A SECOND LOOK AT LIFE EXISTING IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE
I learned all the information described here from the article by Robert Roy Britt that I linked to in the last post. This is a deeper look into the discovery of the building blocks of life being present in the early universe. One probably wonders what context these molecules were found in, that is, where they were and what was around them.
Biologist Ken Nealson described his opinion of the context of the molecules. “It’ll have shape and composition. It’ll have structure,” he stated. Nealson described how this structure is necessary to convert one form of energy into another, which is what stars do and is a fundamental property of life. He continues, “Life replicates, and life evolves. And because it consumes energy, it produces waste products. And it has some particular activities that seem to be universal, one of which is movement.” He claims that there is little else to distinguish life in a universal sense. It is not even certain whether life requires fuel of any sort or even water. It is important to note that while scientists search into the furthest reaches of time and space, there are some planets and moons in our solar system that could contain life. Mars is a possibility. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Saturn’s methane-covered moon, Titan, are still possibilities. Even Venus could harbor life. However these places are extremely unlike Earth and so astrobiologists hope to find other Earthlike planets out there that could harbor a life form similar to that of our planet.