(Kick)Astrobiology

astro gum. You know, you could you could expect that to be basically just gum, but maybe with cool packaging, Yes man or astro man man or astro man or you know, just think about astro lamp, astro desk, you know, astro boy. They're they're they're all examples. So when you when you talk about astro biology, there's a there's a hint of of of absurdity to it. Yeah, it doesn't

quite square in the mind, doesn't. Yeah, it can easily make you think of like old pulp magazine covers with crazy wonky looking aliens that have no no basis in in any kind of physiology that we have on Earth or could even conceivably exist elsewhere. And it's also easy to confine the whole realm of astrobiology to oh, I wonder what aliens look like. But it's, as we're going to explore in this uh, this little podcasts, there's a

lot more to it than that. Yeah, okay. Astrobiology really deals with the speculation about the unknown, but it does it through what we do know, right, what scientific theory in data that we have. Yeah, it's it's uh, it's it's about deduction. It's very like Sherlock Holmes would approve of this. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean it's Sherlock Holmes in the universe right right, saying what can I deduce here? Um? You know, where where do we come from? Are we alone?

Astrobiology looks at origins, evolution, in the future of life in the universe. Yeah, and it does it by drawing on a bunch of different fields, yeah, including biology, astronomy, geology, as and astrogeology and figuring out all the things that really make life like yeah, chemistry, because basically this is the key, all right, in contemplating life in space or

on other worlds. Uh, we know that, or we believe the laws of physics are universal, So what the laws of physics here are they gonna say, are the same as they're gonna be in any corner of the known universe. All right, So it stands. So it stands the reason that the laws of life also apply elsewhere as well. Okay, so we have to look at the best model of life we have, which is the one we have on Earth. The only model of life that we have is the one we have here on Earth. So we need to

understand it. We need to understand how it forms, how it evolves, how it changes, how it kicked off to begin with? Did it did it just brew up here? Did it get a kickstart from a little bit of a space shrapnel? A little pans bermia in action? Yeah? Pants a great word, but but yeah, that's that's that's one of the keys about about astrobiology. It's like taking our model of life and really figuring out how it works in order to figure out how it might work

somewhere else. And so you do. You have to think about geology, you have to think about climate, you have to think about about the biochemical aspect of it all. It's auf so you end up drawing in a lot of different fields. Yeah, and to make a sort of Darwinian tinged joke. It really got its legs in the last like forty years, UM. And a lot of that is because there's been a burgeoning technology that's really aided astrobiology.

There's been the Human Genome Project, which has really helped astrobiology in terms of looking at ancient genes, proteins, um, you know, looking at old fossils and trying to figure out what's going on here at the beginning, and how can it inform us about what we are like right now and what might be out there in the universe. And the more we explore to it, it changes the

limits of what, if where life can be. Um. Extreme aphiles are a huge example of this, you know, and the microbes thriving around the geothermal heat in dark, deep

portions of the ocean. And again that's something of extreme aphiles or something that we've gotten a much better hold on since we've really in earnest begun to explore the oceans right right right um, and you know, these geothermal vents um and how and then I guess the idea is, if an extreme aphile can exist in that sort of atmosphere, then certainly it can exist somewhere out there in the universe that's very different to the way that we we

humans um as liand lovers exist right right, Like it's changed the way we've thought first about mars Um. You know, in the past, it's been like, oh, well, maybe there's a little liquid water um you know, around the near the poles or something, or maybe it used to exist. But but with with the extreme fhiles have changed the equation a bit where we can say, oh, well, it might actually be thriving somewhere deep below the surface. Likewise,

the there. You know, there's a lot of excitement about Europa and the idea that beneath these frozen caps you have a lightless ocean, which normally you might not imagine things thriving, and a lightless ocean that's sealed forever beneath the ice caps. But if they're geno geothermal events down there, based on what we've we've discovered, that could that could be it. That's could be how they're thriving down there.

Maybe not whole mermaid cities or anything, but maybe you know some I'm sorry, but but yes, probably not mermaid cities. And there are no treasure chests to have that. No, this presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow just but but still microas the idea of that there's some sort of alien life is thriving somewhere, like right now, there's a lightless ocean on one of the Jovian moons, and there's something there might be something living

around this searing hot water. That's kind of beautiful. Yeah, yeah, I like that. David Grinspoon, from his book Lonely Planet said it helped that by the nineties, the second generation of planetologists was becoming well established in the field of astrobiology UM, which may at times been falsely hyped as a scientific revolution or brand new discipline, but it is

a refreshing and encouraging development. A revolution really is going on, not a scientific revolution, but a revolution in the culture of science, one that is healthy for science in a number of ways. And he talks about that is basically saying that astrobiology is bridging all of these disciplines and allowing them to to share their information socially, since we

