How Did Life Begin? with Betül Kaçar

Summary

StarTalk Radio: "How Did Life Begin?" with Betül Kaçar

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-Host: Chuck Nice
Guest: Dr. Betül Kaçar, Professor of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Date: May 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this revelatory episode of StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice are joined by Dr. Betül Kaçar, a leading astrobiologist and director of NASA’s MUSE center, to explore profound questions about the origins of life on Earth—and what this can teach us about life elsewhere in the universe. The conversation weaves together planetary science, evolutionary biology, and hard-hitting philosophical queries on contingency, extinction, and the frontiers of both laboratory and astrobiological research.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. What Does It Mean to Study the Origin (and Early Survival) of Life?

• Tyson frames the origin of life on Earth as the necessary "ground truth" for astrobiology ([01:54]).
• Kaçar’s lab resurrects ancient enzymes and studies how these “fossil molecules” might reveal the survival strategies of ancient microbes ([04:08], [05:48], [06:17]). - “We are…obsessed with understanding [life's] first steps. Mind you, it’s a bit different than life’s origin. We are interested in what happened once life emerged and what were the first steps?” — Kaçar ([06:17])
• Kaçar likens these footprints to marks left in snow or rock, pointing out that microbial traces are subtle and often overwritten ([07:10]).

2. Life and Its Singularities: Only Once?

• The episode probes why key evolutionary/economic innovations—origin of life, photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation—appear uniquely in Earth’s history ([13:55], [15:50]). - “I like to think of these as singularities…evolutionary singularities that happened only once and they completely transformed our planet." — Kaçar ([14:50])
• Chuck quips: “So Beyonce was wrong? Who run the world? Not girls. Microbes and girls.” ([07:10])
• Explanation of nitrogen fixation as a unique, essential innovation—if the key enzyme fails, global biology collapses ([16:22], [21:47]).

3. Ancient Enzymes, Laboratory Resurrection, and Astrobiological Implications

• Kaçar’s team uses computer modeling, gene editing (e.g., CRISPR), and lab experiments to reconstruct enzymes as they were billions of years ago ([10:58]).
• This research helps scientists test biosignatures and metabolic limits, and to anticipate how life could adapt to alien environments ([12:54], [13:17]). - “If I create a Martian condition, for example…That’s the next step we are going for, for sure. I mean, this is a big problem for astrobiology…” — Kaçar ([12:54])
• By triangulating between molecules, planetary conditions, and evolutionary context, the work advances both understanding of ancient Earth and the search for extraterrestrial life ([11:34]).

4. Survival, Extinction, and the Limits of Life

• The trio debates if life is fundamentally about survival, or something more philosophical ([20:35]).
• Kaçar: “Life is about survival and it is about [how] biological systems find ways to make it…through the good and the bad..." ([20:51])
• Discussion of the catastrophic and chance-driven aspects of evolutionary history—removing a single keystone innovation could collapse the entire biosphere ([30:58], [33:55]). - "You can imagine it’s more like columns, right? And you remove one column, the building collapses. That’s our past.” — Kaçar ([31:32]) - “If you remove carbon fixation, we won’t even have time to come up with a better solution…if you’re thinking about human perspective, we’re vanished first.” ([32:33])

5. The Myth of the Tree of Life—and Webs Instead

• The “tree of life” concept is beautifully deconstructed as a practical but ultimately misleading metaphor ([41:43]). - “There’s no tree of life. It’s our romanticized view of life that we collect everything." — Kaçar ([41:45]) - The reality is a tangled web of genetic exchange—horizontal gene transfer, networks, not linear branches ([42:13]).

6. Defining Life: Evolution, Memory, Metabolism

• The group examines what, if anything, constitutes a unifying definition of life ([43:12], [48:32]). - Tyson: “If we were to define life in some way that might also apply on another planet, one of the concepts is metabolism…” ([43:14]) - Kaçar: “Life is a form of chemistry that maintained a memory over really long time period.” ([48:32])

7. Extremophiles, Energy Gradients, and Universal Metabolisms

• “There’s no such thing as non-living on this planet.” — Kaçar ([27:11])
• The “extremophile” label is questioned as being anthropocentric; what’s ‘extreme’ to us is life’s niche to others ([27:36]).
• Tyson brings in thermodynamic ideas: any life depends on usable energy gradients ([44:21], [45:03]).

8. Life Elsewhere: Limits of Imagination & Biochemistry

• They discuss whether silicon-based life is plausible, given cosmic abundances and enzyme engineering studies ([57:49], [58:22], [59:02]).
• Kaçar notes engineered enzymes can sometimes substitute silicon for carbon, but practicality and planetary chemistry matter more ([58:06]).

9. Connecting Ancient Life to Today’s Challenges

• Kaçar's work aims to translate lessons from ancient planetary biochemistry into practical solutions, e.g., for nitrogen fertilization ([23:49], [64:06]).
• The planetary context is inseparable from the biology of life; learning how past biospheres adapted to changing environments could inform our future ([25:17], [65:01]). - “Just because something isn’t around doesn’t mean it was useless. And that our planet has gone through things that actually could teach us a lot about the future because they resemble our future.” ([65:26])

10. Notable (and Playful) Moments

• "Life is an electron looking for a place to rest." — Kaçar ([28:55], [43:00])
• Tyson: “So, we are just an anaerobic vessel of fecal matter, right?” ([08:05])
• Chuck: “I’m just happy that the universe has confirmed that size does not matter.” ([55:30])
• Kaçar’s delight at being cold-contacted for research funding as a birthday gift ([67:21]).

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• Introduction of Guest and Concepts – [04:00]
• Resurrecting Ancient Enzymes & Microbial Marks – [06:17]
• Life’s Evolutionary Singularities – [13:55]; nitrogen fixation deep-dive at [16:06]
• Why Only One Genesis? Philosophy of Contingency – [13:26], [30:58]
• From Tree of Life to Web of Life – [41:43]
• Defining Life: Energy, Memory, Evolution – [48:32]
• Extremophiles and Life’s Resourcefulness – [27:02]
• Life Elsewhere: Silicon vs. Carbon – [57:49], [59:02]
• Nitrogen Cycle—Modern Artificial Fixation – [64:06]
• Planetary Microbiology and Our Future – [25:17], [65:01]
• Astrobiology Research Funding Anecdote – [67:21]

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Exceptional Quotes & Attribution

• Kaçar:
  • “Our planet is run by microbes. If you don’t like microbes, wrong place for you.” [07:10]
  • “Life is about survival…and overcoming these insane challenges by coming up with very insane responses.” [20:51]
  • “Life is a form of chemistry that maintained a memory over really long time period.” [48:32]
  • "There's no tree of life. It’s our romanticized view of life…It is more of a web." [41:45]; [42:13]
• Tyson:
  • “You can remove one of those singularities and life is gone?” [30:58]
  • “I want to keep open the possibility we need not be the pinnacle of this evolutionary path.” [37:46]
• Chuck Nice:
  • “So Beyonce was wrong? Who run the world? Not girls. Microbes and girls.” [07:10]
  • “I’m just happy that the universe has confirmed that size does not matter.” [55:30]
  • “That's when you know you are kicking ass…they call you, to give you some money?” [67:08]

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Tone and Style

The episode is intellectually lively, laced with humor and accessible analogies, while not shying from technical depth. Kaçar brings infectious curiosity and clarity, Tyson steers toward cosmic perspectives, and Chuck Nice ensures comic relief and layperson translation. The dynamic enables complex science to feel immediate, exciting, and connected to big existential and practical stakes.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode expertly juggles the awe-inspiring contingency and creativity of life on Earth, the philosophical humility of having just “one example,” and the practical implications for understanding both our origins and how we might prepare for the future—on Earth or elsewhere. Dr. Kaçar’s research resurrecting primordial enzymes provides tantalizing insights into both the fragility and tenacity of life, teaching us that survival owes as much to planetary context and chemical luck as it does to biological ingenuity.

