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Life & Search For Life (I)
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  Labor & Labour  ·  Labour Party (GB) I  ·  Labour Party (GB) II  ·  Ladder  ·  Lady  ·  Lake & Lake Monsters  ·  Land  ·  Language  ·  Laos  ·  Las Vegas  ·  Last Words  ·  Latin  ·  Laugh & Laughter  ·  Law & Lawyer (I)  ·  Law & Lawyer (II)  ·  Laws of Physics & Science  ·  Lazy & Laziness  ·  Leader & Leadership  ·  Learner & Learning  ·  Lebanon & Lebanese  ·  Lecture & Lecturer  ·  Left Wing  ·  Leg  ·  Leisure  ·  Lend & Lender & Lending  ·  Leprosy  ·  Lesbian & Lesbianism  ·  Letter  ·  Ley Lines  ·  Libel  ·  Liberal & Liberal Party  ·  Liberia  ·  Liberty  ·  Library  ·  Libya & Libyans  ·  Lies & Liar (I)  ·  Lies & Liar (II)  ·  Life & Search For Life (I)  ·  Life & Search For Life (II)  ·  Life After Death  ·  Life's Like That (I)  ·  Life's Like That (II)  ·  Life's Like That (III)  ·  Light  ·  Lightning & Ball Lightning  ·  Like  ·  Limericks  ·  Lincoln, Abraham  ·  Lion  ·  Listen & Listener  ·  Literature  ·  Little  ·  Liverpool  ·  Loan  ·  Local & Civic Government  ·  Loch Ness Monster  ·  Lockerbie Bombing  ·  Logic  ·  London (I)  ·  London (II)  ·  London (III)  ·  Lonely & Loneliness  ·  Look  ·  Lord  ·  Los Angeles  ·  Lose & Loss & Lost  ·  Lot (Bible)  ·  Lottery  ·  Louisiana  ·  Love & Lover  ·  Loyalty  ·  LSD & Acid  ·  Lucifer  ·  Luck & Lucky  ·  Luke (Bible)  ·  Lunacy & Lunatic  ·  Lunar Society  ·  Lunch  ·  Lungs  ·  Lust  ·  Luxury  

★ Life & Search For Life (I)

The best explanation we have for the origin of life on Earth is that it is the result of an accumulation of organic molecules; these organic molecules are probably produced from the primitive atmosphere of the Earth by the actions of various kinds of energy: electrical discharges, heat from volcanoes, the ultraviolet light from the sun – all these would have combined together to give what has been described as a primordial soup.  Professor Cyril Ponnamperuma, Department of Chemistry University of Maryland, interview Horizon: Message in the Rocks, BBC 1979

 

 

The NASA scientists have discovered that life can survive in places where no-one had expected.  It now turns out that life can survive just about anywhere that there is water.  It doesn’t seem to matter how hostile the environment is.  Universe: Life    

 

The tenacity of life here in Earth’s most extreme environments encourages many biologists to believe that life may be remarkably widespread throughout the universe.  ibid.  

 

At the start of a new millennium we’re about to embark on the greatest adventure of all time.  500,000,000 miles from Earth a spacecraft will land on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.  Its mission: to search for alien life.  ibid.

 

The microbes of Europa would have to be far tougher than their Arctic counterparts.  They’d have to survive lethal doses of radiation generated by Jupiter’s powerful magnetism.  ibid.

 

 

Could primitive life have survived a caustic environment?  The Universe s1e6: Spaceship Earth, History 2007

  

Because of cyanobacteria life was able to diversify and become more complex very rapidly.  ibid.

 

The Asteroid Belt [is] located between Mars and Jupiter.  These warm ice-bearing bodies may have the same water as Earth because they were all formed in the inner solar system which is closer to the Sun.  What’s more, startling new evidence suggests that these usual comets may not only have delivered water to Earth, they may also have seeded our planet with the building blocks of life itself.  ibid.

 

Could primitive life have survived a caustic environment?  ibid.  

 

Could the building blocks of life have come from somewhere else?  Perhaps from an extraterrestrial object.  ibid.

 

Consensus that the first life-forms were single-celled organisms that lived in the oceans.  ibid.  

 

Because of cyanobacteria life was able to diversify and become more complex very rapidly.  ibid.

 

Microbes reigned supreme for much of Earth’s history.  They revolutionised the planet and paved the way for a myriad of more sophisticated species.  But it was land that gave life-forms a new home.  ibid.

 

Its history has been compared to a twenty-four-hour clock with man occupying only the final two seconds of the day.  ibid.

 

 

Are we alone in the universe?  Are we the only ones who look up at the stars and wonder, Is there anybody out there?  The Universe s1e13: Search for ET

 

The Miller-Urey experiment had demonstrated that the precursors for living organisms could have been started by a chemical reaction.  ibid.

 

Would extraterrestrial life be water and carbon based?  Would DNA shape intelligent life?  And would aliens look anything like us?  ibid.

