Astrobiology
The search for life beyond Earth and understanding life's origins in the universe.
Episodes
Conversations and explainers connected to Astrobiology.
AI Breaks a 90-Year Math Problem, Life’s Alphabet in Space, and Science Funding
Asteroid samples reveal life’s molecular alphabet, Washington battles over who controls science funding, and AI produces a counterexample to a 90-year-old mathematics conjecture.
Astrobiology’s Biggest Survival Test + A Vaccine Against Everything?
How life could survive a trip from Mars—and how one vaccine might protect against many pathogens.
Hypersonic Physics, Deep Sea Life & Princeton's Millisecond Qubits
Hypersonics, alien-life analogs, and a millisecond qubit.
Strongest Evidence for Alien Life? (Mars, K2-18b & JWST)
The strongest evidence yet for biosignatures on Mars.
Research
Papers and studies featured by the show.
A complete set of canonical nucleobases in the carbonaceous asteroid (162173) Ryugu
Imagine DNA as a message written in a 4-letter alphabet. Those 'letters' are called nucleobases, and there are five of them: A, T, G, C, and U. Scientists collected tiny rock samples from an asteroid called Ryugu — a rock floating in space about 300 million kilometers from Earth — using a robotic spacecraft. When they looked very carefully at those rocks in a laboratory, they found ALL five of those biological 'letters' inside. Nobody put them there; they formed naturally in space through chemistry involving ice, water, and simple ingredients like ammonia. It's like finding all the pieces of an alphabet scattered across the cosmos, ready to be assembled into the language of life.