Transcript

[A]

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[D]

You know, all our efforts to find life in the universe at some point needs a ground truth.

[A]

So true.

[D]

And that happens on Earth?

[A]

Yes.

[D]

We got one of the world's experts to think about life on Earth and how it got here and how, how it turned into what it became going back 3 billion years.

[A]

We're going into the way back, way, way back.

[D]

Coming up on StarTalk, what would you do if an alien actually showed up? Would you shake its hand or run? Does it even have a hand to shake? In my latest book, Take Me to youo Leader, I explore not only how they might have gotten here, but what they might want and how you should respond. Because the real question is not are we alone? It's are we ready? By the way, I also narrated Take me to your Leader and I'M duly informed that you can get a copy of that book or the audiobook now, wherever books are sold, you should probably get the book sooner rather than later. You don't want to have a first alien encounter and not be ready for it. I'm just saying. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Got Chuck Knight with me.

[A]

What's up, Neil?

[D]

Chuck, it's about time we cover this subject.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

It's life on Earth and in the heavens.

[A]

It is about time because, you know, it's been about 4 billion years.

[D]

When the hell are we going to get time? Might as well.

[A]

Might as well do it now.

[D]

Might as well do it now. And there's an interesting diversity of expertise out there.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Everybody taking the little bit of what their background enables them to study.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

And contribute to our understanding of what life is and what makes it tick.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And what's the difference between life here and elsewhere?

[A]

What do you mean elsewhere?

[D]

We're gonna find out.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[D]

We have with us Bitul Kachar.

[C]

Hi.

[A]

Hello.

[C]

Hi. Thanks for having me.

[D]

Welcome to StarTalk.

[C]

Happy to be here.

[D]

All right, so you got all the pedigree here that's necessary for this conversation. Director of the NASA funded Muse Metal utilization and selection across eons. Oh, wow. We gotta get into what's that about, working there. Yeah. And there's the eons, and there's a Kachar lab. Did you found your own lab, is that right?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I. I run my own lab.

[D]

People have their own labs.

[A]

That's badass.

[D]

That's badass.

[A]

It's pretty cool.

[D]

That. That's. That's.

[A]

That's very Marie Curie of you.

[C]

I hope my ending is the same.

[A]

No, well, the good part.

[D]

Okay, that means if you create something in your lab, it comes after you first.

[C]

Yeah, I live with that fact every day. Thanks for reminding me.

[D]

You are professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the department of bacteriology.

[A]

Wow. Ooh.

[D]

So if you have that on a business card and you hand that to someone, do they just walk away from

[A]

you or do they use gloves to take your car?

[C]

Well, let me tell you, I don't have a lot of friends because of this.

[D]

Oh, that's what I'm wondering.

[C]

But if you don't like bacteria, we can't be friends. So let's get that straight. Are we bacteria friendly here?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, we are.

[C]

Okay, good.

[D]

Very good, Very good.

[A]

Without it, would we be. Would we even be. Would we even be. We would not be without bacteria.

[C]

Be able to breathe.

[A]

Yeah. We wouldn't be it.

[C]

You would make an attempt, but there

[D]

wouldn't be any oxygen to breathe or digest our food.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Oh, so many things.

[D]

It does the digestion.

[A]

Does all the digestion.

[D]

Right, right, right. Okay.

[A]

See, we're friendly.

[C]

Wanted to make sure.

[D]

So you recently published a paper in Nature, which is the preeminent European journal of science.

[C]

And.

[D]

And it's you. You resurrected ancient enzymes. What does that even mean? It's kind of scary, though, to resurrect anything as a biologist. Yes, that. That's. That's got Jurassic park written all over it.

[A]

Oh, I was going in. I was going with Jesus, but okay, Jurassic Park. I'll take the Jurassic Park.

[C]

They both start with a J.

[A]

Exactly.

[D]

So tell me, what. What was the significance of that paper?

[C]

Well, as you said in the beginning, there are many ways in which a scientist can study life. And we are, I would say, obsessed with understanding its origins and its first steps. Mind you, it's a bit different than life's origin. We are interested in what happened once life emerged and what were the first steps? And how did life survive over eons, over billions of years, and how did it make it through this far? We are also interested in understanding the marks that life leaves behind. So if I walk in the snow, you can tell my footsteps, at least for some time. And then snow melts and my marks are gone. If I leave that kind of mark on rocks, like if I'm a dinosaur, you are able to track my past as well, using this. But if I'm a microbe, how does this work? And we know that this is a microbial planet. Our planet is run by microbes. If you don't like microbes, wrong place for you.

[A]

So Beyonce was wrong? Who run the world? Not girls. Microbes and girls. See what happens. See what happens?

[D]

She's all up in your situation. Don't even try next time, just give up.

[A]

I see. I got your number. I got your number.

[D]

Okay, so in the end of the day, we are just vessels for microbes to do their work.

[C]

Exactly. I mean, our gut. The gut feeling. I always find it funny. It's really, you know, microbial gut. Right. Microbes scramble inside of you and they. They live there. And you are basically a hostage for a microbe, as far as I can tell.

[D]

I checked the numbers on this 1cm slice of your lower intestine in there. Lives and works more microbes than the total number of humans who have ever been born.

[A]

Nice.

[D]

So to them, we are just an anaerobic vessel of fecal matter, right?

[C]

Yes. Yes. That's an ugly bags of mostly water and anaerobic vessels of mostly fecal. I agree, we are very crappy. It works. But the whole point of this paper, though, is that, you know, as I mentioned, your marks can be raised. And life. What makes life so amazing on this planet? That it is an evolving system. It's not like geology, where you can find a rock and you're lucky to find one, and you can analyze the fossils on them. But how do you replay the tape? How do you visit the past of something that constantly overrides itself?

[D]

Right, because in geologists, they have a rock and it can sit there for hundreds of millions of years and it's still the same rock.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

And then another layer, they have layers that they can go down and look at.

[C]

Exactly. And if it's not covered by forest, which mostly our planet is. So you're not going to be able to find these rocks. And we have very few rocks that we can rely on in order to tell the story of the first 2 billion years of this planet, of life, of. Well, you know what? Life and the planet. Because the first 2 billion years, about a year and a billion and a half of that life was present here. Right. Life happened to this planet really rapidly. So I don't think you can separate planet Earth from life. It's a pretty.

[D]

That's nice. I like that.

[A]

What is the timeline? When you talk about whatever molten state, cooling life, what's that timeline?

[C]

If you. For geologists, it's like a second. It's pretty fast. We're talking about 500 million years. For us, that's, you know, long time.

[A]

That's a long time for you.

[C]

But for a geologist, it's pretty rapid. So it happens fairly rapidly and we rely on what life left behind. So you can imagine that probably it already took over the planet if we are able to find these remnants of life. The problem, however, is that we only work with a very few samples, because if you even call them samples, they're fossils. And so what do we do right now? So I'm a biologist. I like making things in the lab. I like touching organisms, I like playing with them. And I like genomes. I like genes, I love proteins, I love all of that. So our approach was to use the language of life, which is DNA, and resurrect the ancient language that is now extinct. And bring it back to life by cloning that extinct DNA inside the microbial organism, Basically forcing the microbe to speak an ancient, ancient dialect.

[D]

Well, if DNA survives a crime scene, yes.

[A]

Then how do you know that?

[D]

How do you know?

[A]

Because he uses bleats whenever he murders someone. That's how.

[D]

So let me see if I understand this. You're using computer modeling based on the DNA we know, extrapolating, backstrapolating to a time where we don't have DNA available to us to get some handle on what that life might have been like. And in this case, it's not life that you created, but an enzyme that would be important for life at the time. Do I understand that correctly?

[C]

Exactly.

[D]

And in order to do this, you use the DNA manipulating tools, One of the crispr, I guess.