do have this new understanding of the world UM. And I think a good example of that is that, you know, we kind of thought that the first earthlike planet that we would find um outside of our Solar system would be earthlike, right, But turns out that the nearest one is more Jupiter. It's really hot, and it's really changed the paradigm of what astrobiologists think happened in the universe. How we developed jupiters, that's what they call it. That's

it's the new dance. I don't know what that is um. So it really does has changed our understanding of of ourselves. Yeah, and of course there are other things in an astrobiology that are a little more straightforward, like obviously we know that water is really important to life as we understand it, so in looking to other worlds, one of the things we look for our signs that there may be water

on the planet. We also look for Earth like planets that are in a habitable zone, you know, not too close to the Sun because then the ports will be too hot, and not too far away because then the parts will be too cold. The goldils principle. Yes, yes, Hey, this brings us to another interesting tidbit in the evolution of the field of astrobiology, and that's the Martian meteorite a l H eight four zero zero one. We ran across this in nineties six and they found it contained

fossilized Martian nanobacteria, or that was the argument, tiny bacteria. Yeah. Now, subsequently, the you know, the evidences has been discredited for the most part, but still skept question right, yeah, just yeah, heavily questioned. Skeptics still can't really explain the crystals of magnetite found on this particular meteorite. But the thing is they closely resemble crystals made by terrestrial bacteria. So it's

a real thought provoking relic. Yeah. So when it first came out, people are like, oh, this is evidence that life does exist outside there, outside of what we know. And um, NASA really got behind this, um, which is not to say they got behind something that was, um not worth getting behind, But at the time I think that really gave them a vehicle to say, you know what, this this, whether or not it's right it, this is a good idea for us to get behind astrobiology and

use it to try to explore the world more. Yeah. And part of that is like understanding Earth's early biosphere, you know, examining the earliest sedimentary rock for biosignatures, UM, searching for biosignatures of key micro organisms in these ancient rocks. UH, analyzing genomic sequences UH and UH and and really looking at at how evolutionary ecological changes may have occurred following

known asteroid impacts. Again, looking back to the idea of pant spermia, the idea that that in the same way that this meteorite may or may not have signs of bacteria, UM, that in the distant past we might have had bacteria introduced to the planet through one of these events of pant spermia. I was hoping you'd say that again, there you go. Well, I tried on the fly make an adjective out of it, like pan spermom mamic. I don't know, pansper mimic, pansper mimic. But that's just too much. Okay,

I love to think about that. But one of the things that I read that if it was really interesting is that once now said Dick, get behind it, it was sort of allowed astrobiole just to sort of say, Okay, the cats have the bag here. Yes, we're interested in in looking at the Earth, um, looking at our solar system, looking beyond it. But the reason we're really interested in this is because we of course want to know if

there's some sort of alien life form out there. Yeah, it's kind of like that's the that's the real point of the spear. Basically, again, I wonder what aliens look like, But there's all this cool stuff that comes up comes off the side of it, because we end up learning much more about what we are because again it's kind of like, uh, imagine a mystery where you're trying to figure out why a coworker is is sad or stressed out, and you're like, huh, well, why would I be stressed out?

Why would I be sad? And you have to you know, maybe examine yourself to figure out what somebody else is doing. And we're examining life on Earth to try and figure out what life might consist of some more else, right exactly. Yeah, And of course even then we know that that filter is limited, right, so um trying to And again that's why astrobiology so interesting because it has so many different

fields that can provide all those different filters. Yeah, and NASA is particularly interested in it too, because they feel like astrobiology again really interesting and the point of the spear is our wonder what aliens look like, So they think it can serve to excite like new generations about science, about all these different sciences that are tied up in astrobiology.

Maybe a kid gets into it because he wants to know what an alien looks like, but ends up becoming more interested in how climate change effects uh, you know, species on on Earth as we know it today. Yeah. And you know, we've talked about this before, about how there's this sort of cosmic naval gazing, like you know between us, you know, humans making these lists of all these banal things we're supposed to do in our life, right, go to the group store, so on and so forth.

