How has astrobiology changed our ideas about the conditions life requires to get started?
It used to be thought — and this is going back to Darwin’s time — that life started at the surface of the ocean or lakes in a warm, sunny environment. That made the earth seem special because that kind of environment is rare, but now it seems that life may also have got started underground or along the bottom of the ocean alongside these hydrothermal vents. Those sorts of conditions are going to be fairly typical of planets in the solar systems. We also know that there’s a cosmic connection with life now. All planets get bombarded by comets and asteroids because they’re just leftover junk from when planets are made. These things carry organic material. You find amino acids — one of the building blocks of proteins — inside certain meteorites. They’ve been found floating free in interstellar clouds so we know there’s basic organic matter out there, and we know there’s a delivery system that brings it to newly formed worlds. What is interplanetary exchange? That could be important loc
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