[C]

Crispr. Use all those.

[D]

The gene editing. That's what you've done. And is this the beginning of what will be a Jurassic park of enzymes in your lab?

[C]

We've been doing this for some time now with other systems, but it's definitely the beginning in the sense of linking these two biosignatures and connecting them to our understanding of life anywhere.

[D]

So you'll be triangulating, using these measurements, triangulating on what life at that time might have been doing.

[C]

Exactly. So this.

[D]

That's very powerful.

[C]

It is like bringing some ancient organism back to life and having a conversation with them. And, you know, most of the time you don't understand each other. Right. So. And they now are awake in an environment that is very different. But we want them to tell us, so to speak, have a little conversation with them. Okay. We use the breadcrumbs that you left behind in order to track you. We now know where you come from,

[D]

we know where you came from, we know where you live, and we know where you came from. That's Mafia right there.

[A]

That is very much, yeah. So now, when do they escape and come together and create a life that kills us all? When's that happen?

[C]

Well, I'm really glad you asked that question.

[D]

Where is she? We haven't seen her in weeks. She's tied to the back wall. And the microbes are just in charge. They become your overlords?

[A]

Yeah, they're just like. How do you feel about being studied?

[C]

While you're describing my worst nightmares, I have a question.

[A]

If you

[D]

know what the sample is going to be that you create, why do you have to create it?

[C]

Well, we need to understand in what conditions it can trick us. We want to know if I give it a Different gas. If I recapitulate ancient Earth, will it start tricking me if I analyze it?

[D]

So you poke around at the thing you created.

[C]

Oh, yeah, we created and then we wanted to see its limits.

[D]

And you poke it.

[C]

Oh, I want to see what it will look like if I create a Martian condition, for example. So that's the next step we are going for, for sure. I mean, this is a big problem for astrobiology because we always talk about Enoch's one, there's only one planet, there's only one life. But if you think about it, our life has gone through many, many, many, many, many different versions of itself. It reinvents like over 99.99% of everything that ever lived on this planet has gone extinct.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

And that includes likely microbes. We don't have an understanding of what kind of signatures they left behind and what alien life, which is our own past, may have looked like.

[D]

However, if life is so good at creating new species opportunistically as an environment is changed, why hasn't there been more than one genesis of life on Earth? Why does all life have DNA in common? Why isn't there a whole other branch if it's so quick? It was so easy to make life on Earth. Why didn't it just happen 10 times? Not just branches within one tree, different trees.

[A]

An orchard of life.

[D]

Orchard.

[A]

I like that.

[C]

First of all, life may not be as good as you think. Right. It may really need a planet to be at the right time, at the right place with it. Life is not just a thing. That's by itself. Biology needs its container. And here it's the planet Earth. So you cannot take the planet outside of life. They're together. That's the number one thing. Are we clear on this?

[D]

Yes.

[C]

Number two is that life is. We don't know to what degree it's a fluke accident or to what degree it was determined to be the way it is now. Right. We don't have much understanding of the chance and necessity.

[D]

Because you only have a sample of one.

[C]

Exactly. I mean, we can play in the lab, we can create some conditions and replay in reverse and try to do these evolution experiments like we do. But fundamentally, we lack that understanding of to what degree life is able to recapitulate itself. And three, again, we don't know. Maybe there will be other planets. And that's our hope, right. That where we look and study what life can do.

[A]

And you'll find a different tree.

[C]

And I will tell you this, and this may actually blow Your mind. Because it is true that as far as we know, origin of life has happened once. And it's not the only thing, though, that transformed our planet. That happened once. I like to think of these as singularities. These are evolutionary singularities that happened only once and they completely transformed our planet. And I can only count to you a very few of them. One is origin of life to what we know. One genesis. Second one is the production of oxygen. There is only one way that biology invented creating oxygen. It is crazy that that's even a thing. Only one way that this planet has done its way to create oxygen. And look how much everything we relate to as a living thing relies on this thing.

[D]

It's a photosynthesis.

[C]

Exactly.

[D]

Oxygen and photosynthesis either in the oceans or in the plant life. That would come later.

[C]

And plants are. I mean, plants are lakes, right?

[D]

So yeah, they're much later than the oceans gave us oxygen.

[C]

Animals 1 origins, right? Plants 1 origins. So these are the singularities that only happen. Nitrogen fixation. 1 origins. So there are multiple things. As good as life is, it only happened once.

[D]

I've heard the term nitrogen fixation. Explain that to me, please. Maybe I missed that day in chemistry class, but I have no idea what nitrogen fixation is.

[C]

Ironically, I missed that day too. Yet I study it, so it's not an excuse.

[D]

Call me out. Oh, okay. Gauntlet throne challenge accepted. I will, on my own, go learn nitrogen fixation.

[C]

We rely on nitrogen. ATP needs nitrogen, our DNA needs nitrogen. So it's essential to life as we know it. And we think that it is as old as about 3 billion years. So the first billion years of life didn't have biological fixation of nitrogen. So what do we mean by that? Luckily, there's a lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere. Lots. But it is not readily available to our cells. It cannot enter our cells as easily. It needs to be transformed. It's a triple bond. It's very, very strong. So life invented a way to break this bond and turn nitrogen into a form that is ammonia that is available for life. And that's been doing that for 3 billion years, relying on a single enzyme. So if that enzyme is ruined, the whole show of collapses, or so we thought. So we created an artificial way of fixing nitrogen. That's the Haber Bosch process, which is insane. Amount of energy. About 2% of world's entire energy consumption goes through the production of artificial ammonia through artificial nitrogen fixation process using Harbor Wash. Think about that. And all fertilizer, agriculture, industry depends on this.

[D]

You need to get nitrogen unbound to itself. Because in the atmosphere it's N2. So now you have a nitrogen atom available to work its way into the processes of life.

[C]

Exactly.

[D]

And that's nitrogen fixation.

[C]

That's nitrogen fixation. That's the biological nitrogen fixation. It happens abiotically too, like lightning fixes some nitrogen. So many people think because it's got

[D]

a lot of energy, you can break apart anything.

[C]

Oh, yeah. But we think that wasn't sufficient enough. After a while, there was such demand for more nitrogen as organisms grew and the more species diverged early on, that likely triggered biological production. Biological production of nitrogen.

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[D]

So what's the value of you fixing nitrogen artificially if it's not what nature does?

[C]

Oh, I'm so glad you asked this question. So this goes back to survival of life, right?

[A]

Okay, Chuck. Yeah. That's not what we had an argument before this whole show started. It wasn't really an argument.

[D]

Don't bring your arguments from outside the show into the show. Well, no, keep the arguments in the street.

[A]

Listen, I left my argument in the street. She just bought it into this movie.

[D]

Okay, okay, what is the argument?

[A]

Well, no, the argument I said. She made a very biologist statement.

[D]

What was that?

[A]

Life is about survival. And I made a very philosophical statement which was that is wrong.

[D]

Okay, let's get to the bottom of it. Go.

[C]

Life is about survival and it is about how the biological systems find ways to make it basically through. Through the good and the bad. And I think there's a big inspiration out of this. It's not a. It's not something that I'm afraid of facing, Chuck, that life finds a way and it is through most of the time overcoming these insane challenges by coming up with very insane responses. So it doesn't. You know how we are told that in the face of conflict, like find some corner, maybe be quiet, be political. Life doesn't do that. It's. You punch it, it punches back, right? So now there's oxygen in the planet. We are 2 billion years in and nitrogen fixation has evolved. But guess what? This enzyme, this whole biological system hates oxygen. All right, what do I do now? There's all this oxygen in the environment and I don't like oxygen. So how do I survive? It finds ways, we don't know exactly how and what to protect itself from the dangers of nitrogen. It protect itself.

[D]

So we created animals that thrive on oxygen.

[C]

Oh, that is way.

[A]

That's way down.