Every once in a while we kind of stop in our you know, in our travels and go, why wait, why are we here? Wait? There are other beings out there, like are we alone? I mean, you can't help but not have these thoughts. Yeah, it's like you're in the line. You let you go. Let's see. Okay, I got the soy milk, I got the bananas, I got the yogurt. I wonder if there's a god. Oh I forgot the U, I forgot the nutella, and again yeah, yeah, why why why did my deem thee? Why did it survive? You know,

it's going back so many hundred thousands of years. It's pretty fascinating actually, um, But again, astrobiology is really seeking to try to answer these questions. Astrobiologists actually, Paul Davies in Charles Lynne Weaver line Weaver I found that cancer share similarities with early forms of multicellular life. So again, this is something that you were talking about that in in this pursual we we find all these different pieces of information emerging, and this is I think one of

the most fascinating ones. Um. So we're talking about ancient forms of life that survived, you know, six hundred million to one million, one billion years ago that might be related to what we know no cancer. Yeah, it's kind of I like to think of this kind of as the demolition Man factor. For the one listener out there who questioned h the exclusion of demolition Man references from

a recent podcast. In this film, in this science fiction film, the world has advanced and become more peaceful, and uh, this ultra violent Wesley Snipes type character is completely obsolete. But he was frozen. He's not dead, he's frozen and preserved in some sort of a prison. And then he escapes on an unsuspecting world. So it's uh, the the idea that Davis in line we were putting forth is that is it cancer is uh is basically just the

Wesley snipes in this scenario. It is the the archaic form of life way back on the scene and it's causing chaos. Yeah, that's I'd like how you put that. Actually, um as also known as atavistic, right, so it's reoccurring, uh, not this digital right, not something that has gone extinct, but something in our genetic coating that may pop up. And that was quite a revelation. I mean, that's still

someone of a theory out there. But um, Unlike bacteria and viruses, cancer has not developed the capacity to evolve into new forms. So cancer is better understood as the reversion of cells. This this atavistic quality to the way that they behaved. UM. So basically what that's saying is that because they are atavistic, there's a limited set of functions that it can perform. And so and if we can understand it in this way, we may actually be able to treat it better that way, because it's not

a moving target anymore, there's some form of predictability to it. Right. And it's not necessarily necessarily about understanding something new, but

understanding something very old, right right. And see that's very That's what I think is so fascinating about this is because we've always thought of cancer as rogue cells taking over, but in fact, it's just that it's it's sort of been there, Uh, that you've got our more modern cells that if if they're damaged or they're not performing, all of a sudden you have these cancer as cells that have their own little toolkit, almost like a computer virus, right,

that sort of implant themselves. Um So, knowing that that they've got the discrete function is pretty fascinating, and that they can't evolve and they're not they're not a moving target. Um so. And how how cool is that the astrobiology is a part of that, right? Yeah. Again, the point of the spear is still wonder what what aliens look like, when what life in another world may consist of. But we're learning so much about more about ourselves in our

quest to answer that question. Yeah. So for I mean for anybody who thinks, I, well, what you know, why is astrobiology important? It's just pine this skuy stuff. Um it's just sort of like when people first looked at the Human Genome Project and thought, well, this is ridiculous. Why are we mapping the human genome? You know, what's what's the worth in that? Well that there have been all these different offshoots which allow us to look at this very microscopic level and say, okay, look look at

how cancers UM performing as this sort of ancient uh gene. Yeah, it's giving us a deeper understanding of life, and it's also fueled a lot of of of measures to make sure that as we continue to explore the worlds that we keep this in mind and we don't pollute them with with earth life, that that we we try and keep it a little sanitary. I can't keep it clean, Yeah, keep it clean if possible. But that's just one of the many things that have come out of the come

out of this UM. But yeah, I mean it's in young field. It's really exciting to be alive in this you know, day and age where the sort of data is coming to fruition UM. Not just that we have our iPods handy, but we know that we can see that the the full impact of something like the Human Genome Project in astrobiology. Yeah, bring scientists together. It's a beautiful thing. It is indeed beautiful speaking beautiful. I don't we have just a quick note from a listening there, Yeah,

we do. We've got a note from Michael and um. He sent us a nice email and I'll just read

the first couple of um sentences. But we were talking about subliminal messaging in our Eat Popcorn podcasts and I had talked about a subliminal cross used in a politicians commercial and at the time I couldn't remember who it was, but he wrote to say, hey, I remember the controversy surrounding Huckabees commercial and how people made a big deal about the shelves in the background that formed a subliminal cross. It was just like, okay, it was like books on

a shelf and they formed a cruciform shape. Yeah, like that's the interscesces of the bookshelves just kind of made this cross. Like, I mean, if you looked at it, you could see what looked like across. Honestly, I don't know that I would have picked it out if I hadn't been hip to the fact. But that's the thing about subliminal messaging, right, You don't know what part of your brain is pickcamp on stuff exactly, So thank you, Michael.

Thanks for the heads up on that. If you have any cool examples of subliminal messaging you would like to share with us, or if you have any thoughts on astrobiology, if you are indeed an astrobiologist, or or in any of the fields that stray into its territory, feel free to drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. We are blow the Mind on both of those, and you can also drop us a line at blow the Mind

at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes