Oceans TV - Jupiter's Alien Moons TV - Survivors: Nature’s Indestructible Creatures TV - Rachel Carson - Jacques Monod - Solar Empire TV - Ethan Hawke - Robert Winston - Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1994 - The History of Mr Polly by H G Wells 1949 - Adam Rutherford TV - Storyville: Expedition to the End of the World TV - Yoshiro Mori - Paranatural: Blood Rain and Star Jelly TV - Japan: Earth’s Enchanted Islands TV - Nova TV - Hunt For Aliens TV - Ashwin Vasavada - CBC News online - Francis Crick - Alien Planet Earths TV - Young Frankenstein 1974 - Erwin Schrodinger - Fire Maidens From Outer Space 1956 - Victor Frankenstein 2015 - Aliens: The Definitive Guide TV - Chris Everard - Phil Plait TV - The Search for Life TV - Alien Investigation TV - Aliens: Are We Alone? TV - Rebel Without a Cause 1955 - Red Dwarf TV - Albert Schweitzer - John Jacob Abel -
The oldest life-form on Earth: stromatolites. Oceans IV: Atlantic Ocean, BBC 2008
Europa: a tiny moon of Jupiter. An icy world that’s a prime target in the search for alien life. If we find life on Europa, then life may be abundant in every solar system in the galaxy. But to look for that life we’ll need to ... explore an ocean nearly sixty miles deep ... Can we really send a craft to Europa? Jupiter’s Alien Moon
If we want to find Life in our solar system, our best chance may be to look on the tiny moon of Europa. ibid.
Every place we’ve found water on Earth there has been some life. ibid.
There was evidence that these vents might exist, but no-one imagined this! Life abundant, thriving, alien. Oasis in a barren, frigid world completely devoid of sunlight. ibid.
They are called extremophiles: life-forms that thrive in some of the harshest and most hostile environments here on Earth. ibid.
Could Europa’s ruddy complexion be the remnants of dead microbes brought up from the ocean below? ibid.
Europa: a tiny moon of Jupiter. An icy world that’s a prime target in the search for alien life. If we find life on Europa, then life may be abundant in every solar system in the galaxy. But to look for that life we’ll need to ... explore an ocean nearly sixty miles deep ... Can we really send a craft to Europa? ibid.
Life on our planet has suffered a series of devastating mass extinction events. These have killed off uncountable species, and even threatened to end life on Earth altogether. Survivors: Nature’s Indestructible Creatures I: The Great Dying, Professor Richard Fortey, BBC 2013
Is being a survivor a question of having some very special features or nothing more than pure chance? ibid.
We are all the sons and daughters of catastrophe. ibid.
The Greatest Extinction Event in the history of our planet: 250 million years ago. ibid.
Then one day sixty-five million years ago this world came to a sudden end when a ten-kilometre-diameter asteroid collided with the Earth. Survivors: Nature’s Indestructible Creatures II: Fugitive from the Fire
Big brains would prove to be key to the evolution and success of mammals. ibid.
2.8 million years ago, triggered by changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun and shifts in its ocean currents, our world began to cool. Survivors: Nature’s Indestructible Creatures III: Frozen in Time
One way to cope with the onset of freezing conditions is to go large. ibid.
Another was to get woolly. ibid.
Every survivor we have seen is just one small part of a vast and interconnected tree of life. ibid.
A new era of man-made mass extinction. ibid.
I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life – past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives. Rachel Carson, preface to Humane Biology Projects 1961
There are living systems; there is no living matter. No substance, no single molecule, extracted and isolated from a living being possess, of its own, the aforementioned paradoxical properties. They are present in living systems only; that is to say, nowhere below the level of the cell. Jacques Monod
Europa may hold our solar system’s biggest surprise: life. Not on its surface but sixty miles beneath. Solar Empire: Edge of Darkness, Universe 2014
There's something about knowing life is finite that makes it so precious. Ethan Hawke
Mary Shelley’s hero – Victor Frankenstein – was a doctor seeking the ultimate truth about life. Professor Robert Winston, Frankenstein: Birth of a Monster, BBC 2003
This gruesome trade in dead bodies inspired Mary. ibid.
Sooner or later the best way to cheat death will be to create life. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1994 starring Robert deNiro & Kenneth Branagh & Helena Bonham Carter & Ian Holm & Rory Jennings & Tom Hulce & John Cleese & Aidan Quinn & Richard Briers & Robert Hardy & Christina Cutall & Celia Imrie & Cherie Lunghi & Charles Wyn-Davies & Richard Bonneville et al, director Kenneth Branagh, Victor to friend & Professor
It’s alive! It’s alive! ibid. Victor in lab
Did you ever consider the consequence of your actions? You gave me life then left me to die. Who am I? ibid.
If you don’t like your life, you can change it. The History of Mr Polly by H G Wells 1949 starring John Mills & Betty Ann Davies & Megs Jenkins & Finlay Currie & Gladys Henson & Diana Churchill & Shelagh Fraser & Edward Chapman & Dandy Nichols & Sally Ann Howers & Juliet Mills et al, director Anthony Pelissier, Polly to self
These cells are a staggering one billion years old. It’s now believed that all life on Earth emerged from one single primordial cell … Every since the spark of life has passed from cell to cell. Adam Rutherford, The Cell s1e3: The Spark of Life, BBC 2011
Many of the amino acids vital to all living things could have been present in the Earth’s primordial soup. ibid.
Crick proposed that the information inside DNA was in fact a precise set of instructions. ibid.
Our planet is bursting with life ... Every single thing that has ever existed on earth has one thing in common: and it’s this: DNA ... This stuff is the most ingenious code in the universe ... And what an amazing story we’ve uncovered. Adam Rutherford, The Gene Code: The Book of Life, BBC 2011
Complex cells like the ones we’re made of suddenly appeared. ibid.
For the first billion years or so life on Earth consisted entirely of simple single cells like bacteria and archaea. Then about two billion years ago more complex cells appeared. ibid.
Mitochondria: the host now had the power to become bigger. ibid.
We can see about two hundred genes scattered around my chromosomes that ... originally came from archaea ... We found short stretches of DNA that are uncannily similar to bacteria. ibid.
Back to our wormy friends: in June 2008 the entire Amphioxus genome sequence was finished; it revealed that our genome is essentially a Amphioxus genome quadrupled. ibid.
The genes that build these bones are essentially the same in all species. ibid.
In north-east Greenland unexplored fjords are hidden behind masses of ice. But the ice is melting due to the Earth’s warmer temperatures. And now the waters are open for a few weeks a year. Storyville: Expedition to the End of the World, BBC 2013
Living organisms are the main machine in how the earth works. ibid. scientist
What really strikes us is probably ourselves. ibid.
I’ve looked for the meaning of life in different corners of the world. ibid. philosopher/scientist
Life is extremely robust once it has established itself. ibid. scientist
Life and Earth will survive us by far. ibid.
It [Human Genome Project] represents an immense step forward for humanity in deciphering the make-up of life itself. Yoshiro Mori, Japanese Prime Minister