[C]

Way down. Like there's another like 2 billion years until we get there.

[D]

Oh, wow.

[C]

Yeah, there's another billion year folkaryotes. There's another. If some biologists are listening to me, they may be like how about all the heterosis and all the systems that protect nitrogen organelles that blah blah blah. They were also later. All right, so we want to understand how nitrogen fixation survived oxidation. How did such dangerous thing manage to not kill this biological system?

[D]

Because oxygen is highly caustic to so many things. Right. When you created an ancient enzyme, was that a nitrogen fixing enzyme?

[C]

In this particular case it is a nitrogen fixing enzyme. We did this for carbon, we did this for informatics, for genetic more replication system as well. But in this particular case it is a nitrogen system. So going back to your original question, if this is so costly and we need all these fertilizers, what we are trying to do is not to reinvent a new Agriculture, but maybe decrease our dependence on this energetically, globally very demanding productions. We need better biological to create fertilizer for plants. Well, it wouldn't be for fertilizer, but to create more efficient nitrogen fixation. It would be the opposite thing to maybe lessen our dependence on fertilizers. So this is a beautiful example in my very biased opinion of how astrobiology and studying life in the universe by starting from here, our own place and our own past can actually help our future. If we understand that how these essential systems made it thus far, we may be able to re engineer them and repurpose them for better efficiency. Because our planet has gone through a lot, it's gone through many ups and downs and we should not treat past as some useless waste because of our understanding, maybe limited understanding of evolution. We think that if something didn't make it, it was failure. But there are many reasons for an organism to just to not make it thrive any longer for no fault of nothing to their own.

[D]

Like T. Rex just got unlucky.

[C]

I mean also they were not that bright, I think. I'm sorry about that. If any T Rex is watching me, don't hate me.

[D]

The asteroid didn't take them out. There's no reason why T Rex wouldn't still be asteroid.

[C]

They didn't have a planetary protection program.

[D]

I know.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, right. Well, if intelligence is a prerequisite for survival, I got news for you people, we're all screwed.

[D]

Okay, I don't want to put words in your mouth where you're exploring all the ways life has attempted to survive on the possibility or the likelihood that learning what those are could help us today.

[C]

Exactly. This is not where it started, I'll be very honest. We just had this very basic curiosity about very basic processes of how and why and how did things evolve. We don't have any understanding of any protein or any metabolism. How did they evolve at first place? I mean, think about that. Tell me any protein you love and I'll tell you. We have no idea how it originated on this planet. And that's a huge knowledge gap. But these questions inevitably led us to understand create a new paradigm between the planet and microbiology, which I like to refer to as planetary microbiology. How does the microbe and bacteria and eukaryotes, how do they dance with the planet? Biology needs to completely transform itself and really evaluate molecules and cells and organisms from the perspective of the planet. We need to understand the planetary boundaries that constrain life in order to understand and maybe create a better future for Ourselves as well, because we rely on

[D]

these organisms and remind us what a eukaryote is. You said that very quickly in a sentence.

[C]

How do I begin to explain myself? Well, I would. In my very biased opinion, it's a bacteria that escaped the metabolic trap and bacteria that got very, very lazy. It's basically, I would say, the next points in evolution. They are about 1.8 billion years old. They have more organelles, more complexity. Exactly. They are our ancestor and so our ancestors are 1.8 billion years of. We are eukaryotes. Plants are eukaryotes.

[D]

So they have a cell nucleus.

[C]

They have a nucleus. They have more complex, more going on. More going on. Exactly. There's a lot more going on. And they're more lazy. I mean, in general, life is lazy. It will always choose the laziest option.

[D]

Take a look. Cats and dogs at home. I think dog sleeps 20 hours a day.

[C]

That's called smart. That's all.

[D]

They're looking at us like, you're happy when you should get home. But they sleep the whole rest of the day.

[A]

That's why they jump up and down and they're just like, all right, I'm tired seeing you. Just really exhausted. I gotta go eat and then go back to sleep.

[D]

Let's pivot to what we now think of as extremophiles. This has arisen in astrobiology, as if life on earth can thrive in exotic environments that might otherwise kill us. Let's look in the universe at the exotic environments. It might help us think about ways of being alive that are not otherwise. The 72 degree tide pool, where as someone had said in generations past. Tell me about how this plays into thinking about extremophiles.

[C]

Well, I don't think there's any corner on this planet that was not taken over or occupied by life at any point. There's no such thing as non living on this planet.

[D]

Everywhere.

[C]

Everywhere. And thanks to NASA and astrobiology program and their vision, I think decades ago, understanding that we need to drill, we need to go to caves, we need to look into ice, we need to go all these crazy places where we think is completely barren of life. Because guess what? Under every rock we find life. And now we call them extremophiles. But if you think about it, it's a bit of an outdated term, I think, because what is extreme? I mean, it's very relative.

[D]

It's not extreme for them.

[C]

Right, Exactly. I mean, just extreme.

[A]

What is it that they found underwater eruptions of volcanoes where the undersea vents. Yeah, highly Toxic water is extremely hot. And I forget the microorganisms that they found living there. And they're doing just fine.

[C]

They're doing just fine. Someone's waste is someone's food, right? Nothing. This planet wastes nothing. Nothing goes to waste. And that's the beauty of all these organisms that sort of depend on each other. They cheat, they compete, they cooperate, but they find a way to survive. They find a way to make.

[A]

Itula is loving every time she can say survive to me.

[D]

So I like the idea that. That the word extremophile might be outdated. I love that. Because it's just life. Just life.

[A]

It's just life. It's not extreme life. It's not the X Games. It's just life.

[C]

It's extreme to us, but it's all, again, coming from our.

[D]

They would call us extremophiles.

[C]

Absolutely. Life does many, many weird things. And it will not waste anything. It will eat the sunlight, it will eat acids, it will eat whatever. It will find a way. And that's thanks to metabolism and all the. What is that nice saying. Life is an electron looking for a place to rest.

[D]

Wait, wait. How much of a saying is that?

[C]

It is.

[A]

Everybody in the street, all the kids are saying that, you know,

[C]

they should be saying that I'm just an electron looking for a place to rest.

[A]

Looking for a place to rest.

[D]

Wow. No, I'm just a neutron trying to buy a drink. And the bartender says, for you, no charge.

[A]

No charge.

[D]

The ones we're doing particle physics jokes.

[C]

Was that too much biology for you already? I'm sorry, excuse me.

[A]

Escape hatch.

[D]

Just for a thing to come back in. So remind us, what precisely an enzyme does in a chemical reaction.

[C]

Well, it does lower the thermodynamic barrier to speed up reactions.

[D]

Oh, so we have reactions that might eventually happen, but you put in another chemical that brings them together.

[C]

Exactly.

[D]

So these are the biologist's best friend and the chemist's best friend, or worst

[C]

enemy, depending on what you study. Right. And they're all protein. They're micro molecules. I love that you call them chemicals. It's true. Their life is chemistry, memory, everything is chemicals.

[D]

Best friends are made of chemicals.

[A]

Exactly. That's so funny. It's like when people say on a package, they're like, and it's chemical free. And I'm like, you're an idiot.

[D]

There's no such thing as chemical free.

[C]

Okay, so you're chemical, they're also chemical. An ugly bag of mostly chemistry.

[D]

I have to square a circle here. From what You've said we talk about life as thriving on Earth, but so much of it was highly contingent on singularities of geologic, biologic, chemical phenomena in the history. So you could just remove one of those singularities and life is gone?

[C]

Yeah. Yes, it's true.

[D]

So the contingency of life feels almost preordained.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Or could it be, based on what you just said, that we don't know how many other attempts have been made that just did not work, and this is where we are, or how many

[D]

other singular moments could have happened, could

[A]

have happened that did not happen.

[C]

That did not happen, or happens, but we're erased and we can't access them.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

There are three possibilities.

