskowitz: This is Clara Moskowitz. Listening to the Science Quickly podcast. Scientific AmericanToday we are talking about life so we don’t know it.
Sarah Scoles just wrote an article for us in our February magazine on the subject. Hello Sarah.
Sarah Scholes: Hello Clara. how are you?
Moskowitz: i’m great. Thank you for your participation.
Score: Thank you for inviting me.
Moskowitz: So what exactly is life that we don’t know, or as you brilliantly call it in the story: LAWDKI.
Score: Yes, so I’m glad you like the acronym I made up. But I think it’s a story about life that we don’t know. It is important first to talk about life as we know it. Because we really only think of life as life. Biology as biology.
However, as we know life is really just a specific example of the kind of biology that could exist. They depend and they share something in common.Call it what scientists call biochemistry.
And it’s the life we know and the life we don’t know… I guess I’m procrastinating to say what it is. It is biological, but not necessarily dependent on the same elements, and compounds are ways of transmitting information. I don’t know either.
Moskowitz: right. Trying to imagine something you’ve never encountered, thought about, or seen actually hurts your brain. So when we talk about looking out into space for life, most searches these days are searches for extraterrestrial life, or for life that we know, or for life that we don’t know. search?
Score: Today, and historically, most searches have been for life as we know it. So it makes sense as a starting point. One of the analogies the scientist I spoke with used is that if you lose your key on the street you might first look under a streetlight, there is light there so you can see it. . will be recognized as a key.
But even if the key is there, it’s a lot harder if you’re just fumbling around in the dark. increase right start. And they search the universe for what is essentially a fingerprint. That is what life like us, and life like other animals on Earth, might create if seen elsewhere.
But now that we’ve been doing it for a while, scientists are starting to get a little more creative and thinking about ways to try to find life we don’t know about. As you said, we know nothing about it. It’s unfamiliar and unimaginable, I think, some science told me.
Moskowitz: right? completely. So what are their ideas? How are they looking for life when we don’t know it?
Score: right. good question. And they thought about it a lot. The general idea is to understand what it is that fundamentally distinguishes something that is alive from something that only relies on physics, chemistry, etc. What is it and how do you look for its characteristics? And some of what they’ve come up with so far are looking for compounds. It is a complex molecular compound that is unlikely to be produced naturally by nature unless something living forces it to do so.
We’re looking for concentrations of such molecules, perhaps like complex little dots on the moons of other planets or planets in our solar system.
The third is evidence that energy is flowing from one place to another. Things in nature generally prefer to be in equilibrium. So if you see something out of equilibrium like energy flowing in and being used, it could be a sign of life. No, this is a different kind of streetlight.
Moskowitz: teeth. That said, it’s cool to think.
However, I will touch on an important point. What is life in the first place? How do you define being alive?
Score: Everyone wants to know the answer to that question. And in general, scientists don’t quite agree on the definition of life and what makes it. There are dozens of equally valid and different definitions. But one scientist has written a paper that tries to pull together all those different definitions and extract the essence of being alive.
Ultimately, at least in his opinion, life is self-replicating with change. Basically anything that can make more copies of itself, but a copy is just a clone, but that’s a little different. I think that’s it. You can probably ask five different scientists and get five different definitions.
Moskowitz: It certainly helps explain my 3 and 5 year olds.
Score: Not exactly your clone?
Moskowitz: far cry. So, do you personally believe that there must be some form of extraterrestrial life somewhere?
Score: See, for most of my life I thought there must be something there. The universe is so big. We know there are so many planets with so many different conditions, many of which could be suitable for life like ours. And in the past, I thought, yeah, statistically, there has to be life there.
But as I learn more, work on articles like this, and talk to people who are biologists as well as astronomers, they’re a little hesitant. , chemistry became biology. And I don’t really know how that happened. And we don’t know how hard it is. I don’t see that possibility.
Even if there are trillions of planets in the universe, I don’t know if the chances of life forming on them are 1 in 10 trillion or more. So my new stance is I don’t know, I’m not guessing. I will wait for people like these researchers to gather more data and then revise my conclusions.
What do you think?
Moskowitz: It sounds very sensible and discreet. I mean, I’m still hearing echoes of Jodie Foster’s character in “Contact.” So I hope so. I feel hopeful in my life. But as you point out, it’s attractive either way.
I mean, if we were the only example, that would be incredible.
Score: yes. yes. I think both answers are truly awe-inspiring. I prefer having alien cousins, but if they’re not there, I can get on board with being alone in space as well.
Moskowitz: Agreed. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us and for writing such a wonderful article. So read on for more interesting details.
Score: thank you.
Moskowitz: for of Scientific American Chemistry.Clara Moskowitz
Science Quickly is produced by Kelso Harper, Tulika Bose and Jeff DelViscio. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.
Don’t forget to subscribe to Science Quickly. For more scientific news features, podcasts and videos, visit scientificamerican.com.
Subscribe: Apples | Spotify
