Are we looking for aliens in all the wrong places?
Posted February 3, 2023 8:06 am.
Last Updated February 3, 2023 9:02 am.
In today’s Big Story podcast, much of humanity’s search for extraterrestrial life has focused on, well, our kind of life — the conditions that make possible the biology we see on Earth. But what if the conditions that make life possible are far from what we imagine? What if we don’t actually know what “life” is, even? Woah, dude …
Seriously, though, in recent years scientists have been working to reframe our parameters in hopes that we’ll find unlikely life, in unlikely places. Science writer, Sarah Scoles, is on The Big Story today to discuss what this new life could look like.
“Once you close off the idea that we know anything about the life that we’re looking for, you could be looking for anything else,” she said, “it’s a much harder problem than looking for little bacteria.”
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You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.