[D]

Can you just reflect on the statistics of that?

[C]

Well, I want to tell you first that what you said is very fundamental because we think about past as some sort of foundation to our existence. We imagine like everything built on top of each other and we stand on these solid grounds. News flash. No. Okay, you can imagine it's more like columns, right? And you remove one column, the building collapses. That's our past. So we got to be very careful about how much we rely on these biological phenomenon, thinking that we are in good hands. I mean, Earth, it took a really long time for what we depend on to evolve and to find its place. And it is not a foundation whatsoever. These are very delicate systems. You change the PH of a soil, you threaten biological nitrogen fixation.

[D]

So here's where I would push back. Yes, it's delicate for what it is, but you take away that pivot point, you take away this singularity, and a whole other system might have come up where we might be 10 times smarter than we are as humans.

[C]

No, this won't happen. I mean, if you remove carbon fixation, we won't even have time to come up with a better solution. I mean, if you're thinking about human perspective, we're vanished first, Right? We are the first ones.

[D]

Okay, so there's some other species. So some other species rises up, microbes.

[C]

They will be. Okay, obviously they're going to be. They will find. I mean, there won't be any humans to study them.

[A]

Right.

[C]

But they will be doing fossils and

[A]

they'll be like, thank God they're gone.

[D]

Are you suggesting because we went so long without oxygen and all these life forms thriving in a carbon dioxide atmosphere. Microbial systems, microbial systems. You're saying without oxygen, that could be a 5 billion year planet of just microbes?

[C]

Yeah, it will be, most likely. And eukaryotes, complex life it depends on how you define complexity. I don't know if consciousness would still evolve, but the chances of a human evolving again, I don't know. That's a very good question.

[D]

Some other life form that's going to.

[A]

Everything has evolved extremely fragile. I mean, isn't that true? Everything has evolved to where we are right now, everything. So it doesn't make a difference.

[C]

I wish I could see the future. It would make my life much easier, especially because I study evolution. But there's no way to predict these things. What we can do by again, statistics calculate to what degree we know the greenhouse gases will be messed up up with the rapid changes that we are introducing and to what degree life can keep up with this or not.

[D]

If you, if you use models to

[C]

back predict, can't you use it for future?

[D]

Why can't you use it to forward predict?

[A]

That's how they do climate.

[C]

Well, they do to some degree. We know we always talk about we need better models, but you know, it's a model at the end of today. And life will trick you. Life will do things that you're not expecting. It's a complex system. Now, going back to the singularities again, I think you remove one, you remove nitrogen fixation. Half the time the world population starves. That's a big number. Biological nitrogen fixation. If we solely depend on artificial generation of nitrogen, that's the number half the population of the world. So these are, you know, big numbers. And our sustenance rely on these innovations are the oxygen we breathe, the food we eat, right? Everything depends on these things. Now, going back to the singularities, I do believe, and I want to believe that there's more out there about our past that we simply cannot track. I mean, you can think of it as similar to resurrecting an ancient language, right? Egyptian language. How do we do this? We are lucky because we found Rosetta's stone. We could cross, compare some notes and we can infer in ancient language and suddenly everything made sense. And culturally we understand. So whatever we can recover, we attribute the entire world history to that. It's the same thing as what we do when it comes to biology. Whatever we recover, we can attribute the past to that. And I think that's overwhelming to think about, but also extremely motivational and inspirational that we may be completely wrong about our own past in terms of life and its history. And this is extremely important that we understand where we came from. I mean, don't you want to know your ancestors? You do, right? Like it's the ultimate if they're anything

[A]

like me, then no.

[D]

I had a friend who said, I want to explore my roots, and all I dug up was dirt.

[C]

Everybody, right? It's going to Greece and, you know, not reading about the Greek history, but just, you know, like skipping the museum and hitting the beach right away and not being curious about anything that made that culture possible.

[D]

So I want to take on your point. There are people who like to think, and some of this just flows through your work, that there's this process, there's this stable phenomenon, then something happens, and then something else happens, and there are these checkpoints, right? And then at the end, we exist as conscious entities, all right? And if you change any one of these points, then we don't exist. I don't have a problem with that. However, where is your latitude to ask if something else happened, then something else would exist, making a life form vastly smarter than humans or some other thing. What is the range of possibilities? Rather than focus on the one that worked, how about all the others that could have worked but just didn't have the occasion to do so and could have had a way more advanced civilization than we have today?

[C]

That's always a possible. There's always worse, there's always better. Right. So we don't know. I think so. You need to clarify this for me, because I don't know what you mean by. I guess what bothers me is this understanding that life finds a way can be dangerous a little bit, because we assume that everything's going to be fine because evolution has been doing its thing for billions of years. And even if we mess up things

[D]

like that, life finds a way to produce some kind of life. That's really what I'm saying. Nothing's gonna make us. No, no. You know, any break in the branch in our ancestral tree, we don't exist. All right? But whole other vertebrates will exist and other. You know, and dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are around for hundreds of millions of years, far longer than Homo sapiens that have been around. So as far as they're concerned, they're quite successful. Yeah, they didn't have a space program. If they had, they would have deflected that asteroid, you know.

[A]

Oh, yes, without a doubt.

[D]

I want to keep open the possibility we need not be the pinnacle of this evolutionary path.

[C]

I agree with that.

[D]

That other evolutionary paths might have been differently fertile, but had a different kind of Earth with different life forms.

[C]

That's very true. And I think this whole earlier depiction of evolution, like from monkeys to humans, like maybe draw that. That picture in our minds that we think there's some direction to evolution when

[D]

there is no direction at all.

[C]

So we think A became B, B became C, C became D, and now, boop. V appeared.

[A]

And like I said, everything has evolved. Everything that's here now evolved. And we still have. Based on what you just said, we still do have dinosaurs.

[D]

They're called birds. So dinosaur descendants.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. That's their evolution.

[D]

Yeah. I want to add something to something you said earlier. Earlier on we mentioned, well, how long did it take life to show up on Earth? Because Earth formed in the void and it's a hot thing. So life came around even faster than that because we have a period in the early Earth, what we call the period of heavy bombardment, where the solar system is vacuuming up the remnants.

[C]

I know where this is going.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Okay. So we are being pummeled. Pummeled.

[A]

Cause there's still a lot of trash out there floating around, Correct?

[D]

Correct. We're being pummeled. So the official word would be we're still accreting leftovers from the early solar system. My point is, you can take a thermometric measure of Earth, and Earth is way hotter than what would sustain complex molecules. So you wait for that to cool down, then you start the clock. If you do that, then life started here within 1 or 200 million years, not 500 million years faster than even. You don't start it when Earth began. You started when Earth could have possibly sustained a complex model. Doesn't it help you out?

[C]

I mean, sure. Like, I think I was referring to what we can track in the rock record. Right. Using the isotopes. And so we are really referring to some cell that already was doing its thing. I am not sure to what degree. Like, based on our understanding of chemistry, yes, we do need some optimum temperature for certain complexity to emerge. But there's no reason for, again, early chemistry to also evolve from simplicity to chemistry. Chemistry can give rise to more complexity. Gives rise to more complexity. Mahina ex mahina. Right. Like, you can't have that original messiness. And out of that messy chemistry, there's more messy things that came out.

[A]

So you're saying that the noise that is in the very beginning is part of the process itself, or could be

[C]

part of the process itself. What Neil's pointing out is that what we think as life is different than life circa 100 million years past Earth's formation. Right. But we think in biology at least, or at least when we think about the last universal Common ancestor that's already a fully fledged. Can eat, can poop, has all the genetics and doing its thing. Organism. But origin of life is different than that. Right? So origin of life could be a complete chemical system that can maintain itself and do things. So there's likely some period.

[D]

I'm just saying that when you start the clock, you don't have to start it at the formation of Earth. That's all I'm saying.

[A]

You're saying start it at the place where it could happen.

