Weird Life: The Search for Life That Is Very, Very Different from Our Own
by David Toomey
W. W. Norton, 2013 ($25.95)

Life, researchers have learned, can sometimes thrive in places that would kill most organisms. The strangest life bathes in acid (multihued bacteria growing in Yellowstone National Park), floats through clouds (microbial algae, fungi and bacteria), and flourishes around boiling hydrothermal vents (giant clams and tube worms sustained by heat-loving bacteria). As English professor Toomey tracks the work of scientists who hunt for such extreme examples, he explores the very definition of life. He also envisions the truly weird life-forms that might exist elsewhere in the universe—such as bacteria that ride on icy comets or even “living” networks of charged dust grains that circle black holes and communicate with one another electromagnetically.

This article was originally published with the title Recommended: Weird Life.

2 Comments

1. 1. WRQ9 12:51 AM 2/2/13

   Thank you for writing this article. I understand about biologists and carbon based interpretations, but I feel there is room for more possibilities in a myriad of circumstances. The existence of life could be determined on grounds beyond even physical self containment. Self determination alone could merit consideration (beyond chemical/physical dictation) as a qualification.
   Black holes open up a world of possibilities regarding the criteria for "life". Consider our own relationship with gravity, and imagine a hospitable zone of an entirely different sort. No matter what dimensional parameters we are talking about, we are still talking about the possible permutations of energy.

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2. 2. gnagy 02:11 PM 3/10/13

   It is amazing that billions of dollars were wasted by NASA in space exploration and experiments while human problems exist in our nation that could have been helped by this infusion of that money.
   
   Columbus was trying to find a better way to the East, NASA wasted billions trying to build up the ego of their executives and test pilots (glorified with being renamed “astronauts”).
   
   The side benefits to science, medicine, etc., could have been greater if the funds were directed to those sciences directly rather than indirect benefits of going into space.
   
   We will never find out if life exists on planets close to earth's size, even those orbiting the nearest star to our sun, which we call Alpha Centauri. It takes four light years for AC to reach our eyes.
   
   This NASA Kepler project: No one alive today, or their children, or grandchildren, and down the line will ever know whether these "Goldilocks" planets harbor life any more than do our own Goldilocks planets, Mars and Venus. This latest planet is 950 light years away.
   
   The especially wasteful part of NASA was the creation of SETI in its empty search for life on other planets.
   
   NASA would be delighted with any kind of chemical reaction on any planet because it would be regarded as "life." Yet many of these same people do not regard a 20-week-plus embryo as life.
   
   There is no one else out there so we better learn to get along better with ourselves.
   

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