Extraterrestrial Life

Did heat, pressure and carbon from meteorite impacts create biological precursors?

Peptide nucleic acid, a synthetic hybrid of protein and DNA, could form the basis of a new class of drugs—and of artificial life unlike anything found in nature

Searching for microfossils inside igneous rocks

DNA building blocks found in meteorite took shape in deep space

Organic molecules inside space rock were probably the result of plain old chemistry

In this episode, theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist Paul Davies ponders the question of whether life originated more than once on earth, and how to find examples of a second origin if it did. Plus we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Websites mentioned on this podcast include: www.sciam.com/sciammag or tinyurl.com/3b8voo; www.beyond.asu.edu; www.sciam.com/sciambody; www.mayoclinic.com

In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist and writer E.O. Wilson talks to award-winning journalist John Horgan about the Encyclopedia of Life project and finding common ground between science and religion. And Horgan, the Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, talks about his research into whether war might someday become a thing of the past. Plus we'll test your knowedge of some recent science in the news. Websites mentioned on this episode include www.eol.org; bloggingheads.tv; www.cfa.harvard.edu/~tcox/localgroup; arxiv.org/abs/0705.1170

If there are plants on other planets, they would likely evolve to take advantage of the most abundant light rays reaching them--which might make them other than green.

Familiarity with an idea makes some people more likely to forget where it came from—and confuse fact with fiction

The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was exceedingly improbable. Energy-driven networks of small molecules afford better odds as the initiators of life.