[D]

It could. It could have. Where it could.

[A]

Where it could be.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Where it could be sustained.

[D]

Exactly.

[A]

That's.

[D]

That's really all I'm saying.

[A]

So what was the thing that you guys found in your field that is the earliest form of an organism?

[C]

Well, in. In biological terms, it is 4 billion years. That's the latest time for the. This ancestor. That's the last universal common ancestor, luca. So the first organism. But keep in mind we use what we refer to as phylogenetics, is trees. Tree of lives. Obviously there's no tree of life. It's our romanticized view of life that we collect everything. We drove trees and we imagine everyone.

[D]

You tell me there's no tree of life.

[C]

It's a. It's a hypothesis, it's a thing. It's like metaphors.

[D]

We'll take that from me.

[C]

I will take it. And I study tree stymies. I will leave this room with the tree.

[D]

You are cold blooded. You are cold blooded. I'll take it. Where does.

[A]

I would like you to read me a bedtime story.

[D]

Where does the tree of life analogy fail?

[C]

Because it doesn't really factor into the genetic exchange between organisms. And I think it creates this understanding.

[D]

It applies a certain purity of.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

It gives this direction again. Time. Time, arrow, time zero. When it is likely more web network rather than tomorrow and Wednesday.

[D]

I'll give you that.

[A]

Okay. So it's more of a web than a tree.

[C]

Absolutely. But it helps us, of course, because we understand time. We need to. But it is important that, you know, we acknowledge that it is because we made that up. Like we just used that as a way to make sense of it. Make it sense.

[A]

Easier to understand.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

That's all.

[D]

So I want to bring some physics into this, if I may. So

[A]

you made him uncomfortable. No, you're just like. Just too much damn biology. We gotta get back to something. Let's bring some physics into this.

[C]

I mean, if you made a pie chart of this show, it's probably like what's the biology percentage?

[D]

No, we Try to get some good biology on here.

[A]

We don't mind.

[C]

We can have some.

[A]

Okay, let me just go for it.

[D]

Let me stir some physics into this. Okay, go ahead. If we were to define life in some way that might also apply on another planet, one of the concepts is metabolism. That the life absorbs, by whatever means energy from its environment and uses that for its own survival and possibly reproduction. So how much do you guys think about metabolism when you think about life?

[C]

Oh, all the time.

[D]

All the time.

[C]

It's the engine we take metabolism. I mean, it's just.

[D]

Okay, here's something else we think about. If an entire system is exactly at the same temperature, then you can't have a process take place because a process takes energy over here and puts it over there. And in order for that to be the case, it's gotta be like, hotter over here than over there. Or things have to be moving over here more than they're moving over here. So when biologists explore the world and think about life, do you also think about energy gradients from one section of an environment to another?

[C]

For sure. So first of all, I mean, I'm a weird biologist because I'm interested in astrobiology.

[D]

No, that's the best kind of biologist. Go on.

[C]

But that still makes it weird. That doesn't get in the way. But I think about the planet all the time. But for sure, biologists just think about the ladder in which donor and an acceptor and how they relate to one another. What gives, what takes. And what kind of voltage can be generated in exchange of electrons or materials in terms of electrons, I guess, between the two ends of the optimum. So. Absolutely, because as I said, life is an electron looking for a place to rest. And it is all about precise channelization of these electrons.

[D]

Right. Because all electrons are already resting. Nothing happens.

[C]

Exactly. So you need a receiver. You need that push and pull and you need that tension and you need that fight between these systems so that you create energy and you channel that, and you basically channelize that energy across enzymes or whatever is in the cell. So they bounce and push and pull and do their thing.

[D]

Okay, because we're looking now, we have a mission going to Europa. It's a ice penetrating radar mission that will orbit. So Europa has this ice sheet on top. And we are quite certain that there's a highly confident. There's an ocean of liquid water. It's kept liquid from the tidal stresses of Jupiter itself. If it's just an ocean underneath ice, I guess it's kept warm because of the Tidal stress. And maybe that's the source of energy.

[A]

That's the source of energy.

[D]

That's the source of energy for it. Right. Because without it, you would have no energy source.

[C]

I mean, even if, if it is dormant, we will still be able to find it if it is there. Because we have fermenters on this planet that are also quite lazy. The voltage between the giver and receiver is pretty minimum.

[D]

They're really weird fermenters.

[C]

It is basically, if you're thinking about the ladder between the donor and the acceptor fermenters, we want the ladder to be. If we draw a line between the donor and receiver, we want that line to be as steep as possible. But when it comes to fermenters, you're getting almost a flat line. It's the equal footing, but it still works. So even though thermodynamic, hardly any.

[D]

I have not thought about that.

[C]

Even though, you know, it is not by looking at it, it's not energetically favorable, like maybe a carbon fixture might be, or photosynthesis might be doing. It is still doing its thing. So what I'm saying is that dormancy or this kind of slow process will not get in the way. We will take what we got. Let me get to Europe.

[D]

Whatever the slope is.

[A]

Whatever the slope is, it's a bunny

[D]

slope, but we're taking it.

[C]

But yes, metabolism, absolutely important. It's the energy, it's the engine. It's all about the battery, right. When it comes to life on this planet. So you have to think about that.

[D]

Those two. I'm happy as being the only criterion for life, but you speak to a pure biologist, not an astrobiologist, they start adding other things. Has to be susceptible to evolution, has to be able to reproduce. And I'm thinking. Really? Really, you think so? And how do you feel about these other criteria?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you cannot just have a battery that's just sitting there, right? The battery needs to produce another battery somehow.

[D]

Why?

[C]

Well, then it's not life, it's just sort of a battery.

[D]

Why can't it just be a battery that lives a billion years?

[C]

But then it's not life, though. What do you mean? How is it going to live?

[D]

Well, it lives slowly.

[A]

I was going to say it lives until it runs out of juice.

[C]

It likely can assemble. But in order for at least our understanding of life, that memory of the information that assembled, that metabolism per se, it continues on. It has to continue. You.

[A]

So you're saying a bunch of logs laying in a pile is Not a house. You got to actually have a house in order for it to be.

[C]

Not a house I want to live in.

[D]

Yeah. Where's the bricks?

[C]

But I guess what I observe in the field also, I think there was some division between metabolism or is it information? Is it informatics or do we need to replicate or do we need to eat? Right. And I think we are more merging right now that we need both. Both. Like it's a problem that needs both ends. Not only you need metabolism, but also you need a way to transform that information of the presence of the metabolism to your offspring.

[A]

All right. That's when things get stuck this between you two. For everybody listening, including me. Can you give me in a very succinct statement, what is life?

[C]

Life is a. Is a form of chemistry that maintained a memory over really long time period. It's. That's only. That's all I can say about life at this point.

[A]

Okay. That was very romantic.

[D]

Memory. That's a corner.

[C]

It retained it. Right.

[A]

I got you. Okay.

[B]

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[C]

Oh, no.

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[D]

We like thinking that intelligence is important because humans are intelligent. But then I say, who said humans are intelligent?

[A]

It certainly ain't me.

[D]

We define ourselves Intelligent, Yeah. We coexist in this world with cockroaches and highly, highly viable life forms coexist with us and don't have anything of what we would call intelligence. So intelligence can't be all that important for survival. Otherwise I think it would have shown up more in the tree of life than it has. So. But I've heard this term chemical intelligence. What is that? And how does that fit to what I just said, if at all?

[C]

Yeah, I think, I mean, intelligence is an interesting term, especially these days, because what does that even mean? Right. So we attribute it to artificial intelligence. Like what is that? What makes the artificial system intelligent? I guess we wanted to confront that with a new term, chemical intelligence. It's not artificial, it's not biological, but there's an underlying intelligence to life at the heart of life and its emergence. We think that these reactions that we talked about, that complex systems, they're probably coupled to one another. Right. You're not looking at a complex carbon fixation, metabolism. Right. These are very big. There's some. It's like a huge. It's a crowded place in the cell. Everyone's reacting with one another. But early on, we think that there release cycles coupled to one another. So they produce the waste that's a chemical. And another cycle takes. It rotates, it spits out. There's input and output constantly. And that is really the probably the most fundamental form of metabolism.

