Origin of Life

The Urgency of Agency

Our consciousness gets in the way of thinking about evolution.

Life, Unbounded, Scientific American

What If Life Did Not Originate on Earth?

The Curiosity rover recently discovered methane on Mars, which could be a sign of life. Gary Ruvkun, a molecular biologist and professor of genetics at Harvard, wants to search for DNA in space.

The New Yorker

New NASA Mission Will Fly Titan’s Frigid Skies to Search for Life’s Beginnings

Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered drone, will visit Saturn’s largest moon in the 2030s.

Scientific American

Life ≠ Alive

A cat is alive, a sofa is not: that much we know. But a sofa is also part of life. Information theory tells us why.

Aeon

The New Physics Needed to Probe the Origins of Life

Stuart Kauffman’s provocative take on emergence and evolution energizes Sara Imari Walker.

Nature

Paul Davies on the Origin of Life and the Evolution of Cancer

Physicist Paul Davies is interested in some of the biggest questions that we can ask. What is life? How did the universe begin? How will it end? And are we alone?

The Life Scientific, BBC Radio 4

Is the Universe Pro-Life?

An old and profound existential question is receiving new interest from the scientific community: Was the emergence of life in the universe an improbable event, or the opposite, an inevitable one?

Quartz

What Is Life?

A podcast about the really, really big questions.

Carl Zimmer

How an Ancient Cataclysm May Have Jump-Started Life on Earth

Its starring role is inferred because it would solve a bevy of mysteries, says Steven Benner, an origin of life researcher at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, who organized the Origins of Life Workshop.

Science

Computing the Origin of Life

Life’s origins could one day be explained thanks to computers.

Astrobiology Magazine

Chemists Find a Recipe That May Have Jump-Started Life on Earth

At the Origins of Life Workshop, Thomas Carell reported that he and his colleagues have come up with a simple set of reactions that could have given rise to all four RNA bases.

Science

Looking for the Origins of Life Using Synthetic Biology

An interview with Betul Kacar.

PLOS Synbio Community Blog

This Rocky Exoplanet Is the Most Likely to Support Life

Of the thousands of known exoplanets, Kepler-452b has the most ideal combination of UV light exposure and conditions for liquid water.

Seeker

The AI Robot Chemist Trying to Find the Origins of Life on Earth

Lee Cronin equates what he is trying to do for chemistry to what the Higgs boson has done for particle physics: “I’m building a Large Hadron Collider for the origin of life.”

WIRED

Testing Philosophy Through Experiments

New technologies could shed light on old philosophical questions, such as the nature of the mind and whether moral values reflect universal truth.

Scientific American

Does Titan’s Hydrocarbon Soup Hold a Recipe for Life?

Does all life depend on water? Titan may be home to methane-based life forms.

Astrobiology Magazine

Is a Bigger Genetic Code Better? Get Ready to Find Out

Evolution settled on a genetic code that uses four letters to name 20 amino acids. Synthetic biologists adding new bases to DNA will be free to improve on nature — if they can.

Quanta Magazine

The End of the RNA World Is Near, Biochemists Argue

For decades, an origin-of-life story starring RNA has prevailed. New research may be shaking that theory’s hold on our understanding of life’s beginnings.

Quanta Magazine

Life May Have Originated on Earth 4 Billion Years Ago, Study of Controversial Fossils Suggests

Fossils from Western Australia’s 3.5-billion-year-old Apex Chert suggest complex microbial communities existed even way back then.

Science

What If Life On Earth Didn’t Start On Earth?

Oumuamua marks the first time humans have seen a visitor pass through our corner of the universe — renewing discussions of the origins of life, says astrophysicist Adam Frank.

13.7: Cosmos & Culture, NPR

How Did Life Begin? Scientists Propose New Theory for Where Earth’s First Organisms Came From

Our best guess about the circumstances under which life began has been that ribonucleic acid (RNA), part of our genetic material, came first and proteins came later. Though widely agreed upon by scientists, that theory has problems. Now, two scientists have a potential solution: the peptide-RNA hypothesis.

Newsweek