 

Scientists dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life are keenly focused on Europa.  ibid.

 

Tidal heating  and it may create enough heat to keep H2O miles below the surface of Europa in liquid form.  ibid.

 

Titan is an enormous planetary body.  The second largest moon in the solar system.  50% larger than the Earth’s moon.  If it wasn’t orbiting Saturn, Titan would be a planet in its own right.  But most impressive of all, many scientists believe that Titan could now, or at some point in the future, provide a habitat for life.  ibid.

 

To date, no such signal has been detected.  ibid. 

 

 

But there’s another moon orbiting Jupiter which may not only support human exploration but possibly supports its own life-forms.  Europa orbits 400,000 miles from Jupiter’s surface.  The Universe s2e5: Alien Moons, History 2008

 

 

Life: is it rare in our universe?  Or is space a galactic zoo teeming with all sorts of creatures?  The Universe s2e7: Astrobiology

 

Evidence suggests liquid water was seen underneath its frozen crust.  Scientists think Europa has an ocean more than fifty miles deep.  There are also signs of volcanic activity.  So Europa’s icy water could be warmed to a liquid state by volcanic vents on the ocean floor, and this volcanic activity would help cook up the chemicals necessary for life.  ibid.

 

 

For hundreds of years scientists believed that sunlight was the only energy source for life.  But within the past few decades new research has proven them wrong.  Boiling water temperatures found around hydro-thermal vents on the sea floor were once believed to be incompatible with life, but recently scientists have discovered that the areas around these black smokers are perfectly suitable for a flourishing underwater community.  Instead of the sun, these creatures take their energy from the heat, gasses and minerals emitted from the vents.  These highly tenacious life forms are known as extremophiles.  The Universe s3e5: Alien Faces

 

 

Ward cites a number of factors that he thinks would lower the original Drake estimates of how much complex life could exist in the Milky Way, and by extension the Universe.  The Universe s3e9: Another Earth

 

 

Life itself may actually exist in other types of truly weird clouds.  Venus: the second planet from our sun has a hot hellish surface.  Yet strangely the temperature in its cloud which hover at an altitude of about thirty miles could be cool enough for life to exist.  The Universe s3e10: Strangest Things

 

Life as we know it needs water.  The clouds of Venus contain water in the form of concentrated sulphuric acid.  ibid.

 

 

Earth: the third planet from the Sun is brimming with breath-taking beauty.  Unlike any other body in the solar system liquid water covers nearly two-thirds of its surface ... It’s the only planet confirmed to support life in all its forms.  The Universe s5e1: Seven Wonders of the Solar System (One)

 

One feature on Earth is abundant liquid water.  It is thought the earliest volcanoes spewed out massive amounts of steam which condensed into rain and supplied the planet with water.  But recently, new sources of water have been suggested.  And water appears to be a key component for the origin of life.  ibid.  

 

 

Where are the Martians?  On the red planet’s poisoned-packed surface or in newly found sources of water?  Did Martian life survive an apocalyptic attack?  Are Martians microbial or monstrous?  The Universe: Mars s5e2: The New Evidence

 

Dry lightning could have helped jump-start life on Mars.  But it could also kill any chance of life at all.  Life-giving jump-cable or fatal electric shock?  ibid.

 

These 2009 satellite pictures seem to show something impossible – flowing liquid water on the surface.  ibid.

 

The search for water and life on Mars is a continuing quest.  ibid.  

 

Like the nineteenth-century canals and the twentieth-century face the Martian Yeti is a twenty-first century trick of the light.  ibid.

 

The Martian methane could be coming from underground colonies of bacteria.  ibid.

 

 

So life could form on Mars; there’s nothing there preventing it.  We do have the basic building blocks.  Professor William Boynton, University of Arizona

 

 

But underneath all the ice there may be an ocean of water heated by the same tidal friction that makes Io volcanic.  One day we’ll send a probe to explore beneath the ice of Europa and maybe we’ll discover life there.  How the Universe Works s1e8: Moons, Discovery 2010

 

 

On Earth all the conditions are just right for life.  How the Universe Works s2e8: Birth of the Earth

 

Life such as ours needs a planet with the right temperature and size, a stabilizing moon, a protective magnetic field and just the right quantity of water – the conditions must be perfect.  ibid.

 

 

There is an unbreakable bond between life on Earth and the stars above.  Everything we see up there and down here is made from the same stuff … How did these atoms come together to make us?  And are we the only life asking this question?  How the Universe Works s4e5: Dawn of Life

 

What is it that distinguishes life from mere chemistry.  ibid.

 

Three things set life apart: a power source, a protective sack and the blueprints for making duplicates of itself.  ibid.

 

A radical theory called Panspermia suggests our ancestors are about to arrive from outer space.  ibid.

 

 

How life begins … Did our ancestors arrive from space or did they arise up out of the oceans of the Earth?  How the Universe Works s5e1: Most Amazing Discoveries

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