[D]

So it's a chemical factory in a sense.

[C]

Sure. I mean, life is in a way too. But you can also simplify it in the basic form that we like to refer to them as autocatalytic. So they've been able to catalyze their own presence.

[D]

Autocatalytic.

[C]

Yes, yes, you said it better than my. Autocatalytic. I gotta do a lot of like.

[D]

Now we're even. Because I couldn't pronounce your name.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Not fair, I should be saying.

[A]

And I like the way you say it, like you're from Brooklyn. Autocadic.

[D]

Yeah. The hand was in that gesture. So I have a fast story that happened to me 30 years ago, okay. We had just. We, the astronomical community had discovered this, this possible signs of life on a meteorite that is from Mars. Okay. The famous Allan Hills meteorite back in 1996. It was. I think it was. I'm on a TV show with a biologist, okay, Discussing this result. And they had this scanning electron microscope photo of something that looked like a little worm thing. Very small, like one tenth the size of the smallest cells on Earth.

[A]

Okay, okay.

[D]

Really small, and it needed an electron microscope to see it. Okay, we're exploring. What is this evidence on this rock? There's, like, organic molecules, and it's tantalizing evidence. The biologist, upon seeing this little wormy thing, said, that can't possibly be life. And then I thought, wow, he's really certain about this. There's nothing I'm certain about in the universe that I would utter with that level of confidence. Okay. But he's certain about this. And I said, why? And then he said, because that's a fraction the size of the smallest life on Earth. And I said, last I checked, the rocket's from Mars. Okay, so why are you, a biologist that's stuck with only one kind of life, passing that kind of judgment on what could be life on another planet?

[C]

The first. Well, it's amazing that you were in that room, first of all. That's pretty cool. Second, though, is that we know now that the size is not necessarily a determinant of life forms. Their base ribosome itself. The presence of a ribosome, I will argue, would be life. Right. It has to come together through biology. So size itself is not what I would go after if I were to first criticize that sort of finding. So, no, size alone isn't. We know this. And that's the beauty, I think, about space exploration, is that we learn so much about what are the limits of life and what life is. Is it something that I know when I see, or is it something that I can attribute to size? Is it just some chemicals? Is it some sort of movement? Like what is it? Exactly?

[D]

Because that affected the. Let me just call it a bias. When we first landed on Mars, we performed tests with Viking Mist Lander. We have our own bias, life as we know of what we're looking for.

[A]

Right?

[D]

Yeah. And if something's there that you're not looking for. Right. Will you find it? Right.

[A]

Especially if you have a preconceived notion of what it should be.

[D]

Of what it should.

[A]

I'm just happy that the universe has confirmed that size does not matter.

[C]

Not only that study, of course, led to a realization that we need experts that can combine or look into some biological process on a rock and interpret it. Right. We didn't have that kind of understanding, so we gotta be a little bit gentle, I think. But we know now far more suppressors than what we thought life can. How it can express itself.

[D]

An informed biologist, and certainly not you, would have reacted that way in that conversation.

[C]

I wouldn't go after, you know, whether There could be smaller life forms than what they're saying. But nevertheless there are obvious. Now we can do more. We can look at isotopes. We can understand to what degree it is actually so crazy. I mean, think about the sugar molecule or caffeine. Some people have mugs with the caffeine molecule in it. Right. We can understand each atom and the discrimination of each atom, their discriminative properties of the atmospheric isotopes. We can like atomically explore each atom.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

In a concrete molecule through the clump isotope methodology. And we can attribute whether that value is coming from a biological system or none. That is so insane to me. I mean, there are very few people in the world that can do this really well. It's very easy to mess this up. So I respect to them, but we can identify if it is just amino acid on an asteroid versus a microbe that wants or advanced living microbe. So we can do these sophisticated studies and we are getting there now with the sample return.

[D]

Right.

[C]

With the Bennu, it's just so much happening. And in fact it was today a paper came out, I was reading it on the way here that took Deinococcus, this really resistant crazy bug that can survive under really harsh conditions and radiated and you put this insane amount of pressure on it to understand whether this bug can survive planetary travel. And they found that it can, at least numerically, it can handle really, really high pressure. So that's kind of amazing.

[D]

The Fermia hypothesis.

[C]

Exactly. I mean they're kind of linking it to that. Well, very carefully. Because that one line of data doesn't make an entire concept, you know, doesn't prove the whole thing.

[D]

Right. Of course.

[C]

But it is fun to think about it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

Or to dream about all the ways of being alive. And so what about the science fiction writers best friend is thinking about silicon based life swapping silicon in for carbon every place you find it because they have the same outer electron configurations so you can make all the same molecules.

[C]

Well, protein engineers showed this about seven years ago a paper came out that showed that in an enzyme they could replace the carbon with silicon. So at least engineering wise, we demonstrated that you can to some degree push an enzyme to use silicon instead of

[D]

carbon and still have the same function it did before.

[C]

Yes. Albeit with some variations in the sense of it's not maybe as efficient, but it's fine.

[D]

Sure.

[C]

So, but in whole organism. Look, nobody wants weird strange life forms more than me, okay? But I also want to be able to study something and not hallucinate. There's a part like imagination is great, but then you gotta be, I think, a little careful, then not go a little, go too far. Hallucinations can be a little too much.

[D]

Go too far.

[C]

Exactly. So we gotta start with what we know. And especially understand that we know very little. We know less than we think we do.

[D]

That's always true at all times for everyone except me.

[A]

I'm sorry. You wanna know about life?

[D]

My rebuttal to the silicon based life versus carbon based life to as an astrophysicist is that there's at least five times as much carbon in the universe as silicon.

[A]

Well, that kind of goes back to the beginning of our.

[D]

So you don't need to express a

[A]

solution, you don't need to do it because carbon's too available.

[D]

It's too available.

[A]

It's too available.

[D]

It's very fertile in the chemistry lab.

[A]

And it's like you say, whatever the easiest way. Life is lazy.

[C]

But if you think about it, life also relies on all these rare elements and metals on this planet. That is, is like there's nothing for the universe. It looks like it's just a waste, right? Like something that you would not even consider as fat of the steak, you know, I mean, it's just like, sure, take it. And then look what life did.

[D]

Yeah, that's being opportunistic.

[C]

Perhaps that's inspirational that, you know, again, it will assemble this insane. Look at us, look at, you know, look at the world. It will come out of like almost for. Out of nothing. For the planet, for the universe.

[D]

Right.

[C]

And that's what we study with the NASA Center Museum, the Metal Utilization Center.

[D]

Yeah, tell me about that.

[C]

We are trying to understand how the oceanic content across billions of years have inspired organisms to do their thing. We want to know how they competed against a certain metal. Life is metal, right? Life relies on metals. Enzymes do their thing. They are able to do all these crazy thermodynamic barrier breakings because they eat a lot of metal. They depend on this. And metal has to come from somewhere.

[D]

What do you say? Metal? I mean, iron.

[C]

Iron.

[D]

Calcium.

[C]

If you're interested in molybdenum.

[D]

Well, calcium. I mean astrophysically, everything that's not hydrogen or helium.

[C]

Exactly.

[D]

We call metals. Oh, it's stupid, but it's left over from the old days.

[A]

Forget it. After that you're done.

[C]

Look at this feast life created with all the leftovers.

[D]

And with the leftovers.

[A]

Exactly right.

[D]

Think about it. 98% of the universe is hydrogen and helium. Everything of interest to us is with the 2% that's left over.

[C]

Exactly. And we know it's a very iron rich planet. Right. Early on. And then with oxygen what happens? What happens with oxygen?

[A]

Iron you get rust.

[C]

Exactly. So you're fried. And we see that in the rock records. That's how also we understand that our planet has gone through such revolution.

[D]

These are these layers of iron deposits.

[C]

Iron deposits, yeah, exactly.

[D]

So they life generated. Exactly, yes. Sorry. It's not an iron ore coming through, it's the iron leftover.

[C]

And it is. And by the way, that knowledge is also only like 30, 40 years old. Right. Like we did not know that microbes are able to leave a mark behind.

[D]

In fact, when we opened the Rose center that was new information and we made a very big deal of that in our exhibits to date back the earliest possible life.

[C]

It comes back to a study from University of Wisconsin Madison.

[A]

Somebody's tooting their own horn. I see.

[D]

To give the credit action too, Stanley

[C]

Tyler as he was doing, you know what a good geologist does, you know, FA NFO and he was just hiking around and he came across with these iron deposits, some rock formations that are different than the others. Near Gunflint Church, which is in the Canadian border. And he wanted to understand this and he collaborates with a scientist at MIT and they are able to do all kinds of electro. You know, basically relying on the radiation technology. Not only date the rock, but understand that there's a microbe here it which completely transforms our understanding. Because if you think about it, I'm going back to Darwin. Even he contemplated with about origin of life in the past just maybe once or twice, some warm little punt, whatever. But his biggest dilemma was that if everything comes from an ancestor, where is the ancestor of the ancestor? You fall off a cliff once you pass Cambrian. Like there's all these, you know, Ediacaran things and footsteps and you know like bones and whatever.

[D]

Bones are late but you know that's post Cambrian explosion.

[C]

Exactly.

[D]

So and before it you got nothing.

[C]

You got nothing. So a lot of people were also at that time there's all these intense letters to Darwin saying how do you explain like what happens? Because there's a gap, right? There's this huge gap. And through these studies that are only 30, 40 years old, we now know that that entire 4 billion period was microbial. And now we are able to go to Iraq and atomic the process it and understand that those colors are generated from due to once living microbe. Insane.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

And it is red because there was oxygen on the planet and they liked Iron. But boo hoo, so bad it's a catastrophe because now there's oxygen on the planet and you're gone.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

So what we are interested in understanding is that how that shift, the presence of oxygen transforms organisms and entire life on this planet.

[D]

I'm just glad I am on the side of the biology fence where I can metabolize oxygen. Rather than have it kill me, then

[A]

have it kill you.

[D]

Kill me, right?

[A]

Yes, exactly.

[D]

Have me be like melting like the wicked witch of the West.

[C]

Oxygen I will do.

[D]

So, something I missed. What is it that we do today to create the nitrogen necessary to infuse into our agriculture?

[C]

That's the problem. There are two ways. One is coming from biology, and that's biological nitrogen fixation. And we also have the Haber Bosch process.

[D]

And how does that work?

[C]

It's a very energetically expensive process. It not only obviously uses nitrogen, but also hydrogen. And in the presence of a catalyst and really high pressure produces ammonia.

[D]

Nitrogen is just in the air.

[C]

Yeah, Nitrogen is always in the air, but it's not readily available. So we do.

[D]

Free nitrogen is not available for you

[C]

in the form that is useful for biology. So it needs to be converted into ammonia.

[D]

Okay, so now you got ammonia. Now what?

[C]

What you got?

[D]

Clean floors?

[C]

Well, we needed four fertilizers, so that's where they go primarily. But say for example, cereal or corns, they use biological nitrogen fixation primarily because

[A]

when you farm, that's what comes out of the soil.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

It's the nitrogen that comes out of the soil. So this allows you to re energize or replenish the nitrogen in the soil.

[C]

I think what is really interesting here is that as we read more about our past, as I understood more, what our planet has gone through, and when you connect biology and molecules to the planets, which is something we have to do if we are serious about finding life.

[D]

Right.

[C]

Because even though we are making our observations at these large scales, ultimately we are looking at an expression of something really, really, really tiny instead. That's the molecule. So we need to be able to connect molecules to a planet ultimately.

[D]

Yeah. Otherwise, you know.

[C]

Exactly. But that bridge was missing. So I think our research fills that gap through the planetary biology concept. And what we are understanding is that just because something isn't around doesn't mean it was useless. And that our planet has gone through things that actually could teach us a lot about the future because they resemble our future.

[D]

And resurrecting tools of the past.

[C]

Exactly.

[D]

To shape our future.

[A]

Nice. Ooh, lovely.

[D]

So is Your lab funded by NSF or.

[C]

We definitely had support from nsf. NASA for sure.

[A]

Not for long, if it's up to me. I'm just saying, quite frankly, I need the money to start more wars.

[C]

So the John Templeton foundation was very generous with us. Yes. As well as the KEK foundation and also Hypothesis Fund that they've been.

[D]

That's new to me. Hypothesis Fund?

[C]

Yeah, they. They sort of nimble funding for nimble minds. I think that. So I got a cold call one day saying, if we give you this much money, what would you do with it? And glad you. Because I have all these ideas and this is the whole idea of. They said, okay, great, but no respect to elders. What can this do for me? Give me like, what is your sort of moonshot experiment? And I said, well, I think there's a lot we can learn from the past for our future. And so they invested in this work and then later Keck foundation supported it and that's our primary funding right now. So.

[D]

And Keck, of course, funded our twin telescopes in Hawaii.

[A]

Wow.

[D]

The Keck Observatory. So I'm delighted to learn of this. I'm more delighted to learn that your work is visible enough to attract cold calls from funders.

[A]

That's serious.

[D]

That's serious stuff.

[A]

Ain't nobody ever called me to offer me some money. Just letting you know, that's when you know you're doing something right. When they call you, I'm like, do you need some money? Like to give you some money? Like that's when you know you are kicking ass.

[C]

I thought it was a joke because it was my birthday. I thought, who's this? And that's not funny. But then it was real.

[A]

That's great.

[D]

Wow.

[C]

I had to write a proposal, of course, but it was an invitation to

[D]

just congratulations on this. And it sounds like it's very fast moving. Be delighted to catch up with you again when you got more enzymes and we'll find out just how different our future is going to be.

[A]

Or just make some enzymes and we'll talk about those.

[C]

Oh, that would be great.

[A]

You're working on it.

[C]

You bet.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

You're on it.

[D]

Yeah. I want to find out in what way your professional work will influence the future of civilization.

[A]

And if you want to give the number to the lab, maybe there's somebody out there that might want to give some money.

[D]

How do we find you on social? Are you active on social media?

[C]

I am on Instagram. Yeah. I, I used to be on Twitter. Now it's X. I'm still there. I have the account.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah, they can for sure find Instagram

[D]

and what, what do you call it on Instagram?

[C]

My really hard to say first and last name. Astro.

[A]

Astro. Bitu Kachar. Astro.

[C]

There you go.

[D]

Bitul Kachar. Astro. I finally got it right.

[C]

Yes, yes, yes.

[D]

Excellent. Very excellent. Well, thank you for joining us.

[C]

Thanks for having me.

[D]

This was great on StarTalk. It clarified some confusions I had and brings a whole field of study into the attention of our highly scientifically curious audience.

[C]

Yes, thank you. Thank you for having me. And I hope we realize that past is not something to be feared, only to be understood. As Marie Curie said, you don't know my past.

[A]

I'm just letting you know

[C]

you don't know mine either.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

This has been another installment of StarTalk. Thanking my guest Bitul Kachar from University of Wisconsin Madison for sharing her expertise with of wisdom and insight on life yesterday, today and tomorrow. O look at that here and there. Got both dimensions going.

[A]

Sounds like a soap opera.

[D]

Chuck, always good to have you, man.

[A]

Always a pleasure.

[D]

Until next time. As always, keep looking up.

[E]

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